Over the years, India¡¯s only IT hub has attracted engineers and computer science professionals from all over the country. Not entirely anticipating this boom, Bengaluru has now become a notorious example of urban planning gone wrong. Residents of New Delhi and Mumbai, who used to once envy the citizens of Karnataka¡¯s capital city for its greenery, lakes and clean air, now breathe a sigh of relief of not taking the plunge and moving there. Lakes in Bengaluru are catching fire at a consistent frequency. And that's only because they are extremely polluted.?
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India¡¯s Silicon Valley, Bengaluru, is one of the fastest growing cities not only in the country but in the world. Most of what exists in Bengaluru now has come up in the last decade or so. Unforeseen and unplanned rapid urbanisation has created a waste management problem that has gone out of hands and is suffocating both its people and cherished lakes. Inter-city streets are as if decorated with tall piles of garbage and the outer-city landscape has been reduced to overflowing landfills. ?
On February 16, Bellandur Lake in the city caught fire. Sounds absurd, doesn¡¯t it? But it happened, not for the first but the second time in the gap of just a few months. The lake lies in the middle of the city and has for many years been an illegal dumping ground for waste for a place that produces an estimated amount of 3000-5000 tonnes of solid waste daily. Authorities believe that the fire was a result of methane gas formation from illegal industrial waste dumping. Also, a large amounts of weed growing in the lake might also have aggravated the fire.
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But, Bengaluru alone is not the victim of poor waste management policies that have resulted in the city turning into a huge garbage dump. This is an India problem. However, because India¡¯s Silicon Valley was once revered as a safe haven for pensioners, women and anyone looking for an urban life in close proximity to nature, it has been the receiving end of much concern and planning management and policies debate.
Like most Indian cities, Bengaluru¡¯s cocktail of problems, including the toxic corruption of its lakes, boils down two things: lack of consciousness and overlap in roles of local government authorities.
Authorities and infrastructure weren¡¯t equipped to handle such fast-paced growth and the core systems were missing to handle this outburst of the population from 4 million to its current 8.43 million. The per capita generation of garbage not only doubled, but it is also a product of a newly consumerist society, says Venkatesh Kanhaiya, Head of Content at Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy.
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The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahangraha Palike (BBMP), which is the administrative body responsible for the civic and infrastructural management of the greater Bangalore metropolitan area has outsourced 80 per cent of the waste management collection to private contractors and has a system of door-to-door collection for collecting solid waste. An auto tipper is available for every 1000 household and pushcart for every 200 households. Seems like a pretty organised process, doesn¡¯t it? In theory, it does, but the organisation is being lost in implementation.
Megha Shenoy, an Adjunct Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) says: ¡°The problem of governance in waste management in Bengaluru is in the implementation of policies and lack of a dedicated wing within the BBMP to tackle this issue.
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¡°Current policies make it necessary for citizens to segregate waste at the source into dry, wet and sanitary waste. However, private contractors, who collect waste from individual houses are still paid by the BBMP on a tonnage basis i.e. they are paid per tonne of waste that they collect and transport to a dump site. Although, new tenders that mandate these private contractors to separately collect waste fractions, weigh them and transport them (using GPS trackers) to designated processing centres - have been floated at least 4 times - these new tenders have been boycotted so far by the private contractors.¡±
She elaborates on another problem at the level of implementation. Bulk generators of waste, which includes any establishment that produces more than 10kg of total waste, and apartment complexes with more than 50 or more units, are also supposed to segregate waste at the source. Also, they have been mandated to either treat wet waste at the source or employ vendor to collect and transport both wet and dry waste, albeit separately, to relevant waste processing centres. Bulk generators are not supposed to give waste to private contractors, which are employed by the BBMP.
Yet they give their waste to BBMP contractors without segregating waste, by paying them an additional fee.
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Meghna adds that local authorities are under strain for lack of resources.
Population has expanded at an alarmingly fast rate but the resources of the authorities have not grown in tandem. BBMP does not have enough resources, money and ability to effectively manage waste. While Bombay has an allocated budget of 40,000 crores, Bengaluru is allocated a mere 4,000 crores.
It would be wrong to blame authorities alone ¨C BBMP has tried to stringently inculcate the method of segregating waste at home. Some wards will follow, others won¡¯t. Those who do segregate lose motivation, because firstly, they don¡¯t know whether it remains segregated after leaving their house, and secondly they see others getting away without doing the same.
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A city, which once upon a time used to have about 285 lakes, currently only has 194 feeding on sewage. Others have been lost to unchecked urbanisation and encroachment. Both illegal dumpings of waste and untreated sewage are responsible for the toxic corruption of water bodies.
Veena Srinivasan, a fellow at the ATREE says there is an overlap of responsibilities among the many different authorities that are responsible for maintaining and cleaning lakes. About 50% are manned by BBMP, while the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is responsible for a smaller number, and another smaller chunk comes under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department.
However, all authorities have a different set of responsibilities for different lakes. For example, Department A might be responsible for Lake A, but Department A might be responsible for checking the legal and illegal inputs in Lake B, and Department B might be responsible for the same in Lake A.
An overlap and confusion of duties is hindering authorities from effectively carrying out their roles, and taking responsibility for the condition of their lakes, all of which are currently under a state of coma.