Clean the city, use the garbage

Clean the city, use the garbage

I am very grateful to Ms Kamla Ravikumar, dedicated environmental activist and educator in Chennai, India, for sending me this link. I have a connection to Rajkot - my ancestors, especially on my paternal grandmother's side, hailed from there and they moved to the South Indian city of Madras in the 1920s (with occasional short periods back in Gujarat) through the 1940s before they finally decided that Madras (which was later renamed Chennai) was where their hearts were. As someone who has visited Gujarat (and Rajkot) only twice - once in the mid 1970s and then in the early 80s, I could understand why. My impressions of the state and of Rajkot as a city were of dusty and dirty places where public hygiene was considerably worse than what I was accustomed to in the South. My paternal grandmother always maintained that she stayed back in Madras because she wanted all four of her sons to get what she would refer to as "double degrees" from Madras colleges. And that was what brought my maternal grandparents to Madras as well - Karachi was not quite a place for girls to get an education in the 1950s, and not for a member of the minority in particular. My maternal grandmother's family had lived in Mambalam since the 1890s and it probably took her and my grandfather the better part of fifteen minutes to decide where they were going to send their daughters to study - that was Madras's reputation as a center of culture, learning and advancement back in the day.

The public squalor and unhygienic conditions in Gujarat did blow up with the Surat plague of 1994. Thousands of people died from pneumonic plague in the rat infested town with badly overflowing sewers. As the world watched sick in the stomach, it does appear as if the people of Gujarat found the reason that they needed to clean their city up - in 2004, a prestigious magazine (I am not sure whether it was India Today or Outlook) did a story on how, in 10 years' time, Surat had become one of the cleanest cities in India because of a concerted effort by the city administration. Now, another city in the same state - Gujarat - has gone a step further. I am not sure if the recognition of garbage as a resource that the Indian express article talks about in Rajkot is a first for India, but, even if it isn't the very first, it is certainly among the first. And there is a lot to be hoped for in this demonstration of an idea that has made entrepreneurs wealthy the world over - hopefully, other cities across India will compete and try to best Rajkot in using their garbage as a resource. The pluses in doing this are simply too many, but the most significant ones would be:

1. Whole cities get cleaned up, and, instead of spending money on cleaning, they realize a profit from doing this. This is especially important in a desperately poor country like India

2. A large scale operation like this provides employment to some of the most marginalized communities in the country - rural migrants to the cities who, usually, have little education and no money

3. A cleaner living environment means healthier lives for city residents. The Surat plague showed the deficiencies of the Indian public health system. Cities that work hard to keep themselves clean and also make money out of this, end up reducing the strain on already beleaguered hospital systems

I hope that this example would be competitively emulated by other cities across India as they try to make even more money out of their garbage. There is a lot more that can be done - I have been beating the drum about garbage mining as is done here in the USA and in several European countries. That would make even more money for cities and entrepreneurs who get into this business in India. And when there is any further development, this blog will cover it - watch this space!