Modi: Clean India? What about Gujarat

I am as patriotic as the next Indian, but truth be told, I am ready to disown my country when confronted by the filth around. I don't need to spell it out, it's omnipresent. But if you really want an educational tour, you could head out just anywhere, on a train-the time-honoured way for the Indian experience - and be charmed by the sights: filth and defecation along the tracks - and just about everywhere else, putrid, toxic drains (in an earlier, forgotten avatar they were clean, free flowing rivers), mounds of rubbish, dirt, flies...you get the drift?

So it was with unmitigated delight that I saw the Hon'ble Prime Minister wield the broom to sweep India clean with the Swacch Bharat campaign. Aaah, I thought, finally this very serious issue, has the attention, and dare I say the might, of the top man in the country, behind it.

Finally, we will see a clean India by circa 2019.

But delve a little deeper, and Utopia starts to fade.

For starters, it is not the first time that we have tried and failed to clean India. Admittedly, this time around, the campaign was launched with far more aplomb and melodrama, of the kind we are getting used to with our new PM; but the idea, and a policy, of a clean India, and managing waste is old, and has been gathering dust for years. In 2000, a Waste Management Policy (for Class I cities) was prepared by a high-level committee, and submitted to the  Supreme Court, which directed the concerned statutory authorities to comply by  its recommendations. I won't go into the details of the report, suffice to say that evidently, we haven't been listening to the Supreme Court.

There have been other such campaigns. One that comes to mind is the Singara Chennai or Beautiful Chennai, when the DMK was in power(2007). Comments Nityanand Jayaram,  a Chennai resident and an environmentalist in a recent piece in Kafila , " the city is no different now in terms of garbage. But in the process, at least 20,000 slumdweller families have been evicted in the name of beautifying the city." It's not the only time when people have been swept aside as "dirt". Such "cleanliness" drives,  when expecting a world leader or hosting a mega event such as Commonwealth Games, are fairly routine - and not limited to India. So, the new government is faced with that prickly question of what exactly qualifies as trash, and whether slums, and the people-as much a citizens of India as you or me-will be swept aside, "somewhere".

Or, dare we hope that cleaning and improving their living conditions be an integral part of the campaign?

But you say, those were other people, other campaigns. This government is different; and the  the PM is a "doer". Yeah, but we might need to take a closer look at the Nirmal Gujarat Campaign launched in 2007, by the then CM Narendra Modi with similar lofty goals, and guess what? Beyond the showcase super highways and shopping malls and the famed Sabarmati riverfront, Gujarat is still unclean. As a "semi-resident" (I largely grew up in Gujarat and still have ties) of the state, I can say with fair certainty that the garbage has not vanished, it has to some extent, shifted to seamier locales. One of the filthiest such eyesores is the dumping site of Gyaspur-Pirana, by the river Sabarmati, in Ahmedabad. A huge, putrid mountain of waste - and a breeding ground for diseases.

Like the Sabarmati clean-up, the changes are largely cosmetic.

Worse, Gujarat has the dubious distinction of being the most polluted state in the country, (Central Pollution Control Board, 2010) and accounts for 29 per cent of the over six million tonnes of India's hazardous waste.  It also has three of the most polluted rivers in India: Sabarmati, Khari (both flow through Ahmedabad) and Amlakhadi (Ankaleshwar) as per the National Water Quality Programme  of the CPCB. The industrial city of Vapi is counted among the most polluted cities in the world.  How do we get around that one, or do toxic wastes flowing into putrid rivers and contaminating land; coal dust, lead, arsenic and fly ash in the air - not count as dirty at all?

This is the crux of the issue: the simplicity of the Swacch Bharat campaign sweeps aside complex issues. It has even failed to address the very basic question of where will we will dump the dirt and the dust and the garbage we "clean",  given the colossal amounts of waste we generate? That calls for a separate story, but to just give you an idea,  India generates 0.1 million tonnes of municipal solid waste every day, making it approximately 36.5 million tonnes annually, and growing. If you count industrial and other wastes, over 950 million tonnes of solid waste is generated every year. With exponential population growth and economic development, India is expected to be the world's largest municipal solid waste generator.

The other complexity being ignored is how does cleaning India tie in with the consumerist and development-without-breaks agenda of the government. There are inherent contradictions here that need to be addressed.  I find a rather striking irony  that even as the government vows to clean-up, it lifts a moratorium  on opening new industries (or increasing production capacity of existing ones) issued by the erstwhile Ministry of Environment and Forests in January 2010, on eight of the 43 of India's most "critically polluted clusters".

That there is a link between economic growth and garbage is well-established. Crudely put, economic growth will generate "prosperity", as well as waste.  The faster the economy grows, the more it consumes,  and disposes. In fact it is this consumption cycle - extraction of natural resources which are made into "products" and consumables, consumed, and disposed, that determine the rate of growth.  And cities, as the engines of economic growth are also the highest producers of waste and pollution.

Mega industries that produce steel, cement, power critical to our infrastructure, or consumers like you and me, who dump our mobiles and tablets for the latest model, or the plastic packaging that encase products-all add to ever growing Frankenstein-like trash heaps; - all of which eventually finds its way into, and contaminate, land and water.

Do we have a strategy in place, to manage the "collateral damage" of economic growth? Have we worked out how we are going to deal the garbage our cities-smart or otherwise will generate as part of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan?

Developed nations have traditionally used poor and underdeveloped countries - India being one among them-as dump yards. Everything, from wasted ships, to shredded plastic carry bags to used diapers to e-waste has found its way to our shores, legally, or illegally; prompting a daily to ponder whether India is a global trash can?

We, however, don't have the option to ship out our waste: we must live with our garbage, and given its tremendous ramification on health, productivity and ultimately the well-being and growth of India, it's crucial that the well-intended Clean India Plan be wholistic, and that there are synergies with the other goals and campaigns of the government.