On July 5th Indian Express came out with a story on the pathetic situation of municipal solid waste management across the state of Kerala (see the link below):
It is indeed a very sorry state of affairs. For a problem of industrial dimensions, quacks are still chest beating on source segregation and decentralized solutions and activists are offering their hair-brained ideas on biogas and rag pickers, etc.. Some are hoping that the army of rag pickers will solve the problem! Its like going to traditional healers specialising in exhorcism while we have a full blown cardiac problem on hand (and there are no qualified cardiac surgeons around) !! (whatever happened to 'Mother India needing organic carbon' paradigm!!). No wonder 'God's own country' is now finding itself buried under a mountain of trash. (BTW isn't it that the term 'God's own country' was coined by the party that professes atheism!?).
Remember what we diagnosed back in 2006 ?! Wonder if you figure out that its all coming true after couple of thousand crores down the drain - The Thiruannanthpuram plant has been officially closed down, all the three plants in Vishakhapattanam have been shut down permanently, all the 10 odd plants constructed under the 'Air Force Station' scheme of the MoUD have closed or malfunctioning, and numerous others - of which I lose track !!
While we tried to convince the community, but we were shot down!! There was expectation that some day a PPP player with Midas touch will come and will convert all our trash into Gold (recently heard a senior IAS officer heading a 6 million + ULB claiming that trash is their asset !! see the previous post) !! Unfortunately the PPP market is now seeing new levels of aggressive bidding with unsustainably low tipping fee quotations !! Developers are wondering whether they can pull it off in the long run !! Operators themselves are wondering when they would be forced to close down operations. We are hoping that there will light some day ! Until then ....
God Bless
