Urban Residential Solid Waste Management in India

Solid waste is a potential nightmare across India’s large and growing urban population, due to inadequate policy and legislative instruments and to the deplorable organizational and financial capacities of urban local bodies. Sketching briefly the waste generation, collection, and disposal scenario across urban India, this article highlights the issues in institutional arrangements for solid waste management. It touches particularly on the impact of municipalities’ financial health and autonomy and the limitations and potentials of alternative actors, particularly the economically exploited waste collectors and vendors of the nonformal sector. Direct and indirect financial instruments of cost recovery and generation control are advocated, taking into account their operational hurdles in capacity building of local bodies. The article further suggests that the nonformal sector be organized and that the private sector participate more widely in collection and recycling; it also suggests that nongovernmental organizations begin to train marginal workers and build awareness among the poor as to the techniques and opportunities of solid waste collection.