In a historical judgment, the Supreme Court of
India has slapped a huge collective penalty of Rs.2 lakh crores on urban
governing bodies. Based on the studies conducted by 2 independent research
committees, SC has come to a conclusion that urban governing bodies throughout
India have been knowingly and deliberately taking rural regions and people for
granted and irresponsibly dumping waste in their lands, thus ignoring rights of
such rural people to lead life in a clean, healthy environment. Studies
conducted by the independent research committees have reconfirmed the claims of
rural people surrounding such places that improper waste management has
resulted into extensive pollution of water, air and soil in those regions, and
this has been instrumental in spreading numerous diseases, reducing lifespan
and even inducing genetic disorders among people in those regions.
According to the judgment, the penalty is to be
paid over the period of next five years. This money should be handed over to
rural governing bodies and should be used to provide state of the art treatments
for affected rural people, cleaning up the mess created so far and also
relocation of people where restoration of environment is not possible. Along
with this, all urban bodies are given a time period of 3 months to identify
sites within their own boundaries for the purposes of waste treatment and
disposal, failing which the penalty could further increase.
Further, a special central committee is to be
formed to determine exact share of penalty for each corporation, municipality
etc. depending on the extent of damage caused by each one of them. Urban
governing bodies are instructed to impose higher tax on property owners, residents
and businesses in their respective regions to make up deficits in their budgets,
if any. At the end of the day, those who produce waste are not owning up the
responsibility of end result of their act, the Supreme Court observed, and the
judgment is only fair, it said.
SC was also appreciative and sympathetic towards
those in urban areas who have been putting special efforts towards better
overall waste management. It instructed urban governing bodies to specially
recognize any significant efforts by any individuals or institutions, and
impose reduced special tax on them. For ex: communities who practice high
degree of waste segregation and recycling, institutions who have adopted
composting of biodegradable waste within campus.
Finally, the Supreme Court said that the seemingly
huge penalty is nothing compared to the loss of affected people and said that
the judgment is just one of the first steps to change the future trend.
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Of course the above is a fake news, but I wish to
see such news in reality. While waste management is an extremely complex
subject and defining accountability and tracking is not an easy task, there is
no doubt that majority of the urban population has been lazy, irresponsible and
unreasonable in their attitude towards the waste they produce. And today we are
seeing many instances where rural folks have woken up and started protesting
against urban folks who indiscriminately dump their waste on rural regions. I
see villagers’ protest as a welcome development and applaud their efforts to
protect their environment and rights.
Please check out following articles published by
‘The Hindu’ on 12th Aug 2012 trying to highlight state of affairs in
different parts of India.
Though I live in an urban area and I myself might
get affected by such a uproar from rural folks, I honestly hope that such protests
from rural folks only becomes stronger in coming days so that urban population and
governing bodies are forced to deal with their waste themselves. Then
automatically solutions will come up, and most importantly waste generation
itself will reduce.
I wish to see a day when following policies and
practices are in place:
-
Products that are not environment friendly are
strategically priced higher than environment friendly alternatives so that
people’s buying choices are automatically guided towards environment friendly
products.
-
Governing bodies should definitely provide options
for effective and efficient waste disposal for all individual homes and
institutions, but only for a heavy charge so that waste generation is seriously
discouraged, reuse and scientific waste management at source are encouraged.
Please note that both the above steps will also
ensure a surge in R&D and awareness education related to eco friendly
products and better overall waste management.
I wish human race collectively works towards lesser
waste generation, efficient usage of resources, efficient recycling and
disposal.
Note: I will leave this topic here and will
share more examples and experience while answering the comments.
1 comments:
even if SC really slaps such fines, governing bodies wont worry- they can pay off those fines again from our taxes.. they can collect more tax in name or different surcharges etc.. again, rural governing bodies will misuse the penalty money and so on :( -Murali
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