New Delhi: One of the biggest challenges in the ten-year journey of Swachh Bharat Mission, which began on 2 October 2014, has been to create a permanent and effective system of waste management. According to a report of the Ministry of Environment, by next year i.e. 2025, 0.70 kg of solid waste will be generated per person per day in urban areas alone. This is four to six times more than in 1999, but our waste management capacity is not even one-fourth of this.

Waste is increasing at the rate of four percent every year and governments are struggling to deal with it. An example of this is the Central Government's Gobardhan Yojana, which aims to set up bio gas, CBG and bio CNG plants from waste. In three years, this scheme has not been able to move even two steps. To achieve the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission, rules for solid waste management were fixed in 2016.

Connect with the economy to create a system 

A big idea was to create a complete system for local disposal of waste and connect it with the economy. If it is used to produce energy, a sustainable structure will be created. Gobardhan Yojana was started in 2018. Many ministries were also connected with this idea. It was decided to create a decentralized system. It was decided to give central assistance to the states for setting up biogas plants. Many types of incentives were arranged to ensure economic viability. Despite all this, the enthusiasm shown initially for the Gobardhan Yojana could not take the form of a campaign.

Today the situation is that only 23 percent of the solid waste is being treated in the entire country and even in that, the contribution of the biogas route is not even half a percent. Every day 1.45 lakh tons of solid waste is being generated in the cities. 67 percent of this is reaching landfill sites. According to the data of the Ministry of Water Power, 1388 biogas plants have been registered so far. But the situation is that only 103 of these have been completed. Work has not even started in 111, while 253 plants are under construction.

Ten percent of biogas plants were completed

871 are working, but they are not being operated to their full capacity. This means that barely ten percent of the biogas plants have been completed. When Jal Shakti Minister CR Patil reviewed the Gobardhan Yojana last month, the operators of these plants had highlighted their problems and challenges. The most important among these were the continued excessive use of chemical fertilizers and the lack of a clear and well-defined system for carbon credit in the CBG sector. What is even more important is that they have to grapple with the inefficiency of the urban bodies, which are bereft of resources and technology in the matter of separating garbage and are also facing a lack of will. Due to all this, concerns have increased over the economic viability of these plants. Major states where installation of plants has not even started: Andhra Pradesh 3 Assam 13 Bihar 4 Chhattisgarh 19 Gujarat 5 Haryana 6 Himachal 6 Karnataka 14 Madhya Pradesh 3 Maharashtra 9 Rajasthan 8 Uttar Pradesh 9 Tamil Nadu 4