Waste management is a complex process. Globally, issues of waste management pose technical and policy challenges. The variability in generation, proportion and management of waste provides unique challenges in both urban and rural landscape of India. Apart from taboos associated with waste generation and management, behavioral issues are also predominant at household level of managing waste. Management of waste should ensure waste avoidance, material evidence and resource recovery and not limited to cleaning activity (Zaman and Lehman, 2013). Outside the household, there are issues of collection like mode of collection, transportation, disposal of waste, middle men, local contractual concerns. Labour management, their safety and financial security are important concerns too. When it comes to technical handling of waste, the rules and regulations are relatively new to India. It is in 2016 that the rules for management of solid waste, plastic waste, construction and hazardous waste; and biomedical waste  released. Waste management practices aren’t governed by Laws yet. The rules alone cannot achieve public participation and enforcement of said practices in waste management. Although cleanliness is a part of waste management, cleanliness drives are directed towards bringing behavior change to ensure citizen participation in waste management. With Swaachh Bharat Mission, there has been nationwide effort to create awareness, cleanliness drives, and public participation in waste management. The efficacy of the program, and drive could be assessed in detail; however, it has been crucial in getting public attention to the mundane topic of waste management. The call to action has led to an increase in sensitivity towards waste management. The ranking of cities might not appear to be very intellectual idea in approach but, a simple annual event of the nature promotes organizations and people to sustain efforts towards tedious task of waste management. At this point, it is essential to reiterate the distinction between cleanliness and waste management. Cleanliness is keeping an area clean. Waste management is bigger in scope, apart from keeping an area clean, it accounts for generation to treatment of components of waste produced.

Cleanliness monitoring-indicators, index and aggregation

At present, to monitor the efficiency of cleanliness drives within Swacchhtha (Cleanliness) mission for Gramin or Rural and urban areas, there are two index used. One is at the rural scale and the other at an urban scale. The indices are named as solid liquid waste management index. However, their aptness for solid liquid waste management could be questioned. Going a step back, their aptness for cleanliness index could be revisited as well.  The current basis of examining rural cleanliness drive is measured with an index of C= 0.4*X1 +0.3*X2+0.1*X3+0.2*X4, where C is cleanliness index, X1 stands for percentage of Household (HH) access to safe sanitation, X2 stands for percentage of HH having no litter, X3 stands for percentage of HH having no stagnant wastewater around them, and X4 stands for percentage level of litter free around public places. The index for urban area is formulated as C= 0.5*X2+0.17*X3+0.33*X4, where the variables[1] mentioned stand for same as in the rural cleanliness index.

First of all, by aggregating individual indicators to form an index, there is loss of information. The idea of using indicators is to help reduce information available at hands of decision makers to make effective yet comprehensive decisions (Nathan and Reddy, 2012). In the process of selecting handful of indicators, care is given to select adequate number of indicators, comprehensive in scope, and avoid overlapping of indicators. An indicator is a qualitative or quantitative measure to monitor performance, measure achievement, and it also determines accountability for a policy objective (UNAIDS, 2010). Organizing indicators in the form of an index often results in loss of information as we are further reducing information at hand from literature, to indicators to an index. This doesn’t mean index formation is a futile task however, it simply, demands additional precision, expert consultation to formulate an index otherwise indicators do fine. The indicators forming part of the index and weightage accorded could both be critically analyzed. The first and foremost point is the indicators forming the two indices are more suitable for a cleanliness index rather than Solid waste management index. As explained earlier, SWM is vast in scope and therefore, these indices should not be linked to solid waste management.

In the index for urban areas, the rationale for exclusion of HH access to safe sanitation in urban set up is not evident. Even from a layman perspective, urban households do require access to safe sanitation and it is a crucial matter. Either it should be included in the urban index or the reason for excluding it should be explained. Rest of the indicators are common for the two indices and do not seem comprehensive enough for monitoring cleanliness. This index would provide a very limited set of information for the surface level cleaning activity alone. The index is publicly available, however, the weightage accorded to the individual indicators are not, neither are the complete indicators from where these were shortlisted, aggregated to form the index. If we look closely, primarily, only two indicators are discussed here, one related to litter, and the second related to waste water. These two indicators are extended from household to public spaces. For a cleanliness monitoring program, there could be other indicators which should be included and extended for household and public spaces. There are themes and indicators missing from the point of view of cleanliness as well as solid waste management. Potential indicators could fall under the theme of public participation, participation of children and women, labour management, funds accrued and utilized, gears and equipment for cleanliness, number of drives over a period of time to state a few. The major distinction for urban and rural set up would be the mode of cleaning activity, number of people involved, employment generated, and types of litter. The rationale provided for submission. The criteria for selection of the indicators, themes, organizing framework is not mentioned or clear. Reiterating the point on two indicators extended to HH and public place would not suffice for measuring or monitoring cleanliness activities. Moreover, in the process of organizing the indicators to form index, according to weightage, the method of aggregation used is not stated, the process of according weight is not stated, distribution of weight is not stated as well. Selection and application of criteria is essential in determining suitable, applicable, and robust baseline of indicators, therefore an assessment for judging the current index and improving it would depend on the criteria of selecting it (Moreira et. al., 2018). Without access to the criteria and baseline of indicators, it is difficult to adjudge the efficiency of the index, however, if we have access to the baseline indicators, weightage and aggregation methods involved; we could assess the cleanliness index better and see if it would suit and/or could be developed into waste management index as well.

Way forward for Cleanliness index and Solid waste management index

In a separate study for identifying recommendations for tourist destinations in India in 2015[2], cleanliness ranking was used as a basis for determining shortcoming and strengths of tourism in India. The parameters or the criteria used for determining the ranking are listed. The parameters used were cleanliness of sewer and drainage, effectiveness of garbage collection and disposal, cleanliness of public convenience, facility, cleanliness around eateries, and cleanliness on ambience related aspects. It is not certain whether the same or similar parameters were used for deriving the cleanliness index for rural and urban areas. A similar set of information is required for cleanliness index as well as if it has to be extended to waste management index. Even in this study the rationale behind list of parameters mentioned is not indicated. An uphill task of managing waste could be assessed better with an expansive set of indicators to work with, these indicators when categorized and organized into various themes, would result in an index. There is extensive household level sample data covered for cleanliness survey. There isn’t clarity whether these data or survey parameters were used for developing the current index. Overall, the current index doesn’t seem comprehensive enough for cleanliness, let alone for waste management.

 

References:

Moreira, R., Malheiros, T. F., Alfaro, J. F., Cetrulo, T. B., Avila, L. V. (2018). Solid waste management index for Brazilian Higher Education Institutions. Waste management, Vol 80, 292-298.

Nathan, H.S. K., and Reddy, B. S., (2012). Towards a conceptual framework for development of sustainable development indicators for an urban setup, Int. J. Sustainable Development, 15(3), 187-205.

UNAIDS, (2010). An introduction to Indicators. UNAIDS Monitoring and evaluation fundamentals. UN.

Zaman and Lehman (2013). The zero waste index: a performance index for waste management systems in a ‘zero waste city. Journal of cleaner production, Vol 50, pp 123-132.

 

 

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