Dear Honorable Prime Minister,
Greetings from a concerned Indian! Over the last year and a half, I have written to you over 114 times highlighting and requesting urgent changes required in the waste management sector. Personally, I know that you are doing all that you can to better the lives of over 1.3 billion citizens of our great Nation by trying to rid it of corruption and crony capitalism that has eaten into the very fabric of our society. I am also aware that a feat of this magnitude requires time, but most of all it requires the masses to believe, commit and experience positive change however minute it might be.
There are many of us who believe in your idea of a new India, and many more who have been working towards your dream of a Swachh Bharat before you arrived on the national stage providing it much needed momentum through mass communication and awareness drives. Since you became the Prime Minister of India in the year 2014, many startups entered the waste sector providing technology-based solutions for treating organic and mixed municipal waste. After your announcement a few months ago to ban single use plastic in India (Subsequently squashed due to industry pressure and weakening economic conditions) even more companies jumped into the foray, again, providing technological solutions to treat plastic and manufacture a new type of plastic marketed as biodegradable or compostable plastic (This new material named bio-plastic will cause more harm than do good as this type of plastic cannot be mixed with conventional plastic and must be treated in industrial composting facilities that are far and few in India. This will entail your government to undertake another mass awareness program to educate consumers about the do’s and don’t’s of using this material while setting up industrial composting units to deal with this new waste stream)
Impressive! But consider the following. The collection and segregation side of the waste management business remains in disarray with the entry of only a hand full of new entrants and the market being controlled by a few large corporates and the unorganised sector. The collection and segregation side of the business remains unorganised (90%) with majority of the door-door collection from residential, industrial and commercial establishments being undertaken by small unregistered private contractors, NGO’s (Who outsource the work to the unorganized sector) and ragpickers. Collection and segregation are the backbone of any successful waste management system and they continue to be treated as a step child within the waste management eco sphere.
Through the 114 letters & a policy document that I have sent to you over the last year and a half, my intention has been to highlight the issue of the gradual monopolization and cartelization of waste collection in India (Through the tendering process), along with requesting you to grant Industry status to the sector as a whole. Privatization of the waste management sector should not benefit a few as is the case now, rather it should have far reaching impact on all aspects of society, from employment generation, wealth creation, upliftment of the underprivileged, cleaner environment, innovation and flow of private investment into the sector. For all this to happen we need a business friendly policy that is based on the principals of free market enterprise encouraging competition and innovation with minimum barriers to entry.
City after city across our country is now either in the process or has already tendered the entire waste management system to a single private contractor or a few contractors as is the case in Delhi. This Sir, is a failed model as evident throughout the country in cities wherever it has been implemented. Not only is this model grossly inefficient and underperforming it is a complete waste of the taxpayer’s money and government resources. The model is based on a tipping fee, which encourages the private contractor to dump as much waste as they can in make shift dumpsites owned by the government as they get paid based on weight. Further, the tenders state collection of waste from door-door and recovery of recyclables, yet none of this is happening. The door-door collection and subsequent recovery of recyclable waste in majority of cases is undertaken by the unorganized sector. Take for example, a recent tender in the city of Noida, given to a private company to collect and dispose of 600 tons of municipal waste in the government dump on a daily basis. The city generates 600 tons of waste daily, and the concerned company has been billing and providing weighment slips of 1100 tons daily, a difference of 500 tons! Where is the accountability and where is this addition 500 tons of waste coming from when the city only generates 600 tons as per government records? The icing on the cake is that not only is the company charging a tipping fee from the government, it is also charging a user fee from bulk generators, along with generating revenue from sale of recyclable scrap to the unorganized sector. Yet, you see garbage spewed across the city, yet municipalities and local authorities are unwilling to provide permissions to private players (as per MSW rules 2016) who at no expense to the tax payer are not only collecting waste door-door but also treating the organic component (Composting & Bio Gasification) and recovering recyclables that they send further for processing. Such malpractices are rampant across the country and will continue to grow without your personal attention and intervention.
The current system is working against your vision of a clean India, of an India where entrepreneurship, innovation and free market enterprise thrive. An India where ease of business is not just a government slogan on paper and adverts, but transforms the very way in which business is conducted and limits the role of the government as a custodian of law and order and that of protecting our borders.
Let us help strengthen your resolve, SME’s and the unorganized sector in the field of waste management in the country are currently saving the tax payer thousands of crores in the following way:
1. Collecting residential, industrial and commercial waste from source at no financial burden to the government, by charging a user fee directly from the generator
2. Recovering recyclables and sending it further for processing, whereby saving precious landfill space and supporting thousands of small and large businesses who are processing this waste. Also supporting the automotive, heavy industry and a host of other supporting sectors.
3. Transporting the inert waste at their own cost to the nearest government dumpsite and willing to pay a reverse tipping fee whereby the government earns revenue. This also ensures that businesses are incentivized to recover and treat as much of the municipal waste as they can.
4. Providing employment in lacs along with paying taxes. Currently private contractors providing snatiation services to any government body are exempt from pay GST (100%) while private companies providing the same service to private enterprises have to pay 18% GST.
Honorable Prime Minister, my request to you is to provide industry status to the waste management sector, open up the market to competition so that any company or individual can partake in helping you clean India. This should not be limited to just technology-based solutions, but must also encompass the collection and recovery side of the business based on set guidelines which the government has in place (Currently Municipalities and Authorities out right deny providing any permissions on the pretext that the work has been tendered or is in the process of being tendered). We need thousands of companies entering this sector, we need innovation and investment on a private capacity and most of all we need your leadership and support to see this through, whereby accomplishing your mission of a truly Swachh India built on the pillars of free market enterprise and organized competition.