Debris dumping: Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to hold residents directly responsible

While Singhal is working out the finer aspects of the plan, Mehta said random checks would be carried out on people who have taken permission for construction work in their house or building. “Random checks will be conducted based on computer generated suggestions so as to ensure people are not harassed unnecessarily and citizens will have to show the receipt with the stamp of the dumping ground where the debris has been dumped. If they fail to do so, the punitive action like a stop work notice or a fine for creating public nuisance will be imposed,” said Mehta.

Some citizen activists like Nikhil Desai, a local resident and member of NGO AGNI, welcomed the initiative but reserved his opinion on the success of its execution. “Such a monitoring system will bring some control and help prevent trucks from dumping the debris on the side of roads or parks as they do in Matunga. We need a system where there are checks,” he said.

He, however, added that other initiatives taken up in the past, such as fitting a GPS device in the trucks, had failed to take off due to the collusion of civic officials and contractors. “While contractors claimed that rats had chewed the wires of the device, officials helped the contractors by giving them the payment in advance. So, the scheme flopped since the contractors found the loopholes in the system and got away with it. Some accountability is important and if implemented properly this system can curb the nuisance of finding debris dumped at the side of your road,” said Desai.

Others like environment activist Rishi Agarwal were dismissive of the idea. “The BMC has a poor institutional memory and has no learning curve at all. This initiative is just a smokescreen to be placed on the BMC’s own institutional failures. Instead of taking up simple solutions like demarcating land in the city for small debris processing plants, the civic body announces this large projects which may or may not come up,” he said.

Referring to the approach of decentralised processing of waste as taken up by other additional municipal commissioners including Subrat Ratho and R A Rajeev in the past, Agarwal added that by adding value to debris, the BMC could ensure people didn’t throw it away. “It is just like the concept of selling old newspapers. The government didn’t have to come up with a circular to tell people to sell their old newspapers and no one throws them in the dustbin. The problem of illegal dumping of debris will disappear once you build a business model around it,” he said.

Suggesting an alternative, Agarwal said the BMC didn’t need to invest Rs 10 crore on one large plant but instead increase the availability of debris processing plants. “If the BMC can simply demarcate small plots for biogas plants or debris recycling plants, they can lease them out to entrepreneurs at a reasonable cost and ask them to set up the plants. Once people are given an opportunity to earn from debris, they will stop dumping it elsewhere,” he said.

Currently, debris amounting to at least 1,200 metric tonne is taken to the three dumping grounds and the only debris recycling plant, which will come up in a 2.8 acre plot in Mulund, is a long way from being functional.

Apart from improving the monitoring system, Bandra-based citizen activist, Anil Joseph, suggested that since majority of people were unaware of the service of providing on-call debris trucks, punitive action should be accompanied by proper advertising of the service. “Every year, BMC lays a lot of emphasis on spreading awareness about dengue and pamphlets are given to every household. Majority of the citizens are not aware of this service which comes at a nominal cost. If a similar awareness campaign were to be taken for debris disposal, the cases of illegal dumping can come down,” said Joseph.