Opinion BMC’s failures on pollution: Alarm bells in Mumbai
Express View: The BMC needs to get its act together, to make people's well-being its priority
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For the second year running, the withdrawal of the southwest monsoon in Mumbai has been accompanied by a spike in the pollution burden on the city’s residents. Last winter, the city registered poor or very poor on the Air Quality Index (AQI) on most days from November to January. People in the country’s financial capital have been choking on bad air for much of this month. Adverse meteorological conditions, triggered by climate change, seem to have negated the natural cleansing advantages of the city by the sea.
But as a series of reports in this newspaper has shown, a large part of the blame should be taken by the city’s municipality, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The agency’s Pollution Mitigation Plan, released in March, identifies five sources of pollution — construction debris, road dust, open burning of solid waste, use of unclean fuel in eateries and industrial emissions. But the municipality’s response to its own report has been belated and patchy at best. Its Standard Operating Procedure, released on October 21, does detail measures to curb dust pollution but the agency has yet to find ways to tackle Mumbai’s longstanding waste management problem.
The BMC’s waste segregation system is restricted to residential buildings and gated societies. It leaves out the city’s slum clusters where most people burn waste, mainly comprising plastic, rubber, polythene and paper. The incineration releases fine particles in the air, making it toxic.
This month, Mumbai has recorded a 45 per cent increase in PM 2.5 components compared with October last according to the Central Pollution Control Board data. BMC rules prohibit garbage burning but the municipality’s enforcement mechanism leaves much to be desired. The municipality has not made adequate investments in creating awareness about responsible waste management. In 2007, it contracted public agencies for the services of marshals to monitor garbage disposal in public places. But the contract lapsed last year and the BMC’s plans to conduct garbage disposal-related inspection drives remain on paper.
The BMC has a budget of Rs 52,600 crore, more than that of several states in the country. But there is a wealth of evidence on this rich municipality’s failures to use funds judiciously. In March, a CAG report flagged “major systemic problems, poor planning, and careless use of funds” by the BMC. It pulled up the agency for “lack of transparency and probity in the execution of works taken up at a significant cost”. The municipality’s multiple omissions on the pollution front have public health costs. The alarm bells have, in fact, been ringing for at least seven years now. Since 2016, Mumbai has been reporting an increasing number of fatalities due to respiratory diseases, including COPD and lung cancer. The exposure of school children to poor air is another pressing concern. The BMC needs to get its act together, to make people’s well-being its priority.
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