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Budget 2021 talks of Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) 2.0, and allocates Rs 1,41,000 crore for wastewater treatment and solid waste management (SWM). The Mihir Shah committee report on water reforms had brought out the startling fact that only 2% of our urban areas have both sewerage systems and sewage treatment plants. The government must draw up multi-year projects for sewage treatment via public-private partnerships (PPP), and also to boost municipal capacity to that end.
India ranks 120th among 122 countries in the water quality index, one significant reason being that we have given short shrift to investments in modern sewage systems for decades. A holistic, integrated approach is clearly required. Take, for instance, SWM. India generated 62 million tonnes of municipal solid waste in 2019, but the vast bulk of it was simply dumped at landfills without any scientific processing and treatment. Worse, given the hugely inadequate capacity in sewage treatment plants, it is par for the course for urban wastewater to simply flow into local water bodies. True, in recent years, there has, indeed, been sharp increases in budgetary outlays for the urban sector both at the Centre and in the states. But there appears to be little or no commensurate improvement in the institutional and financial capacity of local bodies that can purposefully equip them to discharge urban services in an effective and business-like manner.
Hence the need to step up investment in SWM and sewage treatment plants in the PPP mode, to tide over the inefficiencies of urban local bodies, including by way of innovative financing mechanisms such as value capture finance, so as to boost public health. Sewage treatment has synergies with plans to produce biogas and cut methane emission at scale, too.
Courtesy - The Economic Times.
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