THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 25 FEBRUARY 2019 (De-odourising sewage (The Hindu))

De-odourising sewage (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 2: Governance
Prelims level: Communicable disease
Mains level: Health related issues

Context

The World Bank estimates that more than a fifth of all communicable diseases in India (21%) are caused by contaminated water.
It attributes one in ten deaths in India to diseases or infections directly or indirectly transmitted through water.
Over 500 children die every day in India due to diarrhoeal diseases.

Nitrogen, a growing pollutant

According to a study by the Indian Nitrogen Group, a task force of scientists tracking the issue, the amount of reactive nitrogen in a bulk of the water bodies in India is already twice the limit prescribed by WHO.
Nitrogen pollution from untreated sewage, the study found, now outstrips nitrogen pollution from the Indian farmer’s urea addiction.
Toilets are being built in mission mode and there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that there has been a measurable reduction in the number of people defecating in the open, which stood at over 500 million or half the population a few years ago.

Clean India missions

India’s latest, largest and most significantly scaled attempt at cleanliness the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is likely to add to this problem.
Under the mission, in the past four years alone, over nine crore toilets have been constructed. Of these, only 60 lakh are in urban areas, where one assumes they are connected to some sort of sewage system (even this assumption is a stretch.

Problems and solution

A study done by the Centre for Science and Environment in 30 cities in Uttar Pradesh found that only 28% of toilets in these cities were connected to a sewage system).
The rest will be generating fecal sludge, sewage and septage which have no place to go.
It will simply get dumped, polluting land, surface and ground water and killing our rivers and ponds.
According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), 63% of urban sewage flowing into rivers is untreated.
The CPCB’s website admits that the gap between sewage generated in urban areas (all Class 1 and Class 2 towns) and capacity for treating that is over 78%.
Up to a third of the installed sewage treatment capacity is fully or partly dysfunctional.
Even where the plants are working, many are not working at full capacity, because the infrastructure needed to feed the raw sewage into the treatment plant a network of drains, sewers and pumping stations is inadequate or incomplete.
The nation is building toilets in mission mode, one would have thought civic administrations would be building drains and sewers and treatment plants with the same zeal.

Access to water

The water is increasingly becoming the biggest challenge faced by most Indian cities today.
According to NITI Aayog’s composite water management index report released last year, 75% of households do not have access to drinking water on premises.
70% households lack piped water (potable or otherwise) and as many as 20 cities will effectively use up all available water resources by 2020.

Conclusion

Sewage and waste need to come at centre-stage in our policy debates.
Elections may be fought on ‘bijli, sadak, paani’ (power, roads, water) but no election is fought over naali (drain).
Unless that happens, we run the real risk of eventually either choking or being poisoned by our own waste.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q1. Which among the following pollutants is/are covered under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards notified by the Central Pollution Control Board?

1. Sulphur Dioxide
2. Lead
3. Ozone

Select the correct answer using the code given below.

(a) 1 and 3 only
(b) 1 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3