Ramakrishna Mission’s move to make residents take ownership of their waste is sociologically transformative (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3 : Environment
Prelims level : Mangaluru
Mains level : waste management and pollution control

Context

• The Ramakrishna Mission in Mangaluru may have invented the most ingenious method to address an attitudinal problem embedded in the collective Indian psyche.
• During a cleanliness drive that the Mission organised, the volunteers identified individuals who dumped their household trash at 300 different locations in Mangaluru.
• The volunteers followed garbage-throwers and returned the waste at their doorstep. People threw their house trash despite the Mangaluru City Corporation’s door-to-door waste collection policy.
• But when the volunteers started returning their trash, 90 per cent people stopped throwing it in the open.

Way ahead

• The everyday reality is that disposal of waste or cleaning is a menial, “dirty” task performed by someone other than the one who generates it.
• This is an all-pervasive psychology which prevents an individual from taking responsibility for the waste he and his household generate on an everyday basis.
• The challenge of disposing around 62 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per annum in 7,935 towns and cities is at the institutional as well as individual level.
• While municipal authorities have to step up their solid waste disposal mechanisms, individuals have to ensure proper segregation of waste at source and its recycling.

Conclusion

• By forcing people to take responsibility for their household waste, the Mission has performed a sociologically transformative service.
• Besides equipping municipalities and provincial administration with enhanced technical and financial support, such efforts need to be replicated if Swachh Bharat has to translate from slogan to reality.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) Which of the following is/are source(s) of omega 3 fats?
1. Walnut
2. Flax Seeds
3. Spinach
4. Mustard Seeds

Select the correct answer using code given below:
A. 1 and 2 only
B. 2 and 3 only
C. 1, 2 and 3 only
D. 1, 2, 3 and 4

Answer: D
Mains Questions:
Q.1) How caste stratification has stigmatised manual labour in general and work related to waste disposal?