WASTE OF A NATION: Garbage and Growth in India Doron, Assa and Jeffrey, Robin Hardcover – 23 March 2018

Meticulously researched and tenderly narrated this is one of the best books on the modern world’s most intractable problem; waste. The book is not just descriptive but provided, nearly a decade ago, a blue print for setting up a pragmatic, workable, self-sustaining system to tackle contemporary waste, from pesticides and hospital waste to kitchen waste. The examples come almost always from some corner of India where committed NGOs or an exceptional bureaucrat has worked diligently to tackle a problem before it buries our hopes for development. The two meanings of the title are clear. It is about waste in India and how a great chance to be among the advanced nations of the world is being squandered by our haphazard approaches to the waste we generate. Apart from the enormous cost to health and well being there is a warning, implicit throughout the book, that so long as the approach to waste in based on the notion that only dalits should deal with garbage, for that is their karma and the rest of India has little to do with garbage, the problem will remain unsolved. This is a valuable book; one that opens our eyes and nudges us gently to change our mindset.

It enables lay people to understand the problem of garbage disposal.in an easy language devoid of jargons and technical words.Perhaps the best book on the subject that I have ever seen.The authors deserve to be congratulated for their original research on a topic of utmost importance for all of us.

A must read for all Indians.

Best book

A immensely insightful look at the biggest Environmental challenges of our times, Waste! The knowledge created by works like these helps build the foundation for long lasting solutions. This is a must read not just for people pursuing academia but also policy makers, business people and youngsters.

In India, people use even bad things till the end, because of this, the waste is less according to the population. Having millions of people depend on processing waste for their livelihood can be an advantage,because human labour makes reuse and remaking of thrown away things more effective. As fast as the population is increasing in the country, the inventions are happening at the same time whether it is the invention of TV or mobile or building debris. To settle wastes government created Landfills. Numerous stories lies beneath the detritus,excrement,debris and fences.Few dreams are born out there few are entangled in decayed air.The most scavengers work in arduous condition on landfills, such as Deonar in Mumbai, Okhla in Delhi, Dhapa in Kolkata, Kodungaiyur in Chennai and Belgachia at Howrah in West Bengal. Estimates put scavengers life expectancy at 39 years. Waste workers registre high levels of tuberculosis.Just think none of our politicians or policy makers realise the gravity of the waste problems. This is inevitable, can harm to the complete society. A cross India,however, causalities continue to rise. According to calculations of the safai karmachari aandolan, the organisation fighting for the right of manual scavengers, ninety people died in sewage lines in the first eight month of 2017 alone. A headline read, “it’s Safer Being a Soldier Fighting in Kashmir Than a Sewer Worker. What Does That Say About India?”Millions of waste pickers, handlers, and safai karmachari are working for our society to accumulate our wastes throw it to the peripheral of the city. But there is one trade union in which only thousands of workers registered.”Kagad Kach Patra Kashatakari Panchayat” (Pune) in 1993 to raise concern for waste picker and gain recognition for the type of activities they perform. It has helped waste picker’s get union based loans,education and health care.Very few municipalities or NGOs are able to provide safety measure for collection to the waste worker. Government should pay attention even though being a responsible person of of the society we have to be more scrupulous towards them.“Placing a box or a can or a bottle in a recycling bin doesn’t mean you have recycled anything and it doesn’t make you better,greener person: it just means you have outsourced your problem.”Read it…. 📖