Urban Solid Waste Management in India: Present Challenges and Future Prospects

Abstract

Among various environmental problems, issue of solid waste management (SWM) is important and burning issue especially in urban India. With the rapid growth of big cities, slums, the breeding grounds of urban squalor and environmental issues, swell primarily due to increased migration of the people from the villages in search of better employment opportunities and improved standard of living. Hence, environmental issues like solid waste management is one of the bottlenecks of inclusive urban development and at the same time sustainable urban development is recognized as the primary objective that a development process. Studies also reveal that, despite various policies and programmes since independence, including recent policies like decentralization and giving more powers to urban local government bodies (ULBs) and launching of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in 2005, and other urban development programmes the situation of urban solid waste management is still not improved up to a satisfactory level due to numerous reasons. Against this background the present paper prepared with following objectives 1.To explicate and discuss the problems of solid waste management of urban India; 2. To advocate suitable policy suggestions to the problems of solid waste management of urban India. The paper is non-doctrinal and descriptive in nature and based on the secondary sources of data. The secondary sources of data were gathered from publications of various government ministries and departments, journals, books etc.