For any urban centre the daily waste poses a huge challenge. The piles of waste produced in a consumerist society like ours is so huge that tackling it is a task of high magnitude. Add to it the shrinking spaces in our habitations. Earlier, in a city like Srinagar, we had ample open spaces that would absorb the waste, and the waste would almost entirely be biodegradable. This has changed completely. One, the amount of waste has gone enormously up. Two, the spaces are no more there to absorb it. Three, the non-biodegradable waste is ominously creating problems. In such a scenario governments are finding it increasingly difficult to face the problem. Collecting garbage from individual household, and then pooling it at some place may give us an impression that we are somehow disposing off the waste. But it is not so. Those living around the dumping sites know what it all means. We have seen these people protest time and again, and this time they are again in an agitated mood.
The reasons for them are simple and known. The whole area stinks badly, making life of the people in those areas miserable. It is difficult to manage the minutes while you drive near the site, not to speak of living in the area. So the question is that on whose cost waste disposal happens in this city. The residents of the surrounding areas of the major dumping site in Srinagar allege that the disposal doesn’t happen in a scientific manner, hence the problem. If that is the case, the concerned officials must take note of it and put in place the necessary equipments to deal with the waste. Another suggestion that has been put forth time and again is the segregation of the waste at source. If the individual household are sensitised in this regard much of the problem would not surface up at all. If the biodegradable waste is dumped at the source, it would relieve the department of much of the burden, and also save the dumping site from stinking. It needs a huge and comprehensive drive to ensue that no biodegradable waste is thrown on roads, or reaches the dumping site.