SANITATION SCENERIO IN GURGAON – An impact on environment

Dr. Kuldip Singh KaitGovernment College, sec-14 Gurgaon

Pooja Kumari M.A. 3rd semester,

Government College, sec-14 Gurgaon

INDEX Statement of the problem Objective Database Sanitation Scenario Household Level Sanitation Village level Sanitation and Cleanliness Perception of the people Sanitation condition Situation of Environmental Sanitation in Surveyed Villages Ensuring Environmental Sanitation Glimpses of Study Villages

Statement of the problem

Gurgaon, the second largest city of Haryana, a part of the National Capital Region (NCR) has been on the faster pace of development and emerged as the industrial and financial hub during the last 2 decades. This process of urbanization has left its impact on urban and rural settlement on one hand and environmental degradation on the other.

Objective

To study the current situation of sanitation scenario in Gurgaon.

Database

The present study is primarily based on field survey conducted in urban village located under the jurisdiction of Gurgaon Municipal Corporation (GMC)

• Primary Data- Generated through questionnaires• Secondary Data- Collected from various government

published report.

Sanitation Scenario

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that: Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and faeces. Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities. The word 'sanitation' also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal.

Safe water supply and hygienic sanitation facilities are basic essential amenities required for a community for healthy living. About 80 per cent of water used by the community comes out of houses in the form of waste water which, unless properly collected, conveyed, treated and safely disposed off, may eventually pollute the precious water resources and cause environmental degradation. Lack of proper sanitation causes diseases. One of the most significant diseases that arise from poor sanitation is diarrhea. Most of the affected are young children below the ages of five. Other diseases that are caused by poor sanitation include schistosomiasis, trachoma, and soil transmitted Helminthiases. The importance therefore is immense. In the following few paragraphs, an attempt has been made to illustrate the sanitation scenario in the study villages. The sanitation analysis is divided into two parts – household level and village level.

Household Level Sanitation

In the surveyed villages only few households use shared toilets and no one goes outside for defecation. It has been observed that more than 90 of the surveyed households use their own household toilets. In all the surveyed villages, no household responded about going outside for open defecation, which clearly marks a good sign of cleanliness.

Though the households do not defecate in the open, their behaviour in disposal of stool of children was quite disturbing as the majority of them have been throwing the stool in the garbage. Few proportions of households throw the stool of children and infants on the streets directly while only a few bury the stools. The disposal of stool in the garbage by adults is a bad behaviour because smelly stools attract flies, which are considered risky since they can transport faeces and contaminate food. It also may get mixed up with the ground water and local taps resulting in contamination of drinking water.

Village level Sanitation and Cleanliness Outside the household premises, the first thing that

the households are responsible is the disposal of garbage or household waste. Only a few of the surveyed households throw garbage on the streets and in open areas outside their homes and do not know the proper procedure for disposal of garbage while the majority of the surveyed households collect the garbage in their household bins. The same is later collected by the municipal sweeper and disposed off in the municipal van carrying the solid waste for the landfill site at Bhandwari.

The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon however, claims that their garbage vans visit all the urban villages daily and their garbage vans are fitted with Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Trash vans deputed by Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon have been installed with GPS devices to ensure that the task of garbage disposal is carried out properly. As part of the 'Clean Gurgaon' initiative, MCG has allotted 73 vehicles in Gurgaon to provide door-to-door service for collecting garbage and disposing it at the city's solid waste management plant at Bhandwari village. The drivers, however, were not collecting garbage daily as is reflected from News item published during our field-survey on March 18, 2013 in Hindustan Times, Gurgaon Edition also reported that 33 per cent GPS devices in garbage vans not in working order.

Perception of the People

More than half of the surveyed households in all the villages told us that their area is in extremely bad condition and nearly one-fourth respondents answered that their village was clean in some places while less than one fourth of the surveyed households are happy with the prevailing situation. The locational advantage of such households can be contributed major as the factor for such perception.

Young generation in all the four villages agree that sanitation condition is generally unclean. One-third said that their locality is clean in some places. Merely 6-15 per cent deem that their locality is clean everywhere. The response of the old generation was exactly reverse as according to their opinion more than half of the respondent feels that there locality is generally clean.

This difference in perception may be due to due to the fact that the young people, the migrants can compare their area with that of the private builder colonies while for the women and the aged mainly the original residents of the village have emotionally attachment and are satisfied with the gradual process of urbanisation of these erstwhile villages.

Sanitation condition

The sanitation condition of these four villages exposes the residents particularly children and women to severe health and environmental risks because they are un-served by the city’s sanitation systems. Tangible problems connected with the sanitation scenario include:

• The production of enormous amounts of waste including construction waste and wastewater in these villages that is insufficiently collected and treated; and

• Pollution of shallow ground water, due to open drainage system by leaking sewers, waste, and latrine contents thereby polluting the source of drinking water for the residents.

Situation of Environmental Sanitation in Surveyed Villages

Ensuring Environmental Sanitation

It is widely acknowledged that inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities. In the surveyed villages, outside the household premises, the first thing that the households are responsible is the disposal of garbage or household waste. Only a few of the surveyed households disposed their garbage on the streets and in open areas outside their homes, in empty plot of land, while the majority collected the waste within their household premises, in small bins

It was reported that the same is later collected by the municipal sweeper and disposed in the van carrying the solid waste for the landfill site. Most of the households in all the three villages responded that garbage is generally collected daily by the trash vans deputed by the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon. However, as the GPS provided in the trash vans for better monitoring were not functional in some vans, drivers skipped the villages. This was complained by the residents and overall observation of the sanitation situation of the villages substantiates the fact.

Hygiene behaviours of the households in the surveyed villages are also in transition. The awareness level of the households on sanitation issues were found to be poor as in few households in all the four villages, wastewater from the homes were seen pouring out in the broken lanes. This needs no mention that this waste water unless properly collected, treated and safely disposed off may lead to water clogging, blockage, pollution of water resources and cause environmental degradation. It is important for the community to realise that potholes in the streets, pools of stagnant water in the kutcha lanes, and waste gushing from bathrooms and kitchens provide breeding sites for malarial mosquitoes and other spreaders of disease.

Another basic requirement is the improvement in drainage system in these villages to ensure environmental sanitation. Open drains in these villages are the main collector of garbage and even though they are cleaned by the municipal sweepers, the sewage is transported back to the drains as the liquid waste is not removed by the municipal vans. Silting and frequent blockages of the drains with rubbish and construction debris in these villages are frequent phenomena. The foul smell of the drain pollutes the entire area and the presence of the drain reduces the usable width of the already narrow lanes. In combination with poor road and sanitation, open drainage in these urban villages presents a recipe for disaster which is always present and can erupt at any time and wreak havoc amongst the populations.

Glimpses of Study Villages