Waste Tales

Day after day, the rich people of Varanasi, go through the streets, busy in their own lives, occupied with their buses and cars, honking and roaring, never seeming to realize that beyond those sidewalks there is a whole world full of unspeakable things that they are quite oblivious of.

Behind the landfill on the Grand Trunk Road lies a village called Mauja Palangsahid. In a sanitary landfill, layers of garbage should be alternated with layers of soil with a impervious bottom lining. While no landfill in India has a lining, the one in Rajghat, Varanasi is not even covered with layers of soil. Garbage is openly dumped here.Besides the formation of  leachete  which seeps into the ground and pollutes the groundwater, the Rajghat dump has several smouldering fires due to formation of methane gas. 

Most of the people at Palangshahid gaon do not own any land and the village has no sewers, as the two landowners do not allow them to be built through their lands. Here, diseases like malaria, fever and vomiting are very common, especially during monsoons, along with respiratory and cardiac problems. There are a total of 250-300 people in this village. Some of them have been living here for 8-9 years, others for generations.

Two lakes near this place which belong to the totapuri temple (more than 400 years old), are now completely covered with water hyacinth. The worst of it is that it is the rich who are responsible for all this garbage and yet these people suffer through no fault of their own. About 10-20-50 trucks come per day to dump garbage. Other parts of Varanasi are as bad. Rajesh, a sweeper is a municipality worker. He works in Kotwali. He says he sweeps 2 kms each day collects waste which fills 2 trolleys and 4 wheel cars.  Hasmath Singh, a rag picker, has been doing this since the past 10 years. He sells this plastic in shops and earns Rs 1500 per month on which four members of his family survive. Tayyab Ali, another rag picker sells bad plastic at Rs 4 per kg and good plastic at Rs 10 per kg. 

This is the story of how the filthy garbage of Varanasi and its unsanitary landfills affect those who live near them and the one who help pick the garbage for their livelihood. Surely, the least we could do is to dispose of our biodegradable waste ourselves.

hospital waste
good for health?

The government hospital at B.H.U. lies in such seemingly peaceful and picturesque surroundings that it is shocking to find how unsanitary it is - especially in a place like B.H.U. campus which is supposed to be clean and green. 

Some sort of a system of segregation of the bio-med waste exists but no one knows what it si all about. Everyone, be it a nurse, or a doctor, or a student, is very confused about anything connected with segregation. A sewage canal, blocked with plastics, flows right in front of the hospital.

Ganesh, the gardener who has been working here for two years says that the bio-med waste is thrown in the B.H.U. lake and some of it is burnt in the incenerator. He says that people throw cotton, needles and so on, on the lawn and at times they prick the gardener. 

Students of medicine throw the bio-med waste into the bins provided in the laboratory, and have no further knowledge of what happens to this waste. Rinky, a resident doctor, admits that her senior colleague got tuberculosis as a result of the infections in and around the hospital. 

Ujjawal Gautam, a 4th year student of medicine, says that some equipments are re-used. They are put into chlorinated water and sterilized before re-using. 

There are good points too. Bhushan Mishra, husband of a cancer patient, among others says that basically the hospital is quite clean, even the free ward. However, even in the VIP doctors' car park, needles and syringes are thrown about which actually pose a serious threat to passers by and all the people inside the hospital campus.

So, things are not always what they seem at first appearances!

Needles thrown on the BHU hospital lawns prick the gardeners frequently