Why Are Delhi's Citizens Allowed to Flout Civic Laws?
On the other hand, campuses like IIT Delhi are almost entirely zero waste, sending less than 10 percent of their waste to landfills. So are very modest areas of Palam area, where home composting and segregation leave little to be dumped. Why are Delhi's citizens allowed to flout civic laws and poison hundreds of thousands of other citizens?
Delhi is the most (air) polluted city in the world. Landfill fires have to be ended as a single-minded pursuit. The long and the short of this is that less than 20 percent of the waste should leave the ward in which it is generated.
Leaves to organic waste are to be managed by neighbourhoods, with subsidy based on their property tax rate. Wealthier areas get less subsidy, but also benefit from a sliding tax if they meet high levels of decentralisation collectively. Unrecognised slums should be part of this too.
A third category that requires support is the informal sector-wastepickers, waste aggregators, and itinerant buys who buy waste from the doorstep on their cycles. They require social security, recognition and space for safe work, so their contribution to reducing waste at landfills is not their own cost.
