Clean India should be linked with Make in India
-Dr. S. V. Ranade
Hon. Prime Minister has initiated Clean India Movement from 2nd October to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary. It is a highly essential and welcome move and shall definitely motivate the people to take active role in keeping their environment clean.
It should be realized that scope of Clean India Movement is not restricted to collection of dust and refuse from houses and roads using sweeping tools. Keeping the heaps of collected waste without treatment would not serve the purpose as the pollution location only will be changed. Many cities collect and dump such wastes at outskirts to get rid of pollution in the city, but the accumulated waste becomes a big danger for environment at collection site.The collected solid waste needs to be transported, segregated, processed and used for recycling, production of fertilizer or recovery of energy. The hazardous wastes should be disposed safely to prevent environmental pollution.
Moreover, pollution of water, and soil due to solid and liquid wastes and air pollution due to stack emissions and vehicular pollution also need to be prevented and controlled for maintaining environmental quality. All these activities are included in the scope of Clean India Movement.
Though common man can participate in cleaning the dust and preventing pollution of surrounding due to solid wastes, there is a need of elaborate scheme to store, transport and process these wastes. Similarly prevention of water and air pollution need high technology and costly equipment and establishment of treatment plants requiring huge capital investment.
Fortunately we have no dearth of technical expertise in this area and availability of skilled manpower. What we need is will and capacity to invest in these capital intensive projects. Govt. and semi government agencies, businesses and industries are still reluctant in investing for effective prevention and control of pollution as they think it as low priority and nonproductive expenditure. Clean India movement will change their mindset and would give boost to growth of this sector.
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India has also embarked upon the mission of ‘Make in India’, meaning developing and producing necessary technology and equipment in India.
Hence there is ample opportunity for growth of environmental education, equipment production and technology development in this sector and would generate number of jobs for process engineers, scientists and skilled personnel in near future.
Many developed countries have shown willingness for capital investment in India for Clean India projects. However, it is possible that such investment may come in the form of foreign technology and consultancy services, defeating the purpose of Make in India mission. Moreover, it is found that many of the advanced technologies used in developed countries are simply not suitable for Indian conditions and may not deliver the expected results.
Hence we should be careful while accepting foreign investment if it renders dependability and hamper Make in India objective. We should welcome the capital investment but should insist on in house development of technology.