Indian Express Editorial Analysis
17 March 2021

1. The hidden pandemic of single-use plastic

GS 3: ENVIRONMENT, CONSERVATION, POLLUTION


CONTEXT:

1. 2021 offers a hint of hope after a year of gloom. Vaccines are rolling out, and humans might permit themselves visions of normality as the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic at last swings in their favour.

2. While humans may soon prevail against COVID-19, but they can’t ignore an increasing problem that the fight against the virus has worsened.

3. Plastics have been deployed in great quantities as a shield against COVID. But little attention has been paid to where the increased plastic waste will end up.

4. The sad irony is humans were on the cusp of real victories against plastic pollution just as the coronavirus pandemic began.

 

About:

1. In 2019, Prime Minister committed to completely phase out single-use plastics by 2022. The commitment called for better arrangements to collect, store, and recycle single-use plastic.

2. The movement was also international. The UN Environment Programme, with the support of Norway and Japan, undertook a multiyear assessment of how plastic finds its way into riverways, and ultimately the ocean, through projects like Counter MEASURE.

3. And National Geographic’s “Sea to Source: Ganges” Expedition brought together four countries, including India and Bangladesh, to holistically study plastic pollution within the Ganges river basin.

4. The pandemic halted and, in some cases, reversed much of this progress. Plastics, especially single-use plastics, became more ubiquitous.

5. Masks, sanitiser bottles, personal protective equipment, food packaging, water bottles: Life came to be ensconced in a plastic shell.

 

Issues:

1. In time, this plastic will disintegrate into tiny particles of less than five millimetres — known as microplastics — and move through water bodies and farm soil to enter the food we eat and the air we breathe.

2. Humans know that only 9 per cent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled, while 79 per cent of all plastic produced can be found in the world’s landfills and in our air, water, soil, and other natural systems. Plastic doesn’t belong in our bodies and it doesn’t belong in nature.

3. But plastic is still important. Its central role in durable goods, medicine and food safety means that it is not practical to get rid of entirely.

4. Instead, humans must be more thoughtful about where, when and how we use it. Humans need an approach that includes reducing the manufacture of new fossil fuel-based plastics, improving waste collection and disposal, and developing and using alternatives.

 

Plastic waste in India

1. As much as 3.3 million metric tonnes of plastic waste was generated in India in 2018-19, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report 2018-19. This roughly translated to 9,200 tonnes a day (TPD).

2. The total municipal solid waste generation is 55-65 million tonnes; plastic waste is approximately 5-6 per cent of the total solid waste generated in the country.

3. Goa has the highest per capita plastic waste generation at 60 grams per capita per day, which is nearly double of what Delhi generates (37 grams per capita per day).

4. The annual report was compiled based on submissions from the state pollution control boards (SPCB), though the source of the data provided is unclear as no state-wise survey has been conducted so far. 

4. Clearly, we do not know the amount of plastic we generate as a country, as the increase in wealth and affluence contributes to a higher generation of plastic waste.

5. Despite the Plastic Waste Management legislation of 2011, followed by numerous changes in the recent past, most parts of the country lack systematic efforts required to mitigate the risks associated with plastic waste.

6. The states started providing data on the same only in 2018-19 for the first time. A legal obligation has been reduced to a mere formality, and there is a lack of concern, motivation, awareness, compliance and enforcement of the rules.

 

 

WHAT TO DO?

1. There are several steps we can take right now, even during the struggle against COVID-19, keeping in mind that above all we should avoid single-use plastics as much as possible.

2. Firstly, we should ensure that waste collection operates at the same pace as waste generation. We know from UNEP and National Geographic’s work that litter is a large part of the plastic pollution ending up in Indian rivers. Improved planning and frequency of waste disposal operations can alleviate this.

3. Secondly, we must be able to segregate waste and used plastic early in the waste-to-value cycle so that the plastic remains suitable for treatment and recycling.

4. Some source segregation efforts became more normalised during the pandemic and this is a trend that should continue. It will make recycling much easier and more economically viable.

5. Thirdly, we need to encourage environmentally-friendly alternatives to single-use plastics where they exist and develop alternatives where they do not exist.

6. Business models that avoid plastic waste through alternative product delivery systems, promote circularity, and use plastic waste should be encouraged. We can make a difference with our wallets.

7. And finally, considering that plastic pollution is a truly society-wide problem, it is important for government, businesses, and civil society to coordinate to find solutions.

8. Plastic, without doubt, is the miracle commodity that has uses ranging from increasing shelf lives of eatables to medical equipment and automotive. Managing plastic waste requires effective knowledge, not only among those who produce the plastic, but also among those who handle it.

9. Brand owners, consumers, recyclers and regulatory authorities need to take long strides in ensuring that we first inventorise the total amount of plastic waste that we generate by means of proper calculations.

10. The second step would be to identify the avenues where the use of plastic can be minimised.

11. Third, the brand owner and manufacturer should try and understand the fates a plastic packaging material would meet after its purpose of packaging has been served.

12. Last, as consumers, we should ensure that all plastic waste leaving our homes is segregated and is not contaminated with food waste.

 

WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE?

1. UNEP and its partners are working with the Indian government towards these goals, drawing in researchers, enterprises and community groups to address plastic pollution.

2. The science being generated by UNEP and National Geographic is informing policy and decision-making processes at the national, regional and local level.

3. We hope these efforts will contribute to strengthening the existing plastic waste management framework in India and to the development of a National Action Plan for Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution in Rivers.

4. The draft Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2021, issued by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) recently, has necessitated a few changes in the country’s handling of its plastic waste.

5. The amendment has extended the applicability of the rules to brand-owner, plastic waste processor, including the recycler, co-processor, etc.

6. It will also include new definitions of:

i. Non-woven plastic bag

ii. Plastic waste processing

iii. Single-use plastic (SUP) item

iv. Thermoset plastic

v. Thermoplastic

7. The Union ministry has proposed increasing the thickness of carry bags made of virgin plastic to 120 microns from 50 microns.

8. It proposes a ban on the manufacture, import, stocking, distribution, sale and use of specific single-use plastic from January 1, 2022.

9. These include plastic sticks for balloons, plastic flags, candy sticks, ice-cream sticks, and thermocol (extended polystyrene) for decoration.

10. The draft is open for public suggestion for 60 days for consideration by the central government, following which it will be published in the Gazette of India.

11. These rules may be called Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2021, and shall come into force on the date of publication in the Official Gazette.

CONCLUSION:

  1. Right now, the fight against COVID-19 must take priority. But the plastic pollution problem lingers in the background.

 

2. DEMOCRACY, THEIRS AND OURS

Two homegrown questions for Indian democrats

GS 2: Fundamental Rights

Issues Arising Out of Design & Implementation of Policies


CONTEXT:

1. The fifth annual democracy report by Sweden’s V-Dem Institute, titled ‘Autocratisation goes viral’, has downgraded India from “the world’s largest democracy” to an “electoral autocracy”, citing “muzzling” of the media, and overuse of defamation and sedition laws.

2. V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) claims to produce the largest dataset on democracy with almost 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2020.

3. This report comes within a week of US watchdog Freedom House downgrading India’s status to “partly free” in its ‘Freedom in the World’ report.

 

ABOUT:

1. The methodology and ranking mechanisms adopted by organisations like Freedom House and projects like V-Dem can be critiqued. But it is rather petty to challenge them when, and because, your country is downgraded.

2. Within their limitations, such assessments fulfil two purposes. They allow cross-national comparisons.

3. One may have reservations about their criteria but being common for all countries, they give a reasonable idea where a country stands vis-à-vis others. They also tell us how a given country has been performing over time. 

 

How does one handle domestic criticism of the way the current regime has corroded democracy in India?

1. Arrests and gagging of media persons, indiscriminate filing of sedition cases, unleashing of investigative agencies against critics of the government and numerous suspensions of internet in “disturbed areas” have all been widely reported.

2. The regime has facilitated space for vigilantes to engage not just in trolling and name-calling, but also wanton filing of cases by way of harassment, and lynching.

3. The judiciary has chosen to avoid cases involving challenges to major laws and inexplicably postponed hearing habeas corpus cases.

4. Finally, the majoritarian turn both in policy and public opinion has posed an intellectual challenge of evolving an atmanirbhar definition of democracy.

5. Activists who get arrested for their tweets, political workers who are denied bail, comedians who face trials, minorities that get sidelined and maligned, journalists who have to face FIRs, are not going to need V-Dem or Freedom House reports to give their experience a name.

6. There is only one lesson for all of them: It is a mistake to imagine that India is a democracy, there is a stiff cost attached to that imagination and therefore the unmistakable conclusion is that all are not free nor politically equal.

7. Even if the wisdom of the minister were to force a change in the international assessment, it will not change the ground reality.

 

How do we understand democracy?

1. Regimes that undo legacies, de-recognise existing wisdom, unsettle established practices and generally claim the task of paradigm change, often resort to the first tactic of intellectual skullduggery: Taking recourse to nativism, they seek to change meanings of ideas and popularise those meanings in the name of exceptionalism or nationalism.

2. The recent negative reports about India’s democracy have given a convenient handle to pseudo-intellectuals of the regime to commence this offensive of redefinition.

3. A time will come when it will be argued that democracy is a western notion unnecessary for true and spiritual emancipation — moksha.

4. It will be claimed that there is an indigenous meaning to democracy. Liberalism and individual rights are a western fashion, institutional autonomy is a fetish, freedom of expression is a superfluous luxury (and of course, no freedom is absolute).

5. The emphasis on Deendayal Upadhyaya and the unapologetic revival of MS Golwalkar are symptomatic of this first step to arguing that there is an Indian-Hindu version of democracy.

6. A careful reading of more recent speeches by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat testify to that claim. The claim is often simplistic — that democracy was invented, practised and theorised in Hindu tradition and scriptures much before and independently of western intellectual developments.

7. But beyond that, there is a denial of two key resources on which India’s democratic politics is based — namely, the national movement and the Constitution.

 

WAY AHEAD:

1. True democrats need to undertake three routes. The most elementary responsibility is not to express glee at the international downgrading of India’s democracy, and throw the results into the regime’s face. This is a moment to be sober and to keep asking how we arrived here.

2. Second is the theoretical challenge. Going beyond the binaries of western and non-western, a robust model of democracy will need to be redeemed.

3. As globalisation and the spatial movement of people becomes the norm, the question of what constitutes a majority and how different identities relate to each other will become central to democracies.

4. Without being ultra-nationalist, like spokespersons of the current regime, we need to frankly insist on learning from the dreams and experiments of India’s freedom movement and Constitution.

5. Third, the simplistic binary between electoral and non-electoral needs to be set aside. Regimes which initially hide behind the democratic fig-leaf often overemphasise the virtue of electoral victories and the will of the people.

6. However, moments of democracy’s crisis alert us that the division between the liberal and the democratic is shallow and unhelpful.

7. The will of the people cannot express itself unless people as groups, religions, and also as individual dissenters are free to express themselves.

8. The moment individual citizens or minorities and marginalised sections are silenced into self-censorship born out of the lure of social approbation or risk of repression, democracy based on the claims of so many votes begins to resemble its opposite.

CONCLUSION:

  1. Whether or not to call that opposite of democracy by the name of autocracy, authoritarianism, or partial freedom, is less important because non-democracy, by any name, will smell as odious — it will crush the “people” in whose name it has enthroned itself.