PVK’s essay ‘Pollution and Politics, the Kerala Story’
1. Few problems are as difficult to solve as that of pollution in today’s world. Invoking Mohenjo-Daro or the systems in parts of India that functioned beautifully in an idyllic pre-industrial India may not offer real solutions. That is mainly because of the nature, scale and extent of the problem of garbage in the contemporary world.
2. The production of garbage now far outpaces the earth’s capacity to heal itself. The Earth, one must admit, does not or cannot feel any such need; whatever happens, the games of geology and evolution will go on. When one says heal, one does so hoping that once again the planet will be made conducive for the flourishing of human life and civilization. This can happen only if the ‘sapiens’ in the Homo comes out and humans change their behaviour in radical ways. Brahmapuram represents both the poor decision making and worse implementation that characterised our approach to waste and garbage in the past and the dangers that lie ahead if the problem of garbage is tackled with feeble, ad-hoc attempts or swept under the carpet in the hope the earth will solve our problems.
3. First, a look at what got us here. Urban societies, or the centres of civilizations as they came to be called, have always had a problem with refuse. Often it had to do with human or animal waste and its disposal. When the refuse got to be offensive to the nose and the eye it was tackled, most often by letting the sun or the earth transform waste into something less noxious. Aided, often, by channelling it into a water body. Rivers and seas have been absorbing waste for millennia. Soil, sunshine, air and water took care of what was mostly a manmade problem.
4. This was not without harmful consequences. The evidence from anthropology and microbiology suggests (see Diamond and Suzman, in the bibliography at the end of this essay, please) that the rise of cities with dense human populations and consequent poor standards of sanitation led to epidemics and crowd diseases. The links with garbage were not very clear then. Scientists can now see patterns in the plagues and epidemics that ravaged major civilizations from its earliest days and discern the link between dirt and disease. Microbiology is a recent science. It was only in the 19th century that the role of microbes in causing and spreading diseases was clearly understood. In 1854 the link between cholera and contaminated water was established. The experiments of Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) and the work of Robert Koch (1843 – 1910), some of which was done in Calcutta, put the science on a solid footing. Steps were taken, particularly in the developed world, to combat the problem of faeces and urine in ways that did not endanger public health. Imperial India also saw some efforts in this direction.
5. It was with the coming of industrial culture and the use of fossil fuels that waste began to get ahead of the earth’s ability to absorb abuse. The scientific consensus is that the proportion of greenhouse gases, which had been stable for some 800,000 years, began to rise from roughly 1750. Today it is agreed that the cumulative changes they have effected have profoundly impacted every part of the globe by driving global climate change. And climate change is upsetting every calculation on earth. In the coming decades, scientists think, this will become more disruptive and more difficult to reverse. All the evidence is that it is getting turbo-charged.
6. The story of how we got here has been dubbed “the story of more” by the geobiologist Hope Jahren. The process began with the Industrial Revolution, epicentered in Great Britain in the 18th century. (1750 CE or the Common Era is an agreed and convenient, though not exact, date). This spread around the world and has so transformed the earth that geologists say we have now entered the Anthropocene, an age where man is the most significant global agent of change. The pace and depth of this transformation was neither uniform nor evenly distributed. It is enough to say that after nearly three centuries no place on earth has been left untouched or undamaged.
7. Among the things that have grown tremendously is human population. From half a billion in 1798, when Thomas Malthus warned about human numbers, it has risen to over eight billion now. (India leads this chart with over 1.4 billion people. Actually, 1.4 B and counting.) This was accompanied by huge and unprecedented changes in both the production and consumption of stuff. Industrialisation was imposed or embraced by much of the world with the result that 300 years after the process started ways of life, like hunting and gathering, pastoralism, nomadism and even traditional agriculture, have practically disappeared. Much of the world is now industrialised and a dangerous homogeneity now marks most societies.
8. Let us look at some of the important features of this growth story. (An India and Kerala angle will not be mentioned here but is a part of the story and can be inferred.)
9. As populations boomed so did the rate of urbanisation. Today more than half the people in the world live in cities, compared to less than seven percent at the start of the Industrial Revolution. They also live longer and are richer than their country cousins. This is made possible by the enormous increase in the volume of food produced. This production is at the cost of vicious disparities in wealth and at the degradation of much of the world’s environment, both urban and rural, through land clearing, industrial farming and the use of pesticides that accompany it. The clearing of forests and the fouling of the land and oceans through technology-enabled processes that prioritise only profit are among the things that have brought us to the brink of ecological collapse. Industrial meat production and large-scale harvesting of fish are wasteful and inefficient and biosphere-altering as currently practised. It is over a century since the first big dams were built. There was little awareness of their environmental costs at the time. Today, while in some parts of the developed world, large dams are being decommissioned, in places like China and India one witnesses a frenzy of dam building, upsetting ecosystems and creating mountains of waste. An ecosystems collapse is under way caused by the onslaught of mining, road construction and other forms of development. Garbage and waste are generated in unsafe quantities and deadly forms. Plastic can now be found from the upper atmosphere to the deepest ocean floors; “forever chemicals” – chemicals that will take centuries to degrade – are virtually everywhere. Greenhouse gases are still being generated unchecked, leading to the melting of much of the earth’s snow and ice and the rising of our acidified oceans. Indeed, the targets of the Paris Agreement and the IPCC look so unattainable they can, avers Jahreh, only be considered aspirations. The loss of biodiversity is another by-product of our models of development. The solutions that are offered are never on a scale that matter. Growth and garbage are marching ahead, plans, agreements, intentions, proclamations and wishes notwithstanding.
10. Kerala’s story is a variation on this theme. There are important differences, though. Biologically speaking, this was always an extremely wealthy land. Its geographical position, making it more open to access from the sea than the land to its east and north, relative late entry to the path of industrial development and a culture of acceptance of the foreign once translated into a locally acceptable idiom, mark it as different from the rest of India. The sense of human dignity and a belief in egalitarianism native to the people of the state both suggest that we can find effective and viable solutions to the problem of waste and garbage. There is also a resourcefulness and a relatively enlightened politics that might guide us to a stage where Brahmapurams and Vilappilsaalas are part of the detritus of history.
11. How can this be achieved?
12. Kerala was once proverbial for its simplicity. It was a necessity perhaps – affluence came slowly to the bulk of Malayalis – but it was also the result of a culture of voluntary simplicity and an abstemiousness that marked the ethos of this land. True, the eagerness with which Kerala has embraced the hedonistic lifestyle and the clear devotion of the Malayali to conspicuous consumption are troubling, but surely the earlier culture of frugality is embedded in the Malayali’s psyche and can be recovered with a little effort. This, one must not forget, was the land where a maharajah was diagnosed with malnourishment (self-inflicted, not enforced by others) and a Chief Secretary walked to his office. Both occurred in living memory; the maharajah was the last in independent Travancore, Chithira Thirunal and the Chief Secretary, Vijay Anand, I. A. S.) One should also factor in the levels of literacy and education of the average Malayali.
13. Let us examine Kerala’s waste problem in some more detail.
14. Officially, Kerala has achieved an “Open Defecation Free Plus” status. This accolade from the central government is, given the all India situation, an achievement. Even before this, Kerala had turned its back on the practice. One reason, unique to Kerala, as a retired sanitary engineer recalled who once headed, with great distinction, the PHED or Public Health and Engineering Department, B. F. H. R. Bijli, said was the refusal of the caste designated to do this work to keep on doing the work. Threats and inducements did not work. This was in 1958 and soon after this indigenously designed, inexpensive but hygienic toilets began to be built and used across the state.
15. Diane Coffey and Dean Spears (check the bibliography for details, please) reported very poor health outcomes in many parts of north India where the Swatch Bharat Mission was implemented. These included stunted growth, early infant mortality and high morbidity; disadvantages that had lifelong negative health consequences for India’s poor. India’s appalling figures, below that of poorer countries in both Asia and sub Saharan Africa, and their neighbours China and Bangladesh, puzzled many. Coffey and Spears pointed out that there was a clear relationship between exposure to faecal bacteria and the health of children. Many Indians refused to use latrines. Education, relative wealth, and even the availability of water and toilets did not make a difference. Open defecation was an ingrained habit. Coffey and Spears declared that it was the cultural attitudes of many Indians that led to this unique situation. Caste and attitudes to dirt and ritual pollution did not and do not allow many Indians to use the toilets the government had built for them. Ritual purity is still valued above real hygiene in parts of India. This has consequences for our ability to tackle the problem of waste and garbage.
16. Kerala homes have functioning latrines but Kerala still has little proper sewerage and treatment of sewage. A lot of sewage still finds its way to the innumerable waterways that crisscross Kerala. As in some other parts of the country a sewage mafia is said to operate here too. Doron and Jeffrey in ‘Waste of a Nation’(2018) reported that while households in Kerala have clean toilets the “rivers, backwaters and the sea receive thousands of liters of illegally dumped, untreated sewage and sludge every day” (p 87). The fury of the monsoon sometimes makes the rivers functional again, for a short while, before the heat of early summer dries them up or the check-dams turn them into stagnant pools. This takes the lustre away from Kerala’s achievements in this field. No one knows if the periodic outbreaks of diseases in Kerala is linked to this. Some open defecation is still reported from certain pockets near the sea-coast. But the disastrous health consequences that blight parts of the Hindi belt have been avoided by Kerala. Yet, Kerala has some way to go before it can boast of having a fully functioning sewage treatment system.
17. All of Kerala’s 44 rivers have been dammed and killed. Its lakes and ponds have been encroached upon and are far from the ecologically live entities they once were. Schemes to restore them exist, but mostly on paper. The waste that is dumped into them – everything from plastic to sewage to pesticide runoff – stays there till a mega flood transports them to the sea. The farce of calling this a paradise on earth can be seen and smelt by any detached observer. Mridula Ramesh, in ‘Watershed’ (2021) calls for a multipronged approach to solving the twin problems of water shortage and contaminated water. Restoration of water bodies and setting up of small and medium sewage plants are among her recommendations. Experts in Kerala have been saying this for a while now. Not much gets done. Ramesh’s observation that, in much of India, demand and supply are undermanaged and that sectors like metering, analytics and sewage develop far more slowly than sectors like tankers and borewells (306), is pertinent to Kerala.
18. Elizabeth Kolbert, in ‘Under a White Sky’ (2021), talks about how major alterations to rivers and lakes have, after decades, come back to bite the people who implemented them. Lake Tulare, in the Central Valley in California, drained in the 19th century, was then the biggest fresh water lake west of the Mississippi. Human endeavour turned it into prime agricultural land. In April this year, 2023, rain followed by heavy snowfall turned the farmland once again into a lake. Only a few hundred farmers were displaced but the lake is now a reservoir of toxic water; pesticide, oil from transformers and engines, manure, diesel and other buried industrial products pollute it. People are warned against swimming in the lake. In another two years, ecologists think, the lake will be dry again. The bird and animal life that have now begun to appear around the lake will then disappear. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/us/california-storms-tulare-lake.html)
19. Little is known about the purity of the water in Kerala’s remaining water bodies. Sample studies, our newspapers tell us, reveal that close to three quarters are contaminated. Every now and then we hear of some water-borne disease raising its ugly head somewhere in Kerala. The health department is alert to this and steps on a war footing are undertaken to smother the problem. The success of our hospitals and doctors should not lull us into thinking that the problems are not serious. Nature might be playing Russian roulette with us and any day the bullet of a dangerous epidemic might enter the body that is Kerala.
20. Water, its availability and its purity, was something Kerala took for granted. Both the Mayali’s profligacy with its use and his indifference to its sources are being challenged. Sound knowledge and an educated public can correct the situation. Both require a change of attitude; a willingness to undertake serious studies by experts and stakeholders and an ability and will to undertake the suggestions of the experts with zeal. This shaping of public opinion is a political act. Ramesh points out that in both Singapore and Israel, two democracies, politicians succeeded in persuading their public that reforms like treating sewage and managing demand were needed to build water security (308). Surely we can meet this challenge and make Kerala, once again, a land of clean, free-flowing rivers, life-sustaining lakes and ponds and innumerable sweet-water bearing wells.
21. How fresh is the air in Kerala? Exact answers are difficult to come by. Dean Spears observed several times in ‘Air: Pollution, Climate Change, and India’s Choice Between Policy and Pretence’ (2019) that one of the ways in which India copes with pollution is by not measuring it. But bad air is such an oppressive and common problem that different agencies record them and make public their findings. For instance, online weather monitoring sites. Citizens want to know, and where governments are slow or reluctant to present facts, individuals and groups have stepped in to fill the gap. A clearer picture emerges from these observations.
Here too Kerala is a contrast gainer. No large coal-based industries blench out smoke in sun obscuring amounts in Kerala. But Kerala has one of the bigger economies among the states and innumerable small and medium sized units generate dust and other forms of waste. So do all the construction activities across the state. Transport in a state that functions like one big metro city is a major contributor to the foul air Kerala has. Diesel powered trucks barrel their way across the state constantly; how else can a state known as India’s largest market for fast moving consumer goods keep ticking? A very busy shipping lane hugs Kerala’s coast. Much of the pollutant rich smoke the ships spew out must be borne inland by the sea breeze. Municipal workers, not to mention members of the public, still believe that waste is best disposed of by burning. Not much discretion can be seen in what is set ablaze. Sometimes plastic and other waste that should never be burnt joins the paper and dry leaf mixture usually set alight by people who imagine that this is the right way of fighting pollution. During the dry season forest fires, almost always caused by human activity, – Kerala has her share of pyromaniacs – thicken the general haze that now marks the air over Kerala at all times. Quarries or rock crushers, legal or otherwise, produce fine and coarse dust. All these polluting activities are year-round activities and not seasonal ones as is stubble burning in the north.
22. Much of Kerala, therefore, has moderate air pollution levels. But the monsoons and the showers and wind they bring help us by cleansing the air periodically or by washing down the pollutants so they now contaminate the soil and water, not just the atmosphere. Kerala reports a high percentage of people with pulmonary diseases. It is only reasonable to assume that air pollution is one of the causes.
23. This will not change left to itself. Legislation might be necessary, plus meaningful monitoring. The man on the street can make a huge difference if he changes his habits. While discussing the methods of cleaning up India’s air and the failure of the state till now to get its act together, Dean Spears holds out a terrifying and sobering possibility. Maybe, he says, “the administrative, technical and political constraints on India’s governance imply that better policies are out of India’s realistic reach” (p 202).
24. Kerala has shown that major change is possible when the will and the means can be summoned. It did so with open defecation and, to some extent, with cigarette smoking in public. With the right mixture of incentives and disincentives the aim of lowering our levels of air pollution should be achievable. Here the role of social, cultural and political leaders is crucial. If they lead, a lazy public will follow and breathing clean air will once again be normal in Kerala. Who knows it might be a selling point to attract tourists from outside. (Who will arrive in carbon belching vehicles and help produce a lot of waste. Once again we are reminded of the fact that the development / waste tango will throw up catch-22 situations every day.)
25. Waste is a hydra-headed monster, the only truly 24x7x52 problem we face. There is no silver bullet or magic button that can deliver all round freshness always. Waste will nag and harass us and help undo all the gains development and progress have achieved, unless handled with intelligence and determination. If Kerala has to tackle her garbage problem it calls for sensible behaviour from everyone, a big ask.
26. A crucial step in aiming for a waste-free society is the sorting of waste at source. Everyone, from your municipal councillor to the academic writing about the problem of garbage, knows this. Doron and Jeffrey repeat this in ‘Waste of a Nation’ several times and point out that wherever there has been a successful waste management system in India – there have been some exemplary ones, including in parts of Kerala – sorting at source is at its centre. It was pivotal to the Zero Waste Kovalam project that Anne Leonard spoke approvingly of in ‘The Story of Stuff’ (236). Segregation, declared Mridula Ramesh in ‘The Climate Solution’, “holds the alchemical key in turning waste to gold” (p 185). The oft-cited Bangalore models achieve this. Brahmapuram and Vilappilsala tanked because this basic fact was ignored by the planners and implementers.
27. A zero waste model already exists that can be adopted by the whole state. It aims not just to manage waste but to try to eliminate it. Two key points are that it will eliminate or at least minimise the need for incinerators and for landfills, two solutions much of the developed world has adopted but which are not appropriate to Kerala.
28. Two basic rules of waste management, says Robin Jeffery, who co-authored ‘Waste of a Nation’, and who has an intimate knowledge of Kerala’s geography, climate and garbage, should be 1) the less waste the better and 2) mitigation as close to the source as possible. This is both practical and economical; indeed, other models have failed in Kerala. Getting the balance right is also crucial, says Jeffrey. The rainfall and humidity that is a constant, the lack of space for large treatment plants and the economic and logistical problems of choosing alternatives to this model practically dictate that Kerala opt for some variation on the theme of sorting and mitigation close to home. As Mridula Ramesh puts it in ‘The Climate Solution’: “The moment you mix wet waste with dry waste you diminish your potential for a solution, but the second you segregate, you are sitting on a pile of money in your trash can” (p 186).
29. Homes, offices and other establishments should collect and store wet and dry garbage separately. Wet waste is mostly kitchen waste, including vegetable peels, garden waste and food waste. These can be composted, most often in homes. Where space is not available, the municipality could have small local stations where clean composting units can be set up to serve a local area. A small park-like space, with benches and a play area for children would make this a very attractive proposition. The compost could later be sold. If it is clean and has the nutritional value of good compost, farmers would prefer it to chemical fertilizer. The personnel manning the unit should be uniformed and trained to run the plant and to interact with the people who turn up. They should be paid a decent wage. That, along with a uniform and clean surroundings in which to work, will bring much needed dignity to their lives. Many such units in Kerala tells us that with the right kind of awareness-building among the public and efficient running of the units this model can be replicated throughout urban and semi-urban Kerala. Homes and establishments that have the space can opt for the bio-digester. A source of inexpensive fuel and a constant supply of odourless, good manure are the results. These would be a series of small steps towards a zero waste Kerala.
30. The dry waste must be further sorted. Plastics would be one category. Paper, cardboard, glass, metal, rubber, leather, packaging material including thermocol, a form of plastic but more difficult to recycle, need to be separated. Some of these fetch good money and those are generally sorted and sold by homeowners themselves. Higher grade plastics have a value; low grade plastic is mixed with bitumen to surface roads. Metal is, of course, of great value. Every gram of it is, generally, recovered.
31. Chemical and medical waste calls for greater care. They are classified hazardous waste and demand, from the sorting stage to the disposal of treated material, special treatment. Kerala does have a centre or two for this, but a less centralised way of dealing with this is called for. Smaller plants are easier to set up and operate and maintain. Construction and demolition waste, significant quantities of which are generated in Kerala, also call for close monitoring and disposal. They are useful as raw materials and should be treated as having value.
32. One important fact is that all these activities – sorting, transportation, treatment, packaging and resale of a valuable commodity – are labour intensive. This has to be seen as an opportunity, not a problem. Some automation may be possible and desirable.
33. A form of pollution almost ubiquitous in our own country is sound pollution, the Malayali’s gift to himself and anyone who visits these shores. It is produced and consumed entirely in the state. Its remedies, the science of audiology and the use of high-tech hearing aids, are imported but used widely by our empowered citizens. This problem can easily be solved but appeals to do so fall on deaf ears.
34. A zero waste model is not a rigid template but, as Anne Leonard says in The Story of Stuff, “a strategy and a set of practical solutions” (234). She recommends adoption of a set of core components that the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives has drawn up. They are
1. Reducing consumption and discards
2. Reusing discards
3. Extended producer responsibility
4. Comprehensive recycling
5. Comprehensive composting or biodigestion of organic matter
6. Citizen participation
7. Improving product design upstream to eliminate toxics and instead design for durability and repair
8. Effective policies, regulations, incentives and financing structures to support these systems.
35. A close examination of this will show that these chime with Gandhian virtues, the values of frugality and simplicity that that used to resonate with most Malayalis. There are three problems, though.
36. One is that decision makers often prefer big, expensive, one-stop solutions, often lifted from developed economies. That incinerators work in Singapore and Copenhagen and Taiwan or that huge landfills enable the USA to deal with their garbage, does not mean they will in Kerala. One does not have to examine the details to be convinced that a less capital-intensive and energy-intensive model, like the zero waste model, is best for Kerala.
37. The second is the problem of our attitude to waste in general. We are burdened with a millennia old ideology central to which is our version of what Plato called “the noble lie”. Plato said men were born of the earth and into each man was mixed some gold or silver or iron. Those who had gold in them became the guardians, those with silver became assistants to the guardians and those with iron became labourers. Similarly, in Indian metaphysics there is the story that the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras issued forth from the mouth, arms, thighs and feet of the primeval person. The myths share a significant feature. They are both clever defences of the status quo. Your social position was preordained and could not change.
37. In Europe, the idea of the noble lie is hardly known to anyone except philosophers. In India, though, the varna theory still animates much of the thinking and behaviour of natives. It is so deep rooted that ideas about purity and pollution embedded in the myth dictate attitudes. This is a problem in a democracy which has a constitution that treats all citizens as equal. Prejudices are strong and it negatively impacts our fight against pollution.
38. Garbage and dirt are considered polluting in the literal and the ritual sense. The anthropologists who have worked on waste and the ways Indians deal with waste have recognised this fact. Indeed, Doron and Jeffrey have stated that their title Waste of a Nation has three meanings. One, the garbage that India generates. Two, the missed opportunities Indian history is full of; wasted chances. Third, it refers to the dalits, fated to work with garbage and treated as sub-human by a sizeable chunk of their countrymen. In subtle and not so subtle ways this ancient prejudice still shapes our communities. In much of the world the dignity of labour is not just an empty phrase. Sanitary workers receive decent wages and are respected as workers. In India such work is stigmatised, considered dirty. Some bizarre consequences have been documented which are the direct result of India’s attitude to dirt and pollution.
39. Coffey and Spears discovered that Indian children – not all, but those from a large swathe of north India – were shorter, more disease prone and less cognitively developed than even sub-Saharan children who were poorer than their Indian counterparts. They called this the Indian Enigma and set out to solve it. They discovered that Indian children were exposed in early childhood to diarrhoea, enteropathy and parasite infections. These diseases could transform widespread open defecation into childhood stunting. Detailed research into the issue showed that the link between open defecation and poor health outcomes was real. (Please read chapter five of ‘Where India Goes’ for full details.)
40. The Indian version of the noble lie still has people in thrall and seriously harms India’s search for solutions to the problem of waste. As we move into the Anthropocene we need fresh ideas and approaches to help us tackle this unprecedented turn of events. Being glued to the past will hamper, not help us. It is nice to believe in myths that enhance our self-esteem but being in denial of natural and social reality is a serious flaw.
41. The third serious impediment is the hedonism, self-indulgence and aggression of the new consumerist class. Insensitive to demands for restraint and hostile to the ethos of frugality and simplicity that once distinguished Indian culture, they consume and burn and thrash with a frenzy that is frightening and a sense of entitlement that is difficult to dislodge.
42. Eugene Linden states in ‘Fire and Flood’ (2023) that big business and politics have joined hands to fight against beneficial policies with respect to both pollution and climate change. They are masters at distraction and obfuscation both of which are used to kick the can down the road. That there has not been any concerted public action, even after five decades of the early warning bells being rung, indicates how big business has influenced events. Only political action that springs from the grassroots can change this. Leaders have to rise up, awareness raised and widespread and effective movements launched. Only then can we avert the ecologically suicidal path we are on. This applies not just to the citizens of Europe and the USA. India is currently the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitting nation. Historically, our per capita emission is tiny compared with the giant polluters, but rather than take recourse to such rhetorically valid excuses, we should lead in the fight against despoiling the planet. Here in India everyone has a role to play; from the ordinary citizen to the panchayat member to the head of our government. This involves the whole body politic.
43. The knowledge, technology and plans to solve our garbage problem exist. Finance can be found. Man power can be found, trained and deployed. At every point in this endeavour our prejudices and attitudes play a role. The call for change must be heeded. An enlightened political class and an educated polity can achieve all this. But only if preceded by a change of heart and mind that an enlightened politics can deliver.
44. All earth systems are under severe stress. Extreme weather, the new normal, has added an element of volatility and unpredictability to the equation. The dream of zero waste and a circular economy can be realized only if we are nimble and do not get mugged by reality. We must stay ahead of the game. Only a truly refined and effective politics, one that can deliver unprecedented levels of human cooperation and zeal, can ensure we do that.
45. Waste is a truly hydra-headed monster. A policy, inspired by compassion and guided by knowhow, can save us. In India we need a set of Indian Greta Thunbergs who can collectively do a Gandhi and transform our people and lead them to a cleaner, more just, sustainable and stable future. We need a genuinely green politics.
Selected bibliography
Coffey, Diane and Dean Spears. ‘Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste’. Gurugram: Harper Collins, 2017.
Diamond, Jared. ‘Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years’. London: Chatto and Windus, 1997.
Doron, Assa and Robin Jeffrey. ‘Waste of a Nation: Garbage and Growth in India’. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2018.
Farrier, David. ‘Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils’. London: 4th Estate, 2020.
Frankopen, Peter. ‘The Earth Transformed: An Untold Story’. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.
Jahren, Hope. ‘The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here’. London: Fleet, 2020.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. ‘Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future’. London: Bodley Head, 2021.
Leonard, Anne. ‘The Story of Stuff: How our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health – and a Vision for Change’. New York, Free Press, 2010.
Linden, Eugene. ‘Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the Present’. Dublin: Penguin, 2023.
Roscoe, Philip. ‘I Spend, Therefore I Am: The True Cost of Economics’. London: Penguin, 2014.
Ramesh, Mridula. ‘The Climate Solution: India’s Climate Change Crisis and What We Can Do About It’. Gurugram: Hachette, 2019.
Spears, Dean. ‘Air: Pollution, Climate Change and India’s Choice Between and Pretence’. Noida: Harper Collins, 2019.
Ramesh, Mridula. ‘Watershed: How We Destroyed India’s Water and How We Can Save It’. Gurugram: Hachette, 2021.
Suzman, James. ‘Affluence without Abundance: What We Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Civilization’. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Vijayan V. S. and Lalitha Vijayan, eds. ‘A Green Print for Sustainable Kerala: Lessons for Existence’. Kottayam: D C Books, 2019.
Walther-Toews, David. ‘The Origin of Feces: What Excrement Tells Us About Evolution, Ecology, and a Sustainable Society’. Toronto: ECW Press, 2013.
Wohlleben, Peter. ‘The Secret Network of Nature: The Delicate Balance of All Living Things’. London: Bodley Head, 2017.
https://datatopics.worldbank.org/what-a-waste/index.html
P. Vijaya Kumar
P. Vijaya Kumar / PVK
profpvk@gmail.com
Note: A couple of minor corrections have been made to the original article.
Thank you. Nandri. Namaskaram.
PVK 31/May/2026
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