The State government is keen on taking away solid waste management
(SWM) from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and instituting
a parastatal agency for the same, along the lines of dedicated agencies
for power, water, bus service, and metro service outside the ambit of
the city’s civic body.

However, the BBMP is all set to propose
the formation of a Bengaluru Solid Waste Processing Corporation, that
will be tasked with only waste processing in the city, while retaining
street sweeping and garbage collection to itself.

“Street sweeping and garbage collection is one of the fundamental
responsibilities of any civic body, which we will retain. But there is
an expertise gap in managing processing plants, which we feel can be
bridged with a dedicated corporation. I will be submitting a proposal
for the same this week,” said BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad.

However,
a senior Urban Development Department official in favour of an SWM
parastatal, said processing being given up would only be a half measure.
“How will this processing corporation function if the civic body does
not provide segregated waste? Ideally, the entire gamut of SWM
operations should be brought under one parastatal agency,” he said.

The
government is yet to take a final call on the issue, sources said.
Though a similar proposal was made a few years ago, it never gathered
momentum as the garbage cess that the BBMP collected along with property
tax was only a small fraction of what was spent on SWM — over ₹1,000
crore annually — over the last two years. However, that has changed with
a new provision to impose a user fee of ₹200 per household as per the
new SWM bylaws. This is expected to generate an annual revenue of over
₹700 crore, reviving the proposal.

The move to
create a parastatal agency has drawn the ire of urban governance
activists and political parties. Even as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)
termed this “wishing away of primary responsibilities”, the former
leader of the Opposition in BBMP council Abdul Wajid (Congress) said,
the BJP-led State government had been eating into the autonomy of the
civic body and this was only the latest instance.

Mathew
Idiculla, a lawyer and urban policy advocate, said, “Most of the
existing parastatal agencies pre-date the 74th amendment, which should
have been ideally merged into the civic body, but never happened. This
is a legacy problem we have. Instead of clearing this, taking away more
functions from the civic body and creating more parastatal agencies will
be directly contradicting the 74th amendment.”

However,
the proposal has garnered support from several solid waste management
activists. Sandhya Narayan, member of the BBMP Technical Advisory
Committee on SWM, said the processing corporation would increase the
efficiency of asset management in processing and help build new
capacity.

Accountability

Not everyone agrees though. N.S. Mukunda, founder president of Citizens
Action Forum, said parastatal agencies lacked a structure of
accountability. “The de-politicisation of utility services may find
popular support among the middle classes, but it lacks structures of
accountability and will only fail in the long run,” he said.