SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, KOCHI | THRISSUR | KOTTAYAM | PALAKKAD | ALAPPUZHA

OCTOBER 20, 2019 TIMES NATION 9

NON-METROS SHOW PLASTIC ITS PLACE

Guwahati, Ranchi, Lucknow, Bhopal race ahead of big cities in adopting eco-friendly lifestyle
TIMES NEWS NETWORK about Rs 13 lakh collected in an early starter. The Bombay munici-

adha Bhatt, a bank em-

LUCKNOW BANGALORE penalties. In Bhubaneswar, cor-
poration raids have mopped up
pal corporation began acting against
violators of the ban in 2017. It seized

R ployee in Lucknow’s Ma-

hanagar, switched from
single-use plastic last
year. “I stopped using polythene
at the request of my 10-year-old.
Cardboard containers Cane straws fines of Rs 11.5 lakh so far.

WHAT DRIVES BEHAVIOUR

She’s very conscious about the
environment and carried home
lessons from school that plas-
tic is bad. She made the family
shun polythene,” said Bhatt.
On October 2, PM Naren-
dra Modi was expected to an-
nounce a national ban on six
single-use plastic products. But
the government held off out-
lawing the items — bags, cups,
plates, small bottles, straws
and some types of sachets. Of-
ficials said the measure was
seen as too disruptive for an in-
dustry coping with slowdown
and job loss. The proposed step
was part of a campaign to rid
India of single-use plastics
by 2022. States were, however,
asked to enforce existing rules
against storage, manufactur-
ing and use of things such as
polythene bags and Styrofoam.
In the two weeks since, re-
ports from states where bans
have been in place for at least a
year show that where there has
been government will, every-
day-plastics have indeed made
their way out.
Several states like UP,
Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya
Pradesh and Odisha have had bans in
select cities since at least 2018. Strict assistant municipal commissioner
enforcement and replacement op-
tions alongside awareness drives and
unique initiatives meant shoppers and
shopkeepers slipped back to carrying
jute or cloth shopping bags — the dec-
ades-old habit discarded after ubiqui-
tous plastic enslaved citizens with its
convenience.
COAXING CONSUMERS
It’s never easy to change ingrained
behaviour. Ranchi municipal corpo-
ration figured it needed to innovate
to make the city plastic-free after
Jharkhand’s call against plastic
had no pandals with plastic,” beamed
RMC Girija Shankar Prasad.
Providing replacements have
helped enforce the ban. Shopkeep-
ers offer paper, cloth or jute bags at a ously since August 1 this year, ahead of
price if customers turn up without a
bag. In Ranchi, tea sellers, restaurant
owners, fruit and vegetable vendors,
supermarkets, cloth merchants and
medical equipment suppliers have all
shifted to paper bags.
“If they don’t carry one, we pro-
vide them at reasonable rates,” said
Lalkishore Mahto, a vegetable vendor
at Ranchi’s Morhabadi. Others wrap
their wares in old newspapers.
Awareness and monitoring
have ensured drastic cut-back
on plastic use, reports from Luc-
know and other cities suggest.
Even the humble plastic knife
taped to the birthday cake has
been junked.
Branded food outlets and ca-
fés at airports and railway sta-
tions have switched to paper cups
though Lucknow-based Virendra
Gautam pointed out that while
his city’s airport served coffee
in a paper cup sans lid, at a Delhi
airport outlet coffee came in a
WHAT cup with a plastic lid. Such ob-
servations reflect the awareness
WORKED that plastics aren’t doing any-
body any good.
Ranchi | Collecting Not everywhere has it
plastic bags door-to-door been a smooth sail though.
A ban has been in place in
Bhubaneswar | Easily urban Bihar since last De-
available alternatives like cember and in rural areas since
firm sal-leaf plates this February. At the start, task
forces swung into action,
Lucknow | raided, seized plastic
Fines and imposed fines. But
slapped once the initial control
on loosened, the plastic bag’s
relentless hold crept back.
BHOPALconsumers
as well “There was no plastic any-
Glass for juice where in Patna. Even home-
makers made sure they carried
jute bags. But now the ban is
FEAR OF FINE HELPS by public servant.” only on paper,” rued Rajvanshi Nagar
Penalties have gone a long way in Flouting the ban invites a penalty resident Aditi Mishra.
making people drop plastic. Though between Rs 1,000 and Rs 25,000. Luc- Bihar pollution control board chief
the ban has been in place since 2018, know municipality said over 13 tonnes Ashok Ghosh conceded the point. “Re-
enforcement in Lucknow started rigor- of plastic material solve weakened after floods. But we
had been seized from will launch a fresh campaign,” he said.
the expected October 2 announcement. 17 prominent mar- In Guwahati, meanwhile, all eyes
Additional municipal commissioner kets since Au- are on the six task forces that have
Amit Singh said, “Anyone found using gust 1 and launched awareness campaigns in all
plastic products is being booked under 31 municipal wards of the city. “We
IPC 188 — disobedience to order issued The won’t say Guwahati has completely
got rid of single-use plastic. But efforts
Others
world are on to achieve a total ban,” Kamrup
(metropolitan) deputy commissioner
produces
Packaging
Textiles
12% more than
Biswajit Pegu said.
over 76,000 kg of plastic and levied
fines. It also appointed an agency to
recycle the confiscated material. But
enthusiasm waned in the absence of
a dedicated field force. Stocks made
their way back into the city from Gu-
jarat. Government’s inability to notify
penalties, provide a legal framework
to empower and obligate its field force
is also seen as reason for the lack of
steady progress in the plastic war.
In Delhi, one of the most popular
alternatives after the 2016 plastic ban
was ‘non-woven’ bags. But it has now
emerged while these appear to be
made of cloth, they are actually poly-
propylene. Enforcement drives have
been sporadic and haphazard and ex-
perts have questioned seizure data too.
They also point out that without vi-
able alternatives and sustained crack-
down, a ban will show little result.
Delhi’s draft plastic waste manage-
ment bylaws envisage more respon-
sibility on manufacturers with steep
fines. There’s also a proposal to nip it
at the institutional level — state and
private offices, schools, universities,
theatres, malls, hotels and historic
places. But these bylaws are yet to be
notified — three years after the Plastic
Waste Management Rules, 2016, came
into effect.
BAN INSPIRES INNOVATION
Asking for a polybag today in Bho-
pal, a two-time Swachh #2 city, is like
asking for trouble. One often gets looks
of derision and a dose of green gyaan.
The Bhopal municipality monitors,
raids and keeps an eye on wholesal-
ers and distributors. Municipal com-
missioner Vijay Dutta talked of their
campaign ‘CYO’ — carry your own
bag — and said, “People can donate old
clothes at collection points. We turn
them into bags. So far, we’ve distrib-
uted 5,000 such pieces free.”
The ban certainly has spurred inno-
vations. “Saplings used to be planted in
plastic bags. Now 20% is being planted
in coconut shells. We plan to change

BIG CITIES LAG

this to 100% soon by using pots made
of cow dung,” Dutta said.
Similarly, officials in Bhubaneswar
kicked in two years ago. Tea vendors and roadside food
% The fight against plastic has been are exploring ways to mass-produce
Terming its initiative ‘bhiksha-
tan’ (supreme beggar), civic body of-
joints have switched to paper cups
and plates, and plastic spoons have
36 14% Machinery
400 tougher in mega cities Mumbai and
Delhi. Though the switch from plastic
sal-leaf plates. “We hope to help self-
help groups mass-produce the organic

ficials went house-to-house collecting
plastic bags and replacing them with
cloth ones. The state also went easy
on penalties, opting for awareness
programmes. The painstaking initia-
tive paid off significantly.
been replaced with bamboo stirrers.
Bags made of waste paper and vis-
cose are in. Vegetables are wrapped in
newspapers. “We haven’t used plastic
cups for over a year as customers pre-
fer kulhads to plastic cups,” said Om-
% 1%
is visible across malls, supermarkets plates,” said Mona Sharma, Odisha for-
million tonnes and showrooms, it’s a different story est and environment secretary.
10Consumer of plastics
with street vendors who find it expen-
sive to offer alternatives.
The drive against plastic in Mum-
With inputs from Hemanta Pradhan
Pranchal Srivastava, Gaurav Pandey,
%
Building 7 products
every year bai is one of good intentions laid low Sheezan Nezami, Amarjeet Singh,

16%
“We haven’t fined a single person prakash, owner of Chai-69, a popular by absence of political will and logis- Vijay V Singh, Prabin Kalita
since August. This time’s Durga Puja tea joint in Morhabadi. Transport Electronics 4% Source: UNEP
tical constraints. Mumbai was indeed and Paras Singh

EC: BJP gets lion’s No male teacher under 50 at DGCA code error led to SpiceJet chase in Pak
TIMES NEWS NETWORK schedule commercial airliner. Jet’s demise. SpiceJet has ta-

share of donations Rajasthan govt girls schools?

TIMES NEWS NETWORK State education
New Delhi: The scary episode
of Pakistan scrambling F-16
fighter jets for a SpiceJet aircr-
This discrete code is given
to identify an aircraft uniquely
on radar across the flight path
it takes. “A DGCA official has
ken 31 ex-Jet B737s which then
needed to be given reassigned
codes.
This inadvertent error was

from poll trusts Jaipur: In an attempt to curb

Bharti.Jain@timesgroup.com
New Delhi: The Prudent
Electoral Trust has once
again disbursed the biggest
chunk of corporate dona-
tions to political parties, a
total of Rs 182.3 crore during
the financial year 2018-19.
The biggest beneficiary was
BJP, receiving contribu-
tions of Rs 67.25 crore, fol-
lowed by Congress with Rs
39 crore, as per a report filed
by Prudent for last fiscal.
In 2017-19, Prudent had
contributed a total sum of
around Rs 169 crore to politi-
cal parties, of which around
85% (Rs 144 crore) had gone
to BJP alone. Interestingly, it
disbursed Rs 39 crore to Con-
gress in 2018-19, up from Rs 10
crore in 2017-18.
The freshly uploaded re-
ports on the Election Com-
mission website show four
electoral trusts together dis-
bursed around Rs 249 crore
in 2018-19, of which Rs 97.75
crore went to BJP.
Apart from contribu-
tions worth Rs 182.3 crore
disbursed by Prudent Elec-
toral Trust, papers filed by
other trusts show Rs 57.25
crore corporate contribu-
tions routed via A B General
Electoral Trust, Rs 6.5 crore
via New Democratic Electo-
ral Trust and Rs 3 crore via
The freshly
uploaded reports
on the Election
Commission
website show
four electoral
trusts together
disbursed around
Rs 249 crore
in 2018-19,
of which
Rs 97.75 crore
went to BJP
Samaj Electoral Trust.
Eight other trusts have de-
clared zero contributions to
parties in last fiscal.
BJP received Rs 67.25
crore from Prudent, Rs 28
crore from A B General Elec-
toral Trust to which Aditya
Birla Group is major contrib-
utor and Rs 2.5 crore from
New Democratic Electoral
Trust linked to Mahindra
and Mahindra Group.
Congress got Rs 43 crore
from three electoral trusts —
Rs 39 crore from Prudent, Rs
2 crore from A B General
Electoral Trust and Rs 2
crore from Samaj Electoral
Trust. Prudent Electoral
Trust contributed 27 crore to
YSR Congress Party and Rs
25 crore to TDP .
Full report on www.toi.in
sexual harassment on cam-
pus, Rajasthan education mi-
nister Govind Singh Dotasra
said on Friday they would re-
call all male teachers aged un-
der 50 years from government
girls schools.
Speaking to reporters at
poll-bound Mandawa in Jhunj-
hunu district, Dotasra said
priority will be given to women
teachers in all girls schools,
while male teachers above 50
will be posted only if needed. La-
ter in the day, he tweeted: “I have
sought the data (on male tea-
chers) from all girls schools, the
decision will be implemented,
Only 1% rise in
domestic flights
this winter
New Delhi: Call it the linge-
ring Jet effect. With the big
airline shut, this winter
(from October-end to
March-end) will see only a
marginal 1% increase in do-
mestic connectivity as com-
pared to last season — from
23,117 weekly domestic
flights in 2018-19 to 23,403
this season.
Last winter (2018-19) had
seen 22% more domestic
flights than the previous
winter of 2017-18. TNN
only if we have required num-
ber of teachers.”
Experts have termed the
proposal “regressive” and
“immature”. Sources said the
minister may have been pro-
mpted to take the step after a
number of harassment cases
involving male teachers had
surfaced recently. As per the
Rajasthan government’s edu-
cation report for 2018-19, the
minister mulls recalling
all male teachers aged
less than 50 years from
aft on a scheduled commercial
Delhi-Kabul flight last month
has led to heads rolling in In-
been suspended for this lapse,”
said a senior official. Sources
say the code allotted by mistake
so serious that, once resolved,
top Indian aviation authorities
personally thanked their Pa-
dia. to the SpiceJet aircraft was of kistani counterparts for hand-
government girls
schools to curb sexual
It has emerged that the AN 32 used by the Indian Air ling the situation sensitively
“transponder code” allotted to Force. This mistake occurred and not escalating matters on
harassment on campus the aircraft by the DGCA was a at a time when SpiceJet was ra- the morning of August 30
military one and not that of a pidly adding to its fleet after when the episode happened.
state has just 1,019 girls scho-
ols while the rest 68,910 are co-
ed.
The ratio of male and fe-
male teachers is almost 2:1 in a
pool of 3.82 lakh teachers. It
means female teachers are
present in almost all the
69,929 schools, contradicting
the minister’s assertion that
girl students are safe only in
all-female schools.

Neeri develops drone-app
to monitor air pollution
Manka.Behl@timesgroup.com
Nagpur: Ahead of winters
when pollutants in the air will
skyrocket, scientists have fo-
und a unique way to monitor
the toxicity in the country’s
air. In a first-of-its-kind inven-
tion, scientists at the National
Environmental Engineering
Research Institute (Neeri), a
research institute under the
Council of Scientific and In-
dustrial Research (CSIR), ha-
ve developed a unique appli-
cation using drones and new-
generation sensors to get ac-
curate air pollution data.
The device can fly in
different urban and
rural sites to study
various air quality
parameters
Named ‘Neeri-Kshan-
AQ’, the device can fly in dif-
ferent urban and rural sites
to study various air quality
parameters. What makes
this invention unique is the
fact that it can collect data at
vertical axis.
Simply put, the drone can
hover and collect data at dif-
ferent heights.
Explains scientist Piyush
Nodatainad
23684785_2
w:18.10.77PPh:37.9.54PP
Kokate from Neeri’s Energy
Resource Management Divi-
sion (ERMD): “The traditio-
nal monitoring systems gat-
her data at the ground level.
However, this application can
identify air quality between
two buildings, collecting air
quality data at a vertical ax-
is.”
Kokate developed the de-
vice under the guidance of Ni-
tin Labhsetwar, chief scien-
tist and head of ERMD, and
Neeri director Rakesh Ku-
mar. Anirban Middey, Ankit
Gupta and Sagar Nimsadkar
provided technical support.