New Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules are out, as reported in The Indian Express by Nikhil Ghanekar on February 3, 2026. At first critical look, these rules apparently seem to have been prepared in an ivory tower, with very little touch with ground realities.
The Need for an Honest Audit
Before coming up with a new set of rules, an honest and expert evaluation of the old rules should have been placed in the public domain. We need to know what those rules were meant to achieve, what the success rate actually was, what they achieved, and where they failed. Most importantly, we need to understand the reason for those failures. Was it a deficiency in the rules themselves, shortcomings in the framing, or a failure in execution and commitment?
Once the missing portions have been identified, the new rules should have come in to fill those specific gaps. Something as critical as garbage management should not have taken ten years to evaluate. The first two years should have been more than enough to provide a clear picture, allowing us to identify shortcomings and fill the gaps immediately.
Bureaucracy vs. Actual Delivery
The new rules increase the “scriptory” work-getting certificates, registering on portals, and filing returns. As is the specialty of our bureaucracy, they have come up with more paperwork, assigning responsibilities without actually enabling or evaluating the capacity to deliver.
Every household, whether it is a shack or a tinsheet roof house or 50 sq. yard plot to a 5,000 sq. yard bungalow, creates garbage.
While responsibilities have been assigned to welfare societies/ management committees of gated colonies / societies to be made accountable or obtain certificates, this will likely only increase the paperwork without ensuring actual delivery on the ground.
The Crisis in Small-Town India
What is the percentage of our population that lives in such organized societies or colonies? Each locality, mohalla, town, and village creates garbage, but do they have the space, resources, or expertise to manage or decompose wet waste?
Even the government’s own colonies A, B and C category towns-created by Urban Development Authorities or Improvement Trusts-lack the necessary space and resources.
Then come the private colonies in these cities and towns, where colonizers run the area as their personal fiefdoms.
Many do not even have basic sewerage disposal systems or treatment plants; waste is discharged untreated into drains and nallahs with the active collaboration and connivance of the bodies supposed to check them.
These bodies, meant to be regulators, have instead acted as vanguards for colonizers. They were supposed to take over these colonies as per the license agreements but failed to guard public interest and conveniently permitted colonizers to flout rules.
Is any space even earmarked in master plans for garbage collection, segregation, or conversion centers in these colonies?
The Failure of “Generator Responsibility”: The Plastic Pouch Example
In previous rules, single use plastic was banned. Did it happen on the ground ? Now the generator has been made responsible, but will it actually work on the ground?
Take milk plants as an example.
Who is the generator of pouches? Public or Milk Plant?
How many of them actually collect their plastic pouches back?
There could be an incredibly easy system to return empty plastic pouches. Each shop or booth selling products in plastic should charge a fixed amount (a deposit) from the customer, which the customer gets back upon depositing the empty pouch. If a milk pouch costs ₹30, charge ₹32 and give ₹2 back when the plastic is returned. This creates a self-sustaining loop. Without such practical systems, “responsibility” is just a word on a page.
The “Maintenance First” Doctrine
India spends more on capital and less on maintenance of projects. Any new capital projects should first cater for maintenance and repairs over the years, and new projects should come only once the maintenance and repair of old ones are met. We cannot keep building “white elephants”-expensive machinery that lies rusted because there was no budget for spare parts and maintenance.
A Practical Blueprint for Local Bylaws
The bylaws supposed to be framed by 2027 should consider these salient points to ensure they are grounded in reality:
The 3km Collection Circuit:
Each locality, town, and village needs a collection system from every household. The transit point where a collector deposits trash must be within a practical distance of no more than 3 kilometers. This is a manageable limit for a motorized cart or cycle.
Employment & Economy:
Mohalla committees can organize this. A collector charging ₹100 to ₹200 per house can cover 200–300 houses (even 3 days a week) and earn ₹20,000 to ₹40,000. All they need is a cycle or a motorized cart.
Rural Solutions on Panchayat Land:
Villages should use community Panchayat land for localized composting and segregation centers. This requires a commitment to provide a trained supervisor to maintain the site, ensuring waste is handled within the village rather than choking local nallahs.
Government Responsibility:
The government cannot wash its hands of this. They must establish collection centers at reasonable distances from each locality for further management. Whether directly managed or outsourced, the government must provide the infrastructure. Increasing dustbins from 2 to 4 is not a panacea; otherwise, it ends up like vehicle pollution certificates-you pay for the paper, but nothing changes in real-time.
Public Education & Outreach
We must use our youth and media to change the culture:
Schools & Colleges: Make waste management a mandatory project.
NCC & NSS: Deploy these volunteers to map local garbage points and educate households. They can act as a “social audit” team to report when systems fail.
Direct Instruction: Every household and establishment should receive a simple, physical, written set of instructions-not a digital link-on how the local system and deposit-refund rules work.
Communication Strategy (TV & Social Media)
To make this work, we need a “no-nonsense” media campaign:
TV Spot (The Reality Check): Show a “clean” gated society on one side and a “Nallah” in a B-category town on the other. Voiceover: “Rules are made in offices, but waste is made in streets. Is your colony a fiefdom or a community? Demand space for waste in your Master Plan.”
Social Media Campaign (ReturnThePouch)
A challenge where citizens show themselves returning milk pouches to booths for their deposit back. “Don’t throw away your money. Return the plastic, get your coins, save your soil.”
Unless proper infrastructure is made available and the culture of maintenance is prioritized, 10 years down the line we will simply be looking at a new set of rules-unless an epidemic takes its toll first and nature takes control.
Sardar Jatinder Pal Singh, Retd CPMF Commandant
