Kullu panchayat’s struggle for material recovery facility

Recognising that a facility at a gram panchayat will struggle financially, the Bajaura panchayat pradhan approached the Block Development Officer to explore a shared MRF for a cluster of adjoining gram panchayats. This is a sound instinct: rural MRFs typically show a 20 per cent to 45 per cent financial viability gap, largely due to inadequate supply of economically valuable waste. Yet, no guidelines exist for building rural MRFs, even under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen).

The Bajaura gram sabha meeting took place just days after the Supreme Court issued unprecedented directions in the Bhopal Municipal Corporation vs Dr Subhash C. Pandey case on August 18 that the country’s waste infrastructure needs a complete audit and upgrade to meet the exact standards of the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2026, and directed District Collectors to actively involve elected ward representatives of gram panchayats, municipalities and corporations as lead facilitators for source-segregation education and community compliance.

The Bajaura panchayat pradhan was trying to do exactly what the court says must happen but found the lack of quorum, not fully supportive panchayat samiti and no money.

Bajaura gram panchayat’s finances make the scale of the problem clear. Under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen), the 15th Central Finance Commission grants (tied and untied, the gram panchayat receives in total roughly Rs10 lakh to Rs 12 lakh a year) and nothing of it is earmarked for an MRF. The Sixteenth Finance Commission’s guidelines for tied funds do specify some costs related to solid waste management but the quantum available is too limited to be of much practical use.

The gram panchayat has negligible own-source revenue. The Kullu district administration’s current response — providing every gram panchayat with a waste segregation system that is, in practice, a set of four wire cages — illustrates the gap between compliance on paper and infrastructure on the ground.

The Producers, Importers and Brand Owners (PIBOs) should be made to fund MRF construction and help close the financial viability gap in rural areas, in keeping with their obligations under Extended Producer Responsibility. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding, too, should be channelled to the state at a systemic level, given the ecological importance of the Himalayan region, and used to build, operate or maintain these facilities.

Himachal Pradesh faces a second, more structural obstacle: A 1952 notification that rendered most government land technically forestland. This leaves practically no land available to build MRFs on. Every proposal must at present go through individual forest clearance, a process that can take years.

The current Handbook for Guidelines for Effective and Transparent Implementation of the Provisions of FCA, 1980, of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, in force since December 1, 2023, restricts general approvals for public utilities to districts affected by left-wing extremism. An earlier handbook allowed general approval for 15 identified critical development initiatives across the country. Given the acute shortage of land for decentralised waste management infrastructure and in light of the Supreme Court’s above directive, the Himachal Pradesh Government should approach the apex court to seek a similar general approval for MRF construction across the state.

Until targeted finances for building, operating and maintaining MRFs are made available and land is identified systemically, the directives of the High Courts and the Supreme Court will struggle to translate into anything on the ground. The executive will continue to tick boxes: passing off four wire cages as segregation sheds and sub-standard facilities as MRFs.

The struggle of Bajaura gram panchayat to build a waste management system continues on multiple fronts. On the ground, MRF construction remains what it has been all along: an unfunded, unclear mandate.

Archana is an executive member of Himachal Pradesh Sustainable Development Forum while Pradeep is the founder of Healing Himalayas