1. SANITATION SCENERIO IN GURGAON
– An impact on environment
Dr. Kuldip Singh Kait
Government College, sec-14 Gurgaon
Pooja Kumari
M.A. 3rd semester,
Government College, sec-14 Gurgaon

2. INDEX
 Statement of the problem
 Objective
 Database
 Sanitation Scenario
 Household Level Sanitation
 Village level Sanitation and Cleanliness
 Perception of the people
 Sanitation condition
 Situation of Environmental Sanitation in Surveyed Villages
 Ensuring Environmental Sanitation
 Glimpses of Study Villages

3. Statement of the problem
Gurgaon, the second largest city of Haryana, a
part of the National Capital Region (NCR) has
been on the faster pace of development and
emerged as the industrial and financial hub
during the last 2 decades. This process of
urbanization has left its impact on urban and
rural settlement on one hand and environmental
degradation on the other.

4. Objective
To study the current situation of sanitation
scenario in Gurgaon.

5. Database
The present study is primarily based on field
survey conducted in urban village located under
the jurisdiction of Gurgaon Municipal Corporation
(GMC)
• Primary Data- Generated through questionnaires
• Secondary Data- Collected from various government
published report.

6. Sanitation Scenario
The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that:
Sanitation generally refers to the provision of
facilities and services for the safe disposal of human
urine and faeces. Inadequate sanitation is a major
cause of disease world-wide and improving
sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial
impact on health both in households and across
communities. The word 'sanitation' also refers to the
maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services
such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal.

7. Safe water supply and hygienic sanitation facilities are
basic essential amenities required for a community for
healthy living. About 80 per cent of water used by the
community comes out of houses in the form of waste
water which, unless properly collected, conveyed,
treated and safely disposed off, may eventually pollute
the precious water resources and cause environmental
degradation. Lack of proper sanitation causes diseases.
One of the most significant diseases that arise from
poor sanitation is diarrhea. Most of the affected are
young children below the ages of five. Other diseases
that are caused by poor sanitation include
schistosomiasis, trachoma, and soil transmitted
Helminthiases. The importance therefore is immense.
In the following few paragraphs, an attempt has been
made to illustrate the sanitation scenario in the study
villages. The sanitation analysis is divided into two
parts – household level and village level.

8. Household Level Sanitation
In the surveyed villages only few households use
shared toilets and no one goes outside for
defecation. It has been observed that more than
90 of the surveyed households use their own
household toilets. In all the surveyed villages, no
household responded about going outside for
open defecation, which clearly marks a good sign
of cleanliness.

9. Though the households do not defecate in the
open, their behaviour in disposal of stool of
children was quite disturbing as the majority of
them have been throwing the stool in the
garbage. Few proportions of households throw
the stool of children and infants on the streets
directly while only a few bury the stools. The
disposal of stool in the garbage by adults is a bad
behaviour because smelly stools attract flies,
which are considered risky since they can
transport faeces and contaminate food. It also
may get mixed up with the ground water and
local taps resulting in contamination of drinking
water.

10. Village level Sanitation and
Cleanliness
Outside the household premises, the first thing
that the households are responsible is the
disposal of garbage or household waste. Only a
few of the surveyed households throw garbage
on the streets and in open areas outside their
homes and do not know the proper procedure for
disposal of garbage while the majority of the
surveyed households collect the garbage in their
household bins. The same is later collected by the
municipal sweeper and disposed off in the
municipal van carrying the solid waste for the
landfill site at Bhandwari.

11. The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon however, claims
that their garbage vans visit all the urban villages daily
and their garbage vans are fitted with Global
Positioning Systems (GPS). Trash vans deputed by
Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon have been installed
with GPS devices to ensure that the task of garbage
disposal is carried out properly. As part of the 'Clean
Gurgaon' initiative, MCG has allotted 73 vehicles in
Gurgaon to provide door-to-door service for collecting
garbage and disposing it at the city's solid waste
management plant at Bhandwari village. The drivers,
however, were not collecting garbage daily as is
reflected from News item published during our field-
survey on March 18, 2013 in Hindustan Times, Gurgaon
Edition also reported that 33 per cent GPS devices in
garbage vans not in working order.

12. Perception of the People
More than half of the surveyed households in
all the villages told us that their area is in
extremely bad condition and nearly one-
fourth respondents answered that their village
was clean in some places while less than one
fourth of the surveyed households are happy
with the prevailing situation. The locational
advantage of such households can be
contributed major as the factor for such
perception.

13. Young generation in all the four villages agree
that sanitation condition is generally unclean.
One-third said that their locality is clean in
some places. Merely 6-15 per cent deem that
their locality is clean everywhere. The
response of the old generation was exactly
reverse as according to their opinion more
than half of the respondent feels that there
locality is generally clean.

14. This difference in perception may be due to
due to the fact that the young people, the
migrants can compare their area with that of
the private builder colonies while for the
women and the aged mainly the original
residents of the village have emotionally
attachment and are satisfied with the gradual
process of urbanisation of these erstwhile
villages.

15. Sanitation condition
The sanitation condition of these four villages exposes the
residents particularly children and women to severe health
and environmental risks because they are un-served by the
city’s sanitation systems. Tangible problems connected with
the sanitation scenario include:
• The production of enormous amounts of waste including
construction waste and wastewater in these villages that is
insufficiently collected and treated; and
• Pollution of shallow ground water, due to open drainage
system by leaking sewers, waste, and latrine contents
thereby polluting the source of drinking water for the
residents.

16. Situation of Environmental
Sanitation in Surveyed Villages

17. Ensuring Environmental Sanitation
It is widely acknowledged that inadequate sanitation
is a major cause of disease world-wide and
improving sanitation is known to have a significant
beneficial impact on health both in households and
across communities. In the surveyed villages, outside
the household premises, the first thing that the
households are responsible is the disposal of
garbage or household waste. Only a few of the
surveyed households disposed their garbage on the
streets and in open areas outside their homes, in
empty plot of land, while the majority collected the
waste within their household premises, in small bins

18. It was reported that the same is later collected by
the municipal sweeper and disposed in the van
carrying the solid waste for the landfill site. Most
of the households in all the three villages
responded that garbage is generally collected
daily by the trash vans deputed by the Municipal
Corporation of Gurgaon. However, as the GPS
provided in the trash vans for better monitoring
were not functional in some vans, drivers skipped
the villages. This was complained by the residents
and overall observation of the sanitation situation
of the villages substantiates the fact.

19. Hygiene behaviours of the households in the
surveyed villages are also in transition. The
awareness level of the households on sanitation
issues were found to be poor as in few households in
all the four villages, wastewater from the homes
were seen pouring out in the broken lanes. This
needs no mention that this waste water unless
properly collected, treated and safely disposed off
may lead to water clogging, blockage, pollution of
water resources and cause environmental
degradation. It is important for the community to
realise that potholes in the streets, pools of stagnant
water in the kutcha lanes, and waste gushing from
bathrooms and kitchens provide breeding sites for
malarial mosquitoes and other spreaders of disease.

20. Another basic requirement is the improvement in
drainage system in these villages to ensure
environmental sanitation. Open drains in these villages
are the main collector of garbage and even though
they are cleaned by the municipal sweepers, the
sewage is transported back to the drains as the liquid
waste is not removed by the municipal vans. Silting and
frequent blockages of the drains with rubbish and
construction debris in these villages are frequent
phenomena. The foul smell of the drain pollutes the
entire area and the presence of the drain reduces the
usable width of the already narrow lanes. In
combination with poor road and sanitation, open
drainage in these urban villages presents a recipe for
disaster which is always present and can erupt at any
time and wreak havoc amongst the populations.

21. Glimpses of Study Villages