On Republic Day on January 26, 2006, Population First organised a workshop on bio-composting in the 20 villages it has adopted under the Thane Project. The day was observed as ‘Cleanliness Day’ by the villagers, including women’s self-help groups (SHGs), youth groups and men. Earlier, under the Project Population First has worked with the villagers to tackle the sanitation problem by showing them how to construct and use soak pits to drain the sewage water. This helped tackle many illnesses that resulted from allowing the water to stagnate.
Two resource persons from the NGO, Stree Mukti Sanghatana (SMS) Ms. Nirmala Ughade and Ms. Sushila Mokal explained and demonstrated the procedure of bio-composting to an eager gathering of over 150 women.
The workshop and demonstration on bio-composting was aimed at teaching the villagers how to manage their garbage. In the villages, the solid waste is mostly biodegradable in the form of dry leaves, gobar, grass, kitchen waste (peels, leaves, seeds, used tea leaves etc.) These lend themselves easily to bio-composting which can be used to produce organic manure.
In the 1990s, with the advent of the Advanced Locality Management (ALM) groups in Mumbai, the NGO, Stree Mukti Sanghatana (SMS) along with the BMC pioneered the techniques of vermi- and bio-composting. Two resource persons, Ms. Nirmala Ughade and Ms. Sushila Mokal from SMS demonstrated the procedure and explain the benefits of bio-composting as an effective method of waste disposal.
The session began with some informal introductions about the SHG members, where they had come from and in what way were they successful in tackling basic issues in the village. Then Ms. Sushila sang inspiring songs in praise of Savitribai Phule, the women’s reformer. Soon, the mood for change and reform was suitably created in the small village school that was beautifully decorated with festoons, charts, drawings and buntings. The women had come from villages as far as 30 km away, but their spirit charged the room. Children added to the energy levels in the area, as the boys ran about noisily playing cricket, while the little girls giggled away sometimes, sometimes coyly served water to their guests from Mumbai.
Ms. Sushila then commenced the session speaking on what bio-composting is, how it should be done and why it is beneficial to the villagers. She narrated her experiences of working on the technique in Mumbai. She said, “In Mumbai, we don’t have space to do this. But here in the villages, all the conditions are perfect. They have ample space, plenty of grass, cow dung, leaves and kitchen waste to process in the pits and also enough sunlight to aid the process. It can be an economically viable proposition, provided they follow the procedure properly.”
The whole group proceeded to the demonstration area, where Ms. Nirmala and Ms. Sushila instructed the villages to dig a pit in which the biodegradable waste would be processed. The layers of grass and gobar and wet waste like banana peels were added. Villagers were encouraged to keep their surroundings clean and healthy through this technique.
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