Bengaluru city has grown far beyond what its sewerage system can support, and in this gap exists an entire grey market of faecal sludge management providers who, more often than not, dump thousands of litres of sewage along the sides of Bengaluru’s streets daily.

For more than a year, researcher C.S. Sharad Prasad, a professor at Azim Premji University, followed a number of workers who used tankers to mechanically remove faecal sludge from houses and commercial establishments. This was part of his doctoral thesis, ‘When the pits fill up: Faecal sludge “management” in urban India’, which focussed on human waste disposal.

The sector remains out of the regulatory net of civic bodies, and Dr. Prasad’s observations offer a peek into the lives of these workers and the workings of the sector. He estimates that there are around 180 tankers transporting waste, each with a capacity of around 4,000 litres. His own observations point to around 40% of the unloading happening in farmlands — where farmers use the waste as “manure” — and the remaining in the city. “Any open plot, construction site, manhole, open drain or rajakaluve can be a place to dump [the waste]. It takes 7-10 minutes to unload 4,000 litres of raw sewage,” says Prof. Prasad.

His ethnographic observations note that raw faeces from the upper class was being handled largely by socio-economically backward castes. They state that without sufficient infrastructure to govern the dumping of this waste, it was society and the environment “subsidising” its management. If the actual costs of sustainable disposal of faeces were to be factored, it would be beyond the reach of most households, he notes.

“Both the BBMP (Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) and the BWSSB (Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board) have washed their hands of removing faecal sludge from unserviced areas. So, these tankers provide an essential service. However, what is being done is human waste movement, rather than management,” Prof. Prasad says.

Disposal

Ramesh R., who migrated from Hosapete in Ballari to Bengaluru in search of work, found an economic opportunity in the sector and bought a second-hand tanker two years ago. By servicing the area between K.R. Puram and Marathahalli, he gets on average three trips a day and charges residents between ₹1,200 and ₹2,000 (depending on distance from potential dumping spot) daily.

“We have to travel 15 to 20 km after loading the tanker to find a farmland near Kalkere where the sewage can be dumped. Sometimes, farmers who need the manure to grow maize or grass for livestock take it. Other times, we have to pay ₹100 to dump one load,” he says.

He claims that while other service providers dump waste in open drains, there is a growing fear of penalisation by the police or the BWSSB. Similarly, a few operators who spoke to The Hindu said they personally only disposed of sludge in farmlands or in identified empty plots outside the city, while “others” did so on construction sites and drains.

Only one STP

As the National Green Tribunal’s gaze hovered over the Bellandur and Varthur lakes, the usage of the Kadubeesanahalli sewage treatment plants (STP) for disposal and treatment of faecal sludge was halted some time in March last year. At that time, over 50 tankers were dumping sludge for treatment at the STP daily, and they were directed to head to Mailasandra — the city’s only other STP that accepts faecal sludge — instead.

However, at Mailasandra, off Mysuru Road, the number of tankers coming in daily has reduced, not doubled as was expected. “In fact, around 10% of the 40 tankers we had been processing then have stopped coming. There are no new registrations from tankers to use the facility,” an official there said.

According to officials and tanker workers, there are plenty of reasons for this: Mailasandra is a 30-km roundtrip from the city, which adds to the costs; registration involves certification of inspection and several cumbersome procedures to test the sludge being dumped; and the cost of ₹320 for a 4,000-litre load is more expensive than finding a farmer or dumping the sewage out in the open.

BWSSB officials acknowledge that much of the tankers are finding places to dump, but say their focus for now is to fully treat the 1,400 MLD of waste in their sewers through STPs.

Unhealthy situation for farm workers

Using human waste for agriculture is a part of a centuries-old tradition, but the sheer volume and ways of handing this “manure” may be putting farmers and farm workers’ lives at risk.

Mr. Prasad, who has surveyed 2,306 farm owners and 822 farm workers around Bengaluru and Dharwad, noted that 88% of the workers did not wear protective gear, while none of the farm owners gave out safety gear to their workers.

Furthermore, 64% of the workers had minor injuries (scratches and bruises to their hands and feet), which could provide a pathway for harmful bacteria in the manure to enter their bodies. Lack of water sees four in 10 workers skip washing their hands and feet after work. Female workers noted that they cooked and tended to children and other domestic chores immediately after working in these farms.

“There is no well-established study on the impact this has had. But considering the number of pathogens here, we need to be careful before promoting reuse of raw sludge,” says Prof. Prasad.

Whose responsibility is it anyway?

The city has no means to oversee the septic tank business, which continues to be a grey area between the BWSSB and the BBMP.

“It is not our mandate to handle sewage for areas where there is no connection. It is up to the BBMP to provide these facilities,” says Nityanand Kumar, chief engineer (waste management), BWSSB.

In fact, the BWSSB is actively avoiding the use of its sewage treatment plants by faecal sludge operators. “STPs are built for certain parameters, but the sludge coming from these tankers could be of different parameters. There could be industrial and other effluents.”

BBMP officials, however, say there has been no policy or action so far on dealing with septic tankers.

Decentralised STPs

Mr. Prasad says there is selective blindness when it comes to faecal sludge management in the city because there is differential impact. “No one wants to take up this responsibility. It is the socio-economically backward sections that suffer the most handling it.”

As long as urbanisation continues to outpace additions in the sewer network, septic tanks and sewage cleaning services will continue, he says. “What we need is decentralised STPs in places where there is no underground drainage systems. By opening them, we can provide a place to dispose of faecal sludge,” he said.