Sensitization Programme for Elected Representatives of Jharkhand

Venue: Centre for Science and Environment New Delhi

Date: January 17-19, 2017

AMRUT Training Programme for Elected Representatives of the state of Jharkhand was held in CSE campus from 17-19 January, 2017. It was conducted by Environmental Governance team in close coordination with three other units of CSE, named Compliance Monitoring unit, Water unit and APC unit. The three day orientation programme was attended by 26 elected representatives who were sensitised on key environmental issues and challenges the country is facing currently, policy and reforms concerning air, water and waste. The larger objective of the programme was to sensitise this group about the urban transformation envisaged under the AMRUT mission. 

The programme was an effective mix of classroom technical session, group exercises and 2 days field visits to various environmental best practices adopted in and around NCR Delhi. The idea was to showcase these best practices in waste, wastewater management and urban mobility to them besides imparting theoretical input. 

The programme was inaugurated by Ashok Bhattacharjee, Advisor of APC unit. Rajneesh Sareen, Programme Director of Sustainable Building and Habitat Programme, CSE with a briefing on CSE’s engagement and what AMRUT is all about, detailed out the expectation from the AMRUT program and also the achievement this programme can bring in. 

Further, in the day, the technical session started with the lecture of Priyanka Chandola, Programme Manager of APC unit, who made the participants understand the problems related to air pollution and mobility in cities. She explained them the technical aspect and presented various case studies from different cities of India. Also, she conducted a group exercise to make them understand the problems related to Air pollution and transportation management faced by them in their cities. 

Following this, Rajratna Sardar, Programme Officer of Water Unit CSE detailed out about the political economy of water and waste water. This was further clubbed with a class exercises which resulted in listing of issues and challenges, the state is currently facing. Anil Yadav assisted him for the class exercise. The participants were taken to a small round of CSE campus to showcase the Decentralised Waste Water Treatment System (DWWTS) and the Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) system installed within the campus. The last and final session of the day was focused on waste as a whole, where in Dr. Sonia Devi Henam of MSW unit at CSE talked about the municipal solid waste.  She also discussed some of the best practices across the country and pushed the ULBs for affordable decentralized solutions for waste management. 

The second and third day were kept exclusively for field visits, which included DWWTS at Delhi Jal Board campus in Karol Bagh, Non-motorised Transport, Infrastructure and Design, Rain Water Harvesting system at Jamia Hamdard, Household level waste management system at New Moti Bagh housing colony followed by a site visit to witness community level Door to door collection of segregated waste and composting in a sector in Gurugram on Day 3 respectively. 

At the end of third day, a feedback session was held which was moderated by Dr.D.D.Basu, Advisor, Compliance Monitoring Unit alongwith the Waste Team. The elected representatives gave their feedback on the overall design and relevance of entire program, wherein a very good reaction came from the participants. When some of them expressed their willingness to replicate small scale project on solid waste management, rainwater harvesting showcased during the site visits. Suggestion also came to visit these districts, from where the participants were attended the programme. The programme ended with the certificate distribution to the participants.