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‘Where do they transfer the entire city’s garbage?’ ‘How is there not a speck of dust anywhere?’ This corre­spondent repeatedly caught her­self wondering on a recent visit to Tokyo. Public bathrooms there were spotless, roads super-clean, and it seemed even the gardens did not have any dust or dirt. For someone from Kathmandu, the level of clean­liness was surreal.

While there, I started becoming conscious of the waste that I was throwing away. After eating chips or chocolates, I would keep the wrappers in my pocket so that I could toss them into the nearest dustbin. The clean environment also got me thinking. Above all, I wanted to know how Tokyo dis­posed of its garbage.

I later found out that just like Kath­mandu, the Japanese capital too relies on landfill sites. But there is a crucial difference. For instance, in Tokyo, untreated waste is not direct­ly dumped at the landfill. In the first step, every household is required by law to segregate the material that can be recycled (around 21 per­cent). After this, the waste material that can be safely burned is turned into ash, what cannot be burned is pulverized. The mixture of the two is then taken to the landfill and covered by soil, causing minimal ecological damage.

Kathmandu, meanwhile, dumps all the untreated trash directly onto the dumping sites. “It seems the Kathmandu Metropolitan City is solely focused on dumping the waste without any concern for recycling and other healthy disposal alterna­tives,” says Shobha Manandhar, a veteran environmental journalist.

Axe now falls on Banchare?

Back in 2005 the metropolitan had signed a three-year contract to throw the valley’s waste at Sis­dol of Nuwakot district. It has now been 13 years and the KMC con­tinues to use the same land­fill. Only now is Banchare Danda, also in Nuwakot, being explored as an alternative.

According to Hari Bahadur Kun­war, the chief of the Environmental Management Division of KMC, as people from all across the country flock to Kathmandu and as most of the valley is unplanned, it is only natural that there is a problem with managing the sheer volume of the waste. Since Sisdol landfill is now packed in the immediate future, Kunwar adds, there is no alternative to finding another “suitable venue” like Banchare Danda.

The locals of Banchare Danda are not happy. “The government’s promises of development in the area and job opportunities for the locals do not cut ice with them,” says Manandhar.

Kunwar complains that even though everyone generates waste, no one wants to see it dumped any­where near them. For instance the metropolitan is now thinking of patrolling the road from Kalima­ti to Balkhu at night after receiving repeated complaints that some in the area are sneaking out to dump waste in another neighborhood.

In many countries, people are required to segregate waste, and waste management technology has improved so much that the trash these days is seen more as a resource than a burden. Sweden’s recycling program is so efficient that the country often runs out of trash. They even have to import garbage from abroad to keep their facilities humming. Among other things, the waste, after its controlled burning, is used to heat people’s homes via the National Heating Network.

Manandhar says that rather than thinking about managing waste, a better idea is to reduce it at the source. Kunwar agrees that most important actors in waste manage­ment are the citizens who generate it. “80 percent of the waste does not need to be picked up from house­holds because they are either recy­clable or degradable,” he says. But although the gov­ernment has run several awareness campaigns in this regard, there has not been much headway.

But can’t folks be asked to segregate waste so that at least the recyclable stuff can be reused? Kunwar says the municipality right now does not have the req­uisite technology for recy­cling. “That doesn’t mean it will always be impossi­ble,” he adds.

The sustainable road

There have been some novel approaches as well. Green Road Waste Man­agement, a company working for plastic waste management, has built a model road in Pokhara using plastic waste. Bimal Bastola, the co-founder of the company, says the road will be inspected and ana­lyzed for durability for a year. Meanwhile, plans are afoot to build 1-2 km of road in Kirtipur and Godawari utilizing plas­tic waste from local communities. Bastola says permanent collection centers may soon be set up in Kir­tipur and Godawari. After enough research, this company plans to push for a policy that will make the use of plastic waste mandatory in road-building. Pokhara municipality has already been approached with this idea, he informs.

Other organizations are also employing innovative ideas. CWIN Nepal’s ‘Banners to Bags’ initiative uses the banners—the kind we wit­nessed in abundance during the recent BIMSTEC Summit in Kath­mandu—which would otherwise end up in landfill, to make handy and funky bags. At-risk youth and marginalized women are hired to sew these bags. Taalo is another upcycling firm that makes fabric accessories such as neckties, bow­ties and headbands using wasted textiles from factories.

There are other companies too that sell stuff made of waste but most of these products tend to be expensive. Devashree Niraula, an environmentalist, suspects this may be due to the small-scale production and lack of right technology to mass produce eco-friendly products. She says most people have got it back­wards. “They complain about high prices. But if more people started buying them, they would be pro­duced in larger quantities and the prices would tumble.”

“The public should be given the incentive to segregate waste,” says Pankaj Panjiyar, business head of Doko Recyclers, a waste manage­ment company. “People will be more than happy to do so if they are paid back in cash or kind”. Panjiyar says that if the government cannot do so on its own, it can at least give interested private compa­nies a helping hand.

 .The Nepal Communist Party has virtual control over all three tiers of government. It has over two-thirds majority in the federal parliament, and runs six of the seven provinces as well as most local units. It was precisely with this intent that the two biggest communist forces had formally united over four months ago. At the time, the two co-chairmen, KP Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal, had assured their skeptical countrymen that rather than wrangling they would work together as ‘co-pilots’ of the same airplane. It has not been a smooth flight. Dahal wasted no time in projecting himself as the prime minister-in-waiting, even as he was eerily silent on the many criticisms that came the way of the Oli government. Oli for his part has ruled both the country and his party by diktat. Dahal seems to have taken after Oli on this. Disenchantment among the rank and file is growing. This displeasure with the party leadership was evi­dent most recently after the selection of the NCP provincial in-charges (with the largely ceremonial role of overall party management in the province) and provincial committee chairpersons (who enjoy most executive powers).

The party statute confers this selection right on the 45-member standing committee. The committee members were thus aghast when the nine-member secretariat, under the effective control of the two co-chairmen, announced the names of these province-level officials—without informing the committee. Interestingly, four leaders close to Dahal and three close to Oli were made provincial committee chairper­sons; contenders from other factions were sidelined.

Meanwhile, those close to Dahal say he has already had a ‘serious discussion’ with Oli about the government’s inability to meet public expectation. They say he is as yet not angling for the post of prime minister or party chairman. He will go with the status quo for the first two years of Oli’s prime ministership. After that, “all bets are off”.

But even if Dahal is patient enough to bide his time, other party colleagues are getting antsy. Senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal has grown progressively distant from Oli. Another senior leader Jhalanath Khanal has always been uncomfortable with the terms of party unification. Narayan Kaji Shrestha has resigned as spokesperson. And Ram Baha­dur Thapa, the Maoist home minister, seems intent on under­mining his prime minister every step of the way.

When the prime minister touches down on TIA on October 4 after an extended foreign trip he will have his hands full trying to paper over the growing cracks in the party edifice.

Some reckon the media has overdone Nirmala Pant rape-and-murder. There are seemingly other vital issues, including other similar cases. Such distraction would be dangerous. The 13-year-old native of Kanchanpur district who was brutally raped and murdered is no more an isolated victim. She is rather an emblem of the state’s apathy to even the most-pressing concerns of its people. Nirmala’s bereaved parents have met just about every influential politician and bureaucrat, including the prime minister, to press for justice. More important, hundreds of thousands have protested to put pressure on the government.

If Nirmala’s parents are still denied justice, there is little hope that a common Nepali, who has no such support, will tomorrow get justice in a similar case. As our main story this week illustrates (See Page 7), Nirmala’s friends and family are still traumatized. Local girls dread going to school alone. The whole of Bhimdatta municipality is steeped in fear. Yet the police, whose role has been dubious from the start, is nowhere close to apprehending the real culprits, even as it has paraded a few fake ones.

A young girl was raped and murdered in broad daylight, and in an area within easy reach of local police and army installations, and yet the investigators seem clueless. One thing is clear: some powerful people want to protect the real culprits. It remains to be seen whether the prime minister too wants to protect them or whether he stamps his authority to credibly assure people that the government cares about them.

 It’s been nearly two months since the brutal rape and mur­der of 13-year-old Nirmala Pant of Ultakham, Bhimdatta munici­pality in Kanchanpur district. But Nepal Police has thus far failed to get anywhere close to solving the crime, this despite the police claim to the contrary. “Our investigation has been rig­orous,” says investigation officer in the case Krishna Raj Ojha. “And yet we have been unable to uncover incriminating evidence.”

Bhimdatta locals suspect the police are dilly-dallying so that vital evidence can be tampered with, if that has not already happened.

After all, it has been established that police officials involved in initial investigation had tried to system­atically erase evidence from crime scene. Another established fact is that initial investigation was aimed more at finding a scapegoat than solving the crime.

After Nirmala’s body was dis­covered on July 26, Nepal Police had deployed a probe team from its Central Investigation Bureau, which looks into serious crimes. When this team completed its inves­tigation, in conjunction with local police, it paraded before the pub­lic 41-year-old Dilip Singh Bista, a mentally-challenged person, as the perpetrator of the crime.

But as soon as Bista was present­ed as the prime suspect, the locals erupted in protest. They could not believe a mentally-challenged per­son was capable of pulling off such a meticulously-orchestrated crime.

In the ensuing police firing one person was killed while doz­ens were injured. After this the government formed another investi­gation team under Hari Prasad Main­ali, a joint secretary at the Home Ministry. The Chief District Office of Kanchanpur as well as its head of police were recalled.

As the locals had been arguing all along, Dilip Singh Bista was prov­en innocent when his DNA sample didn’t match the sample collected from the deceased body. The other suspect, Chakradev Badu, was also exonerated on the same ground.

Now the police are reportedly in the process of testing the DNA of the suspended Superintendent of Police of Kanchanpur Dilliraj Bista, who was initially in charge of the investi­gation, as well as the DNA of his son Kiran Bista and one Ayush Bista.

Besides, yet another probe team under CIB’s senior superinten­dent Thakur Prasad Gyawali has been deployed. This is in addition to an expert group of criminolo­gists that has been constituted to look into this crime. Moreover, on Sept 18, a separate ‘ladies team’ under Superintendent of Police Durga Singh was sent to Kanchanpur for investigation.

Nirmala’s family suspects foul play as all these investigations have thus far born no fruit. “It’s been nearly two months and Nirmala’s killers are still at large,” says Laxmi Pant, Nirmala’s step-mother. “We have started doubting if we will ever get justice.” She says the officers who erased evidence must be taken into custody and investigated. “It is vital that we know why they destroyed crucial evidence,” she says.