South Asia: India, Giant of the Subcontinent - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 232

Figure 8-12
Cows are sacred in India but they are the primary
work animal and are important sources of milk
and dung. It is common to see typically skinny
zebus wandering around city streets eating any-
thing they can find, including cardboard and
newspapers. These cows are hovering around a
garbage bin filled with rotting vegetables from a
nearby market. W omen and girls collect their
dung, which, if not used for fertilizer , is used
as cooking fuel. Dung cooking fires are major
sources of pollution. Photo courtesy of
B. A. Weightman.

in the modern dairy industry . Modern dairy enterprises
provide better care for dairy animals than many farmers
can for their children. Kanti George (1985) notes that
in certain parts of India, “it must be more comfortable
to be a large landholder' s crossbred cow than to be a
small farmer' s child.”

construct digesters for the 12 million households
that have enough cattle to maintain a sufficient sup-
ply of dung.
Human waste can also be put to good use.
Sewage-fed lagoons produce 10 percent of the fish
consumed by Kolkata (Calcutta). A natural wetland
east of the city has been turned into a 29,652-acre
(12,000 ha) aquaculture operation. While the
sewage provides nutrients for the algae that carp
and other fish eat, the process dilutes the high con-
centration of fecal coliform bacteria in the sewage.
The resulting effluent can be safely used for irriga-
tion in urban gardens. City gardens in the rich,
composted soils of old garbage dumps produce 150
to 300 tons of vegetables a day and employ around
20,000 people in East Calcutta.

Why Waste Waste?

Judicious use of animal and even human waste can
improve the lives of millions. Cow dung, when fer-
mented or digested in an enclosed, cement con-
tainer, produces methane gas, carbon dioxide, and
nutrient-rich slurry . From this biogas plant,
methane can be piped into homes and used as
cooking gas, or it can fire a diesel engine to gener-
ate electricity or pump water. The slurry is an ex-
cellent fertilizer. Generating biogas is culturally
appropriate as well, because all products of the cow
are considered sacred.
Biogas was produced as early as the sixteenth
century in Persia and has been used in India for al-
most 100 years. Now , more than two million small
“digesters” and a thousand community-size plants
have been put in place in rural, agrarian regions.
Biogas provides light to millions who are not linked
to the larger electrical grid and is a boon to the
80 percent of rural Indians who lack access to suffi-
cient cooking fuel. The Indian government hopes to

Deceleration in crop yields is now occurring in key
areas such as Kerala and Punjab. This can be attributed
to several factors. Even with the widespread installation
of tube wells, water management is often ineffective. Fre-
quently , water control projects have been installed in re-
gions where crops do not require irrigation. Fertilizers
and pesticides may be adulterated. Seed multiplication
farms are not operating efficiently . Roads have fallen into
disrepair, disrupting distribution of both inputs and out-
puts. In addition, crop yields have suffered from the un-
predictability of the monsoon.
Having weathered the financial crisis, rural Indians
have to face the weather. Fickle monsoons have foisted