India has been rapidly generating e-wastes domestically and it has been

growing over the last few years. Over the last few years India has also become a
major importer of e-wastes from USA and EU countries. The variety of e-waste
generation as well as dearth of record keeping makes it difficult to estimate the
amount of e-waste generated annually in India. 80% of imported e-waste
originates in USA while the rest mainly comes from EU. In 2005 CPCB estimated
Indias e-waste at 1.47 lakh tonnes. The top 10 states contribute to around 70%
of the waste produced with the top three cities being Mumbai, Delhi and
Bangalore. In 2009 an IMRB survey found television and computer products
consist of 68% and 27% respectively while mobiles lead to 1% of the total ewaste produced. In the post liberalization age due to falling prices and increasing
purchasing power sales of electronic goods increased a large extent. India is one
of the largest importer of E-wastes with it generating about 350000 tonnes of ewaste and importing about 50000 tonnes. However the Hazardous Wastes Rule
2008 restricted the import of hazardous material only for its disposal. Thus only
e-wastes containing hazardous material can be restricted by this legislation.
India is also under severe pressure from developed countries to open its market
for remanufactured goods. However there exists multiple loopholes in the above
laws whereby a computer less than 10 years can be imported into the country
although in a developed country it mainly is e-waste. It puts the responsibility of
e-waste management on the manufacturers by introducing Extended producer
Responsibility where the producer is responsible for the product once the user
has discarded it. Information and telecommunications sectors will have to
ensure that their produce do not have harmful chemical including lead, mercury,
cadmium, hexavalent chromium, poly-brominated biphenyls or poly-brominated
di-phenyl ethers above a safe level. Further according to the Electronic Waste
(Management and Handling) Rules, 2011 it became illegal to dump old consumer
goods or sell them off to the scrap dealers. According to the new rules it must be
routed to one of the authorized recycling centres for e-wastes. The informal
sector recycles around 90-95% of the electronic goods in the country. However
the processes followed in the informal sector exposes the workers to multiple
health hazards due to the toxic chemicals present in the products.