Tag: waste management

The Human Cost of Delhi-NCR’s ‘Mountains of Waste’

The Bhalswa and Bandhwari landfills reflect the state’s choice to regulate waste management in ways that sustain social inequalities and deepen marginalisation.

This field report has been produced in collaboration with the Visual Storyboards initiative of the Centre for New Economics Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University.

On October 2, 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission was launched with much fanfare, aiming to transform India into a “clean India” by 2019. While the campaign promised a revolutionary approach to waste management, ten years later, the capital city thrives while its waste is systematically pushed to its peripheries – where it wreaks havoc on marginalised communities – exposing the deep contradictions of urban development.

The stories of landfills like Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Bandhwari reveal the state’s deliberate choice to regulate waste management in ways that sustain social inequalities and deepen marginalisation. These landfills, far from the city’s polished landscapes, reflect how the state actively produces and sustains informal spaces of neglect, where law and regulation are absent, leaving vulnerable communities to grapple with toxic environments.

The Bandhwari landfill, situated along the Gurugram-Faridabad highway, is emblematic of this broader governance failure. Intended to hold only processed waste – waste that is segregated waste that is sent for energy recovery, treatment or composting – Bandhwari has instead turned into a colossal dump of unsegregated trash.

Joginder, a resident of the nearby Mangar village and a supervisor at the landfill, points to the growing environmental disaster unfolding just 35 kilometres away from Delhi. “Yes, this landfill helps us earn, but should that be put above our health?” he asks.

Joginder, a supervisor at the Bandhwari landfill and a resident of Mangar village. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.

The stench of decay clings to the air, symbolising the long-standing negligence that characterises the state’s approach to waste management.

The Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0, launched in 2021 with the ambitious promise to make India’s cities garbage-free, is yet another example of the gap between political rhetoric and ground realities. The mission aimed to process legacy waste and eradicate the “mountains of garbage” that blight cities like Delhi. The government even promised a dashboard to track progress across 2,200 landfill sites.

Yet, the data on the Mission’s website reveals a glaring gap: of the 2,421 dumpsites identified with over 1,000 tonnes of legacy waste, remediation is complete at only 475 sites and ongoing at 1,235, while a staggering 711 sites remain untouched.

At the heart of the Bandhwari crisis is the failure to implement waste segregation at source. Since 2010, Bandhwari has received over 1,600 tonnes of mixed waste daily, but only a small portion of this is processed.

A 2017 tripartite agreement between the Haryana government, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) and Eco Green Recycling Pvt Ltd was meant to improve waste management, but the company’s failure to fulfil its obligations has led to the continued dumping of unprocessed waste.

Leachate is collected from the bottom of the Bandhwari landfill. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.

By September 2024, the MCG revealed to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that 85% of Gurugram’s waste remained unsegregated, while Faridabad’s municipal corporation said 80% of Faridabad’s waste remained unsegregated, overwhelming the landfill’s capacity.

This state of neglect mirrors what is happening in Bhalswa, where the informal labour of waste-pickers keeps the city’s waste problem at bay, but at a tremendous human cost.

Migrants from rural West Bengal, the waste-pickers live in makeshift homes made from scrap materials, with their children often forced to work alongside them due to a lack of alternatives. These workers are invisible to the state, despite the essential role they play in managing the city’s waste. There are no formal contracts, no rights, no protections and no fixed incomes.

As scholar Barbara Harris-White aptly describes, such informal spaces are “persistently embedded in social institutions such as caste, ethnicity, religion, space and locality”. In Bhalswa, this informality is not a natural consequence of the nature of waste-picking work, but a deliberate choice by the state to keep these workers at the margins.

The state’s selective application of regulation is most evident in its handling of Eco Green, the company responsible for waste management and segregation at Bandhwari. Despite Eco Green’s repeated failures, it continued to operate for years without accountability, leading to an environmental and public health disaster.

Leachate from the Bandhwari landfill flows directly into the Aravalli jungle. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.

The MCG finally terminated Eco Green’s contract in June 2024, but the damage has already been done. The unchecked dumping of unsegregated waste has contaminated the soil and water, with toxic leachate seeping into the Aravalli hills. This pollution, which has been occurring for years, is poisoning the land and water that local communities depend on for survival.

In Bandhwari, villagers like Joginder are technically part of the formal waste management network, but their position is precarious. Their proximity to government officials and promises of interventions, such as RO systems to mitigate groundwater contamination, offers a veneer of state involvement. However, these solutions only increase the financial burden on the workers.

The Haryana State Pollution Control Board revealed in May 2024 to the NGT that nearly all locations around Bandhwari showed groundwater contamination levels exceeding safety parameters. Yet just two months prior, the MCG declared the water ‘safe’ for consumption, dismissing the concerns of villagers, who reported a “faint rotten smell” in the water near the sacred Bani forest.

The Jal Jeevan Mission, which declared 100% water connectivity in rural Haryana, has failed to address the actual quality of water in these areas. Villagers are forced to rely on RO systems, which frequently break down, or purchase 20-litre water cans, adding to their already mounting expenses.

The environmental impact assessments (EIAs) meant to assess such impacts have proven to be little more than bureaucratic formalities. The MCG filed the EIA for Bandhwari’s proposed solid waste processing unit in 2018, but villagers were not properly informed of the public hearing where the EIA was to be discussed, a crucial part of the process.

Despite the MCG’s assurances during the public hearing that leachate treatment would be prioritised, a plan remained unfinalised as of December 2023. Additionally, the air pollution control devices promised by the MCG were never introduced.

Segregation can mitigate the load of waste that is dumped in legacy landfills; however, waste-pickers are marginalised by a system that refuses to formalise their labour. They are denied the protections and rights that would come with the formal recognition of their work, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by private contractors and intermediaries. The state’s refusal to regulate waste-picking as an industry has ensured that these workers remain trapped in a cycle of poverty and precariousness, even as they perform the essential task of waste segregation.

Therefore, within waste management, mountains of waste are not just collateral damage from urban development; they are the direct result of the state’s mismanagement and deliberate creation of informality. This informality is not simply the absence of state regulation but a condition actively produced by the state.

Shredded waste dumped near Dhauj village. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.

In both Bhalswa and Bandhwari, we see how the state creates informal spaces, enabling certain actors – such as Eco Green in Bandhwari – to operate with impunity, while leaving vulnerable communities to fend for themselves, even as they play a critical role in managing the city’s waste in places like Bhalswa. The state’s fixation on controlling certain sectors while allowing others to remain informal reveals a broader political choice – one that prioritises urban aesthetics and the interests of the powerful over human lives and environmental sustainability.

For communities living near landfills, the consequences of this neglect are devastating. In Bandhwari, residents report a sharp rise in illnesses, with healthcare costs tripling in recent years. Some families say every visit to the doctor costs Rs 1,000, a significant burden for families already struggling to make ends meet. The toxic environment created by the landfill has turned their homes into hazardous spaces, where the air they breathe and the water they drink pose constant threats to their health.

The NGT levied a Rs 100 crore fine on the Haryana government in 2023 for its failure to address legacy waste at Bandhwari, but little progress has been made since. The Bandhwari landfill stands as a stark reminder of the widening gap between government promises and ground realities. The deadline to clear the site has been set for December 2024, but for the residents of Mangar and Dhauj near the landfill, who have witnessed decades of broken promises, such deadlines carry little weight.

In recent months, villagers have reported that shredded waste from the landfill is being quietly diverted and illegally dumped on the outskirts of their villages, worsening their living conditions.

Until the state recognises the humanity of those living on the margins – those who bear the brunt of urban neglect – the mountains of garbage that define our cities will continue to grow, both in physical and metaphorical terms.

Shubhangi Derhgawen is a freelance journalist and a researcher with the Visual Storyboard Team of the Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES), O.P. Jindal Global University. Deepanshu Mohan is a professor of economics, Dean, IDEAS, and Director, CNES. He is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and an academic visiting fellow to AMES, University of Oxford.

Why Waste Pickers’ Contribution to Urban Waste Management Needs to Be Recognised

Formalising and integrating waste pickers into municipal waste management system is not only a matter of social justice but also environmental necessity.

Waste pickers navigate through the landscape of waste generation, segregation, and recycling, playing a crucial role in mitigating the environmental impact of our consumption patterns. On World Environment Day this year, the global community – including governments, NGOs, and environmental activists – is rallying around a critical imperative: land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience.

Under the resonant slogan “Our land. Our future” the campaign emphasises on the urgency of safeguarding our planet’s land resources for generations to come. In this context, it becomes imperative to spotlight the often overlooked yet indispensable contribution of waste pickers to environmental sustainability. Waste pickers are the backbone of urban waste management – segregating and recycling waste to significantly reduce the burden on landfills, mitigation pollution and keeping the city clean. 

Urban centres and metropolitan cities face a daunting challenge of waste generation due to its burgeoning population and rapid urbanisation. Cities generate a staggering amount of solid waste daily, which poses significant environmental and health hazards if not managed effectively. The waste eventually finds its way to the ever expanding landfills. The national capital, with a population of 35 million, generates approximately 11,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste daily, the highest among Indian cities.

According to government data, over half of this waste ends up in landfills. Further, from 2018-19 to 2021-22, Delhi’s hazardous waste production surged fourfold, reaching nearly 24,000 metric tonnes in 2021-22, significantly exceeding the authorized 3,406 metric tonnes as recorded by the National Inventory on Hazardous Waste.

One of the crucial steps in solid waste management is segregation at the source, which involves separating recyclable materials from the waste. Waste pickers play a vital role in this process, scouring through waste to retrieve valuable materials such as plastic, paper, and metal for recycling. In Delhi, sources indicate that waste pickers in Delhi’s informal economy recycle approximately 20-25% of the 10,000 metric tonnes of waste generated daily. Their meticulous efforts not only reduce the burden on landfills but also contribute to resource conservation and energy savings.

By educating communities about the importance of waste segregation and facilitating the segregation at source, waste pickers help optimise the efficiency of waste collection and processing systems. This, in turn, enhances resource recovery, minimises environmental pollution, and fosters a culture of responsible waste management.

Also read: ‘If Only the Government Worked as Hard as Waste Pickers’

Our cities are littered with ever growing landfills but which are also sources of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Waste pickers help mitigate these emissions by reducing the organic content ending up landfills. Moreover, by salvaging materials that would otherwise be burnt, waste pickers help mitigate air pollution and its associated health impacts. They play a vital role in diverting this organic waste so it can be converted it into valuable compost. This also reduces the need for costly waste disposal. 

In the digital age, electronic waste (e-waste) has emerged as a major environmental concern due to its toxic components and improper disposal practices. Waste pickers play a crucial role in the informal recycling of e-waste by extracting metals and plastics for recycling. This prevents environmental contamination and health hazards associated with improper e-waste disposal, while also conserving valuable resources. India generates more than two million tons of e-waste annually and also imports undisclosed amounts of e-waste from other countries around the world. The majority of India’s e- waste is processed by a widely distributed network of workers in the informal economy who collect, dismantle, and recycle it. 

All these activities contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions through various mechanisms. By promoting recycling and composting, waste pickers help conserve energy and raw materials that would otherwise be consumed in the production of new goods. Additionally, their efforts in waste reduction and methane emission mitigation contribute to overall carbon footprint reduction, aligning with global efforts to combat climate change. By promoting composting initiatives and facilitating the collection of organic waste, waste pickers also contribute to soil health, agricultural productivity, and carbon sequestration.

While waste pickers’ earnings may be modest, their contributions yield significant savings for the city in terms of waste management costs. On an average, a waste picker collects about 60–90 kg of waste per day, working for about 8–10 hours (CSE, 2021). Their contributions are vital in reducing municipal costs and promoting economic efficiency. Recycling materials such as plastic, paper, glass, and metal reduces the need for raw material extraction and manufacturing processes, which are often resource-intensive and costly. By reintroducing these materials into the production cycle, waste pickers facilitate resource conservation and promote a more sustainable and circular economy. 

Waste picking provides livelihood opportunities to marginalised individuals, particularly migrants from rural areas, who lack access to formal employment. It is one of the few options available for the poor and can also promote social inclusion and economic empowerment within communities.

On World Environment Day, as we reflect on the state of our planet and the urgent need for environmental action, it is essential to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of waste pickers. They work tirelessly on the frontline of environmental sustainability, yet their efforts often go unnoticed and unappreciated. In a world where linear consumption patterns and wasteful disposal practices threaten the health of our ecosystems, waste pickers embody the spirit of resilience and resourcefulness. 

The current waste management system often overlooks the contributions of waste pickers. Formalising and integrating them into municipal waste management frameworks is not only a matter of social justice but also environmental necessity. By providing waste pickers with recognition, support, and access to essential resources and services, we can harness their expertise and to build a more sustainable and equitable waste management system.

As we celebrate World Environment Day, let us pledge to elevate the status of waste pickers, recognise their vital role in protecting the environment, and work towards building a more sustainable and inclusive future for all. By amplifying the voices of waste pickers and advocating for their rights and dignity, we can create a world where environmental stewardship is truly inclusive and equitable. It’s time to stand in solidarity with waste pickers and commit to building a waste management system that values their contributions, respects their humanity, and safeguards the health of our planet for generations to come.

Shalini Sinha is the country representative of WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing), a global research-policy network that seeks to improve the status of the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy.

Rituraj Pegu is an urban researcher and is coordinator for the Delhi Roundtable on Solid Waste Management

Kochi Landfill Fire Doused, but Proper Waste Management Remains a Chimera

The Brahmapuram fire should not be seen as an exception but rather as a periodic occurrence that represents the toxicity of improper management activities and government neglect.

The Brahmapuram blaze which enveloped Kochi in smoke tells the disastrous story of Kerala’s massive, technologically-driven, centralised waste management system. Since its commencement in 2007, covering a sprawling 110-acre area, the dump yard in its ‘waste-to-energy’ avatar has been at the centre of controversy as a problematic site of conflicting interests – mismanagement, corruption, environmental degradation and most of all, the people’s protests. In the process, the well-established and successful model of local self-government in solid waste management has been displaced.

The Cochi Corporation has been fined Rs 100 crore by the National Green Tribunal for alleged negligence that led to a massive fire in Brahmapuram. But the fire in the Municipal Solid Waste Management dumpsite should not be seen as an exception but rather as a periodic occurrence that represents the toxicity of improper management activities and government neglect.

Brahmapuram, a parcel of waterlogged marshy land in the catchment area of Kadambrayar, was turned into a landfill site in 2007. While there were protests against the decision, it was pushed through amid heavy police protection.

The first fire at the landfill broke out in 2013 and took a six-hour marathon effort to extinguish. The second, in 2019, was harder to extinguish and proved detrimental to the environment and human health. Seven major fires broke out sporadically in Brahmapuram between 2018 and 2020. It appears there is potential for a catastrophe at any time.

The latest fire on March 2 reached a massive scale, and nobody is quite sure if it was man-made or natural – even the Kerala high court raised this question. This question is relevant to procedure and legality but has its limitations when it comes to grasping the nuances. Even if nobody lit the match, incidents of fire in dump yards are anthropocentric. It is thoroughly a man-made disaster, nurtured by a collusive nexus between the state, the Cochi Corporation, and various private sector stakeholder groups with interests in the waste economy.

One thing is clear, though: the hazardous smoke has enveloped Kochi in dense clouds, and to some extent, the neighbouring Alappuzha district. Many residents have reported symptoms of discomfort. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, ever-visible during the COVID-19 crisis, has seemingly disappeared in the thick of the clouds. The state government is trying to sweep the fire incident under the rug, calling the reaction panic-driven and out of proportion.

The fire tells the tale of Brahmapuram

The Brahamapuram Municipal Solid Waste Management Plant, operated by the Cochi Corporation, is spread across 70 acres of land and is said to have accumulated approximately 6 lack tonnes of solid garbage as legacy waste in its landfill. Without an official certificate of approval from the Pollution Control Board, 70-80% of the garbage that gets there is unsegregated. An indiscriminate mix-up of biodegradable and non-biodegradable disposal comprises compostable, recyclable, and inert waste alike, which includes even inflammable scraps.

As we have seen in the management of waste yards everywhere in India, the Brahmapuram landfill is unscientifically hazardous in its functioning. Its operating requirements lack proper plans to minimise potential negative environmental impacts and the risks posed to humans. The Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change’s stipulated rules of the Solid Waste Management Guidelines 2016 that only non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, and non-combustible wastes should be allowed to come to the landfill. But these guidelines have been violated, resulting in a massive pile-up of unsegregated waste.

To date, there is no clue about what triggered the colossal fire in the landfill earlier this month. The opposition claims the fire was deliberately started, citing their own ‘political’ reasons. Maybe there’s a possibility. Yet, there is also a possibility of fires starting spontaneously since moist putrescible materials beneath the uneven dumps would decompose and release the extremely combustible methane gas. These landfill gases have the potential to ignite an uncontrollable blaze on the vast piles of waste during the summer. Many scattered ignition points, the impossibility of pumping water non-stop, and the risk factor of climbing the heap make extinguishing a fire a Herculean task. Though the fire was doused, the smoke has literally lingered, like question marks in the air.

Dr C.N. Manoj, an environmental campaigner and expert in waste management, says waste generated from human activities is burnt in piles of rubbish everywhere. “This results in the emission of hundreds of hazardous toxins like carbon monoxide, dioxide, and furan. Apart from an increase in greenhouse gases, these pollutants increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases,” he said.

Manoj says the Haritha Keralam [Green Kerala] Mission, which is chaired by the chief minister, also warns the people about the imminent danger. “Burning municipal solid trash in the open would have a negative long-term impact on health. Toxicants such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and polycyclic organic matter (POMs) are released during a fire. Many people, including fire and rescue personnel, have sought treatment for symptomatic discomfort caused by inhaling the toxic smoke, he says.

“The fact that dense, colourless and odourless pollutants such as dioxin and furan could infiltrate into the soil is of major concern. This could result in severe health issues if it enters the blood through inhalation. Hence, what happened in Kochi is too serious a concern for us,” Manoj says.

“About 70-75% of all waste is organic and can be converted to manure or biogas. Unfortunately, we have a weak management mechanism. That is where the problem is,” said T.V. Ramachandra, professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, “If you burn plastics, paper and wood, there will be many dioxins, which can be highly toxic and can cause several serious health issues, including cancer. Heavy metals and nitrates can seep into the water and cause kidney failures,” Ramachandra explained to the Hindu BusinessLine.

Also Read: Landfill Fires Just The Tip of the Iceberg; There’s More About Dumpyards to Discuss

Kerala moves forward by going back

As the toxic effects of landfills become evident, Kerala has started to witness mass mobilisations against the 13 centralised solid waste plants from 2012 and onwards. The protests began as spontaneous outbursts of people’s discontent, with locals demonstrating against indiscriminate dumps in Vilappilsala, Lalur and Njeliyanparambu. This forced the government to shift its policy of solid waste management towards a decentralised system instead of a centralised one that creates mountains of waste.

In 2014, Kerala set an example for the world by promoting a kind of circular economy with an emphasis on source segregation and waste treatment in a decentralised manner. And in order to accomplish that, organised work has been done by the Shuchitwa Mission, the Clean Kerala Company, and the Haritha Kerala Mission. The treatment of biodegradables is being promoted at the waste generator’s level (households, institutions and communities). A fragmented collection system involving Harithakarmasena and Clean Kerala Company is deployed to collect and recycle non-biodegradables.

Hazardous trash like plastic, rubber, glass, tubes and electronic waste is segregated and collected together to be processed and treated separately. In spite of many limitations, a good job has been done by a total of 941 gram panchayats, 87 municipalities, and six corporations in decentralised waste management in Kerala. And after an official evaluation, 789 local bodies, which include 718 gram panchyats, 72 municipalities, and 3 corporations, received the ‘cleanliness tag‘ in 2020 for their good work.

Even after achieving all that, the LDF government has gone back to its old, perilous ways – again adopting the unsustainable model of centralised waste management. The present Brahmapuram imbroglio should also be seen as the story of a walk back by the LDF government from the little success it achieved in removing the accumulating junk.

Shibu Shanmughom and A.K. Shiburaj are independent journalists and researchers from Kerala.

Facilitating Recycling Should Not Come at a Cost – But It Does

Every garbage dump has the words Swachh Bharat Mission painted on it in bold letters, and yet, the policies to enable this suggest the opposite. The price of recycling is proving expensive for the waste picker community, citizens and the environment. 

Kameen Khan got the bad news on a day like any other, over a call in the afternoon from one of his regular buyers. They said they were going to drop the rates and hung up. It wasn’t so much a conversation as a declaration. Kameen put the phone down and did what he had to. He told the others about the new rates, faced the backlash, the complaining, the protests and then got back to work, sorting through waste.

“GST has destroyed incomes in this area,” Sheikh Akbar says. Akbar founded Basti Suraksha Manch (BSM), a de facto union to help waste workers in Delhi in 2019. He lives in New Seemapuri, near Dilshad Garden. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor with his wife and two kids. The building inches upwards, seemingly without any grounding – a vantage point that allows him a view of not just the road where waste segregation happens but also the apartments where all the waste comes from. “No one values waste like we do. But at least we could make a living from it. Now, this tug of war between our buyers and our sellers has ruined us.”

The reason for this is simple. Before GST, there was no tax on scrap materials – e-waste and metals carried a 6% VAT. Once the new rules were implemented in 2017, all categories of scrap are now taxed between 12-18%. Large-scale dealers buying segregated scrap from waste pickers have been forced to bear the brunt of this taxation, and have – in classic trickle-down economics – transferred its effects onto their immediate providers, the waste pickers.

Waste workers are responsible not just for collection but also segregation of waste, with their jobs under increased threat because of policies that have privatised the industry. Photo: Vaibhav Raghunandan

“Earlier, we got Rs 14 per kg for paper,” Akbar says. “But after GST, it has dropped by at least Rs 2.” Inevitably, waste pickers have been forced to offer lesser rates to those they take scrap from, who, in turn, have decided they are better off throwing it away in a dump, where it lies unsegregated before an MCD-authorised private company takes it away. These trucks work in silos, often taking away the daily bread waste workers relied on. Since most of the waste in it is unsegregated, it ends up in landfills. Follow the chain and the fallout becomes clear for all to see. Higher GST leads to less recycling. Unsegregated waste piles up in landfills. Landfills damage the environment.

“Now, slowly, even our access to the landfills has been restricted,” Kalu complains. “Earlier we could go there and gather some waste, bring it back, segregate it and sell it. But with buyers giving us lower prices on scrap, basically to protect their margins and the numerous restrictions the companies put… it’s become a hopeless situation.”

Largely reliant on incentivising – like everything else in the world – waste, this informal sector has shrunk to the point of being rendered meaningless. Every garbage dump has the words “Swachh Bharat Mission” painted on it in bold letters, and yet, the policies to enable this suggest the opposite. Facilitating recycling shouldn’t come at a cost, and yet now, it does.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) allows private companies to operate waste collection trucks in localities. A truck worth of waste goes for about Rs 100 but because it’s unsegregated, a huge amount goes into landfills. Photo: Vaibhav Raghunandan

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While GST has caused a severe economic fallout among those working in the sector, bigger villains have emerged from elsewhere. With waste workers forced out of work during COVID-19 – a lack of access, police violence and the typical class segregation that was inherently part of the lockdowns – collecting trash from localities fell on the MCD trucks, leased out to private companies. The trucks took over areas waste workers catered to. They didn’t go door-to-door and instead relied on residents dumping their waste themselves. Upon reopening, they forced the original service providers out, only to offer them a way back in – via employment at a meagre wage.

According to Akbar’s estimates, 3.5 lakh waste pickers in Delhi are responsible for managing 43% of Delhi’s waste. With door-to-door waste picking slowly trickling away, their incomes have reduced and so has the waste that ends up in the recycler. Many waste workers, Akbar says, have been forced into finding other jobs.

“We have seen this ourselves. Right here,” he says, waving his arm to show the area around Seemapuri masjid, a road which also serves as a segregation, collection and distribution point. “We used to have so many more people working. Now, the men are mostly going and standing in labour lines early in the morning, and the women turning to look for work in domestic settings.”

The loss of livelihood has come at a time when inflation has peaked. The pandemic helped the 1% make their bungalows bigger, even as large sections of society felt the pressures of sustenance. From vegetables to flour, rice and even oil, prices have rocketed high, often changing not just consumption patterns but also entire cultures and behaviours.

“Everyone in this area,” Akbar says, “is a migrant worker. Most of them have a Bengal connection. Fish, or any protein, was anyway a luxury. Then, during the pandemic, even rice became something that only came as handouts. Where earlier cooking was mostly done in mustard oil, families have shifted to refined oil. Again, this is the GST effect. An increased tax has increased the price, and shifted the onus on the customer. We always suffer.”

Even as infrastructure development continues unabated across the country, for the homeless, the impoverished and the destitute, roads and footpaths are home. Photo: Vaibhav Raghunandan

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The MCD election in December last year yielded a shift in power for the first time in 15 years, with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) taking control of the city’s civic service providers for the first time ever. The result prompted celebrations across the city, but at the places that truly feel its impact, the reaction has been muted and restrained.

“Politicians don’t care,” Shabbir says. “They come, ask for their votes, fold their hands, wave at us and go away. We’ll only see them next when the cycle ends and it’s time to cast votes again.”

Delhi’s waste was a huge point of contention in the lead-up to the elections itself, with AAP using the mismanagement of the city’s waste, and the lack of care given to its sanitation workers as a point of attack on the incumbent BJP. Upon their election, the party’s five-year plan lists the management of solid waste as a key part of the agenda, vowing to “clear the three garbage mountains [Bhalswa, Ghazipur, and Okhla],” in the city. How it endeavours to do this has passed without discussion.

Also Read | Bachaikari of Bhalswa: Narratives of Waste Pickers from a Delhi Landfill

The math is baffling. A Delhi Pollution Control Committee report says Delhi generates 11,000 tonnes of solid waste every day. Of this, 6,000 tonnes (21.6 lakh tonnes a year) end up at the three landfills in the city. According to government data, less than a fifth of the waste at these sites has been processed since the initiation of the 2019 project to flatten them.

Waste workers are responsible not just for collection but also segregation of waste, with their jobs under increased threat because of policies that have privatised industry. Photo: Vaibhav Raghunandan

Akbar says no technology or innovation can help flatten them in the way old-school waste workers can. Segregation and recycling are the only realistic ways to tackle waste. Reducing consumption is radical, politically fraught and perhaps impossible to work within current consumer-capitalist economic models. Policies have to rethink the way they deal with waste and those that work in the sector entirely. “You have to make the profession viable,” he says. “You can put as many bans as you want, but the landfills won’t stop growing. You aren’t after all banning the production of plastic, just the consumption of it. Without waste workers, these landfills will only grow bigger. And the city’s problems with it.”

Vaibhav Raghunandan is a photographer, journalist and designer. This story has been written as part of an assignment for Oxfam India’s Inequality Campaign. 

Landfill Fires Just The Tip of the Iceberg; There’s More About Dumpyards to Discuss

Landfill fires are one of the more visible consequences of poor waste management; there are many others, with consequences for society, ecology and environmental justice. 

Landfill fires are becoming a big challenge for India’s urban civic bodies. In late April 2022, fires broke out in landfills in Chennai, Delhi and Chandigarh. Since 2015, the number of landfill fires in metropolitan cities has surged across India. Waste accumulation in Delhi and Bangalore has risen dramatically, by 1,850% and 2,175%, respectively, between 1999 and 2016. This is notable because more waste in a landfill entails a bigger fire, and probably a bigger chance of catching fire in the first place depending on the composition of the trash. Landfill fires are also becoming more common in cities where waste generation is accelerating, like Chennai.

Landfill fires are one of the more visible consequences of poor waste management; there are many others, with consequences for society, ecology and environmental justice. 

Consider the Mandur landfill near Bengaluru, which caught media attention in 2014 when people protested demanding a ban on waste dumping. I was 12 years old at the time and lived in an environmentally conscious community in the city. In solidarity with the people affected by the waste at the landfill, we began segregating our waste at source and reduced the use of single-use plastics. The city municipal corporation also launched awareness campaigns for all residents to adopt similar measures, and soon after made it policy. The authorities stopped dumping waste at the Mandur landfill in December 2014, while the city banned single-use plastics and mandated waste segregation at the source in Bengaluru in 2017.

As a result, the Mandur problem didn’t get any worse – but there is more.

The waste pile-up at the landfill had degraded the health, finances and social lives of the residents of Mandur village. The landfill here is close to water bodies that were reservoirs for the people, and leachate from the dump had contaminated them. In 2020, the water was highly basic, had a high concentration of dissolved ions and of total dissolved solids. The site has also become a breeding ground for flies that then sit on  food and spread disease. Many of the people in Mandur had no option but to eat such food and drink such water, leading to frequent disease outbreaks. Fumes from the dump also pollute the air, causing respiratory ailments

When the people get sick, they can’t work. When their income drops, they have less – if anything – to spend on clinic visits and bottled water. Farming has been one of the least affected livelihoods in Mandur, but local farmers have reported a dip in harvest coinciding with the landfill’s use. 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, parents and their children in Mandur were wary of sending the latter to school, for fear of exposing them to some ailment or other. This obviously bodes more social and financial challenges in future. 

In effect, the dumping of waste in Mandur has led to damages that the people will experience for several years to come. 

I moved to Ahmedabad in 2016, where I noted many similarities to people’s habits in Bengaluru before 2014. This city has sent a lot of its municipal and industrial waste to the Pirana landfill for 35 years. In 2002, political parties and civic groups resettled people displaced by the riots to areas around Pirana. One of them is Citizen Nagar. Today, its residents suffer through poor health thanks to their proximity to the landfill, have little access to basic essentials, including potable water, and have low incomes.

But for all these similarities, there are two ways in which Mandur and Pirana differ. First, the land rights of the people of Citizen Nagar are uncertain. None of the people here own any part of the land; it belongs to the relief committee of the Kerala Muslim League. Even their status as ‘permanent residents’ is unclear. Second, the site of the settlement is a wetland. Between 2003 and 2020, the population rose from 40 families to 120, which in turn increased the pressure on local ecosystems.

Such long-term fallouts from landfills, like an octopus sprouting new and longer tentacles, have a national consequence as well: they could compromise India’s ability to achieve some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Achieving the SDGs is an important component of inter- and intra-generational equity. The stories of the people of Mandur and Pirana in particular ask important questions about India’s progress towards SDGs 11 and 15. SDG 11 is to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”; SDG 15 is to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. It’s important that we act quickly and effectively, with minimal negative impact, so that fallouts like those in Mandur do not become frequent occurrences we see in the headlines on a regular basis.

The author thanks Dr. John Matthew and Dr. Kalpita Bhar Paul for their feedback and comments.

A Day in the Life of India’s E-Waste Workers

Taking apart old electronics means battling suffocating heat and hazardous chemicals with little protection.

New Delhi: As dawn breaks, hundreds of men move in and out of the congested alleys of Seelampur, pulling carts and driving dump trucks loaded with discarded cellphones, computers, air conditioners, and almost any other electronic waste imaginable. Located on the outskirts of New Delhi, Seelampur is the country’s largest market dedicated to dismantling old tech, and it’s home to an estimated 50,000 men, women, and children whose livelihoods depend on e-waste.

Inside the labyrinth of alleys, hundreds of small establishments are packed with different electronic gadgets, which workers take apart mostly with their bare hands, a hammer, and pliers, hoping to extract precious metals like gold, silver, and tin – or any other useful item. Children move through the nooks and corners of the market with plastic bags on their shoulders, collecting potentially useful scraps among the e-waste leftovers piled in front of doorways.

Aftab, 15, is one of them. He waits patiently along with four or five other children in the scorching heat to collect the e-waste leftovers, things like cellphone displays and broken batteries. (This year, Delhi recorded its hottest June in three years, with average maximum temperatures registering around 40°C Celsius.) “I mostly used to start my day before sunrise to avoid this unbearable temperature, but that was when I collected copper pipes. Since they were heavy, my shoulder used to lock and started to hurt,” said Aftab, wiping the sweat from his face. “Now I prefer to collect cellphone leftovers like cameras, electronic chips, and keypads, which are easy to carry but are less profitable and available mostly during the daytime.”

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The world dumped a record of 53.6 million tons of e-waste in 2019, out of which just 17.4% was recycled, according to the 2020 Global E-waste Monitor. India, for its part, produced 3.2 million metric tons of e-waste – much of which ended up in Seelampur. India also serves as a dumping ground for e-waste from other countries, like the US, through a “complex web of transshipment ports.” A 2017 paper in the Journal of Health and Pollution “estimated that around 50,000 metric tons of e-waste is being imported into India every year.”

That waste fills Seelampur’s busy streets, where establishments specialise in different types of e-waste recycling and disposal – for example, shops focused on cellphones home in on motherboards and batteries, which are more valuable and can be sold to other recycling units. Lacking adequate space and labour force, they throw out other parts, which are collected by people like Aftab, who then sell the scraps in the local market at a cheaper price.

Also read: In Photos: Delhi’s Waste Pickers Reel Under Double Whammy of Pandemic, Privatisation

Most of the people who make a living off e-waste live around Seelampur. Aftab lives with his family of five in a tin shed along one side of an open drainage canal, which is filled with stinky, murky water and runs through the market. The oldest of his siblings, Aftab started working with his mother at the age of eight, collecting pieces of wire and then burning them to extract pieces of copper. His mother was forced to stop working after hazardous smoke produced from the burning made her sick several times.

“To be honest, who likes to work here? But we are underprivileged and have no other choice. Every morning I stand in a long queue to fetch a single bucket of drinking water. I consider myself lucky if I am able to get two buckets, and such small things give me happiness, which is normal for others who are not leading the same lifestyle as we do,” said Aftab. “While working I get minor injuries, but I neglect them. If one of us stops working for a day we won’t be able to make ends meet.”

As soon as the leftover cellphone scraps are thrown out, young children waiting outside rush forward, pulling each other back to get the best of it. Aftab collects whatever possible with his bare hands and runs away. Sitting behind a car near the drainage canal, he opens his plastic bag to look at what he collected.

“It’s a rat race here and you need to be very quick in order to survive. On an average day, I earn around Rs 50 to 170 [60 cents to $2.15], and it all depends on what I find,” Aftab said. He likes the privacy of the drainage canal to go over his findings. But at times, the stink is suffocating. “It makes me wonder what it’s like to breathe in the fresh air,” he said.

On a day in mid-June, Aftab was pleased with what he collected. “It was a lucky day, as I found some useful metals,” he said, smiling as he set off toward a snack cart. “Now I can treat myself with a samosa and get some rest.”

One kg of empty milk packets could be sold by ragpickers for Rs 20; now the price has halved to Rs 10. Credit: Reuters

India also serves as a dumping ground for e-waste from other countries, like the US, through a “complex web of transshipment ports.”  Credit: Reuters

In May, India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change released a draft of additional rules for e-waste (and opened the proposal to public comment). If adopted, the rules would set up a new framework to push recycling toward the formal sector (though critics say it could “exacerbate mismanagement”).

These rules are the most recent in a series of efforts to manage the country’s e-waste, which began in 2011 with a legislation “mandating that only authorised dismantlers and recyclers collect e-waste,” according to the 2020 Global E-waste Monitor. A new set of rules in 2016 further emphasised on producer responsibility and set collection targets. And while India is the only country in Southern Asia with such rules, the 2020 report notes, enforcement is a major challenge, due to “the lack of proper collection and logistics infrastructure, limited awareness of consumers on the hazards of improper disposal of e-waste, the lack of standards for collection, dismantling of e-waste and treatment of it, and an inefficient and tedious reporting process.” Places like Seelampur, where around 80% of dumped electronic gadgets are recycled, are preferred over formal sectors, thanks to the cheap availability of recyclers and dismantling costs.

Just a few meters away from the main road that leads to the market, Rashim, 30, is clearing the road for his van, filled with discarded cellphone chips and motherboards. Rashim came to Seelampur from Meerut, a city outside of Delhi, in 2011. He started as a labourer, unloading scraps throughout the market, and he now runs a business dealing with discarded cellphones.

Also read: Wasted Lives: The Tragedy of India’s ‘Safai Mitra’

“My journey in Seelampur has been full of ups and downs, but at the same time, God has been kind to me. When I came here I never thought I would own a shop, but everything is possible if one works hard. I only deal with discarded cellphones as they are easy to dismantle and don’t cause many health hazards,” said Rashim, sitting on a chair inside his shop, where he employs three people. His employees extract motherboards and other chips from cellphones and send them for further processing. “I earn around Rs 1,000 to 1,500 [$12 to $15] on a normal day, and that’s not sufficient when you have a family of six and other responsibilities,” he said.

At Rashim’s shop, a worker looks for broken motherboards that can’t be sent for further processing. Without protective gear, he dips them in a beaker filled with acid, hoping to extract copper, silver, or other metals that can be sold. Soon after, the small shop fills with clouds of white smoke. “No doubt we are at constant risk here, but what other option do we have?” says Rashim, covering his nose and mouth with a piece of cloth.“I suffer from breathing issues at this young age, but I can’t stop working because I have a family to look after. We need high-end safety gear to deal with this kind of work, but it’s way out of our budget.” Wearing a simple mask, he said, would make breathing more difficult in the suffocating heat.

Rashim, who is fond of thriller TV shows, watches a local Indian serial on his smartphone while his oldest son, a young teenager, shows up with a tiffin, or lunchbox. Rashim makes sure his son doesn’t play or touch anything at the shop, buys him candies, and then quickly sends him home. “I get nightmares of my children doing the same job – that’s why I don’t let them spend much time here,” Rashim explains, clearing a small plastic table for lunch. “I pray every day that they don’t land in this place.”

Indeed, workers’ constant contact with metals, acid, and other dangerous substances shapes their health and living conditions.

Taj, a doctor popular in the area, has been working in Seelampur for ten years. Each year, he said, things get worse. “Until the last few years, I used to see five to 12 patients in a day, now they have risen to 20 or 30,” he said. Most of the cases, he explained, are related to skin infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Taj cited a lack of awareness among e-waste workers about the causes of these health issues. “They burn wires, plastics, and parts of regular appliances, and dealing with hazardous chemicals is the cause of growing COPD cases in the area,” he said. “I see cases of small children with COPD and breathing issues, which would indefinitely affect their lifespan, and it’s really worrying.”

This piece was originally published on Future Tense, a partnership between Slate magazine, Arizona State University, and New America.

Rajasthan: RSS Leader’s Refusal to Join Probe Into Rs 20 Crore Bribery Case Sparks Row

The ACB had sent two notices to Nimbaram’s residence, summoning him for interrogation. But the RSS leader didn’t respond to them. The agency plans to take the legal route soon.

Jaipur: A senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak has not been responding to summons issued by the Anti-Corruption Bureau for an investigation into a Rs 20 crore bribery case in Rajasthan.

On June 10, a viral video clip showed Nimbaram, regional head of the RSS, allegedly involved in a discussion in which a bribe deal was being negotiated in lieu of the release of pending payment to BVG, a firm engaged in the door-to-door collection of garbage in Jaipur. In one of those videos, Rajaram Gurjar, husband of suspended Jaipur Greater Municipal Corporation mayor and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Somya Gurjar, was seen to be in talks with a BVG representative, Omkar Sapre, asking for a 10% commission in lieu of clearing outstanding bills of Rs 276 crore.

On the basis of the video, the Rajasthan Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) booked four people involved in the alleged bribery case. On June 29, it arrested Gurjar and Sapre. On August 27, it filed a chargesheet against them. However, the investigation against the RSS leader and another person is pending.

The ACB had sent two notices to Nimbaram’s residence, summoning him for interrogation. However, the RSS leader didn’t respond. The investigation officer (IO) will send a fresh notice soon.

“The IO sent two notices to Nimbaram’s residence for interrogation under section of CrPC 160, but the notices could not be served. The agency will repeat this practice. If this time also the notice is not served, then the ACB will take a warrant from the court,” a senior officer of the ACB confirmed to The Wire.

Before registering a first information report in the case, the video clip was sent to the state Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for examination. “It did not have the ability to conduct tests on certain parameters, so the clip was sent to an FSL in another state. After receiving confirmation from two laboratories that it was not a doctored video, the ACB has registered a case under 120B of the IPC and relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act and arrested two accused,” Bhagwan Lal Soni, ACB director-general said.

Also read: Is Crime Rising in Rajasthan?

Congress-BJP tussle

The issue has also ignited a Congress-BJP row in the state. The ruling Congress has demanded that the RSS leader be arrested soon. “We demand that Nimbaram should be arrested without any delay. Everyone has seen the video in which a top RSS functionary was seen while talks were held for the release of payment to the garbage collection company. Wherever RSS gets a chance, they get engrossed in corruption and sit in hiding when a case is registered. It is in their nature to get immersed in corruption. Nimbaram should come forward. Hiding in Lucknow or Delhi will not work,” Govind Singh Dotasra, Rajasthan Congress chief said.

Dotasra said that this case has fully exposed the BJP and the RSS. “They call themselves honest and nationalists, but under the guise of nationalism and in the name of religion, they are involved in rampant corruption,” he said, adding that corrupt leaders will be arrested.

On the other hand, the BJP accuses the Gehlot government of dragging the name of Nimbaram in the bribery case to defame the saffron party and the RSS.

Rajendra Rathore, deputy leader of opposition in the Rajasthan assembly, said that it is a ‘unique case’ where there are no complainants but the ACB has arrested two persons. “This is revenge politics for which Ashok Gehlot is known. The Congress government is misusing investigative agencies for political gains. The state government has used the ACB as part of its political vendetta to target a nationalist organisation,” Rathore said.

The RSS also argued that allegations against Nimbaram are an effort to present ‘distorted facts’ to assassinate his character. “We refute these false allegations and slanders being made out of ideological malice. An attempt has been made to present distorted facts even though no exchange of money has taken place. This is character assassination of a respected person by accusing them of being involved in corruption. Being a responsible person in the society, the regional pracharak Nimbaram is ready to support any kind of investigation,” Hanuman Singh Rathore, another RSS leader, said in a statement.

However, Rathore admitted that Nimbaram had met BVG executives. “The BVG company executives had met Nimbaram with a proposal to contribute CSR funds for the development of a Pratap Gaurav Kendra in Udaipur which the RSS has set up. The April 20 meeting was a courtesy meeting and Nimbaram had asked them to visit the centre and contribute accordingly. The company officials set a date, but never visited the centre and so, the question of CSR funding or any other assistance never arose,” Rathore said.

The central leadership of the BJP has closely followed this case since the ACB lodged an FIR against Nimbaram. The party’s national president J.P. Nadda’s office has been following up on the case with the state unit. “The central leaders have assured full support on the issue and will guide us to use all democratic tools to oppose the injustice aiming to defame the RSS. They have also offered legal help and services of noted lawyers to handle the case,” said a BJP leader aware of the development.

According to political analysts, if Nimbaram is arrested, the BJP will have to devise a counter-strategy to deal with it. “Nimbaram is the biggest RSS functionary in Rajasthan. His name in the bribery case is bringing a lot of disrepute to the organisation. If there is an arrest, the entire focus of the BJP will be to ensure that it does not affect the image of the RSS,” political commentator Mukesh Sharma said.

Avadhesh Akodia is an independent journalist. He tweets @AvadheshJpr. 

The Many Lives and Meanings of Waste

Unless we question the socio-economic structures associated with the production of waste and waste management, we can’t really overthrow the waste crisis.

Over the past few decades, Delhi has been bombarded with objects. These objects, deemed as trash by most inhabitants of the city, become a source of livelihood for many. Present in every nook and corner of the city to the splintering landfills, these ‘wasted’ objects pose a grave danger to the city’s existence, both “aesthetically” and ecologically.

Quite noticeably, it is as if Delhi’s end life sits poised among the three landfills in its three corners. Landfills are ablaze with fires and the toxicity of these materials seeps into the nearby water bodies. The neighbouring colonies are inhabited by disposable lives (waste pickers), representing the toxic sinks of the city.

These planned and orderly toxic sites are at once representative of the growing anthropogenic concerns and anxieties and simultaneously reflect the inside-outside binary created through years of cultural constructions around dirt and pollution, specifically in the Indian context, where not just ‘wasted’ objects but also bodies involved in dealing with waste are relegated to dirt and stigma.

It is only when these wasted materials embark upon their post-consumption journeys and are dumped onto the orderly sites of mounting landfills ‒ the city’s eyesores ‒ that the toxicity and disorderliness of the afterlife of materials disturb the visual aesthetics of those who reside in the inner spaces of the city.

Even as we live through the visible and ever-increasing waste crisis, we fail to gauge the afterlife of waste. Maybe a few years ago, many of us imagined waste as merely an administrative concern, limiting it to the realm of management. Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) vans would come, pick our waste from nearby dhalaos and dump it at the designated site. For dirt, loosely mapping onto waste has always been construed as “matter out of place”. Its right place is always some other space, which is not occupied by “common people”.

Yet today, as we become more developed and technologically equipped, the presence of waste (physically and metaphorically) haunts us more than ever before. There is little connection between us and the material we dispose. Once it reaches inconspicuous locations, such as a landfill, we forget the connection we had with them. There is a deliberate distancing of waste. It is generated by us and hidden somewhere else, in the far-removed peripheral and marginal corners of the city.

Delhi’s waste pickers deal with 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually and recover 56% of India’s recyclable waste. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/ Senado Federal CC-BY-2.0

Heavy reliance on scientific knowledge and technology-based solutions, followed by landfills as the epitome of technical artefacts and built-infrastructure of cities, has obfuscated the challenges posed by the waste crisis. By construing waste as a matter of techno-managerial concern and that of disposability, we are externalising its presence. Here, technology is construed as scientifically sound and politically neutral infrastructure, which shall eventually contain the waste crisis in the city.

The recent installations of bio-mining infrastructure across the three landfills (Okhla, Ghazipur and Bhalswa) are projected as grand efforts by the three municipal corporations in Delhi in overhauling the crisis, while simultaneously invisibilising the lives of waste workers. While time will tell what future these ‘recent’ technological advancements hold for Delhi’s waste crisis, what is important is to understand the processes which continuously perpetuate the momentous growth of waste in the city.

Lending a political and sociological lens will help us unravel the labyrinthine problems of caste, ecology, consumerism and the spatio-temporal axis of the waste crisis. Waste is not just a rejected negative value of our living, rather it embodies the present-day consumerist lifestyle and the social relations of a capitalist society. As dutiful citizens, we are so obsessed with ‘rightful’ and ‘orderly’ disposal of waste that we fail to gauge the afterlife of waste and the moment of waste constitution.

Also Read: The Murky Underbelly of Sanitation During the Pandemic

As waste studies scholar William Viney discusses, waste isn’t just matter out of place but also matter out of time. Time is the primary factor in determining what constitutes waste. An object’s use value and material condition may not wither off, but its temporality can define whether it is useful anymore. For example, radio cassettes and re-fill pens are common objects available with kabadiwalas (local waste dealers).

A discarded pair of shoes – discarded in order to make way for a new one – is a common sight around landfills, which ragpickers wear to climb up the hill. That wasted shoe acquires use value for ragpickers. As one waste picker told me, “What is kooda for you, is actually kabaad. Do not confuse the two.”  Thus, the wasted matter, out of place and out of time, pushed towards the margins of the city, are brought back to life by the creative and bricolage efforts of waste pickers, labouring to sustain their lives and renewing the city, by injecting all the harm onto their bodies. Similarly, kabadiwalas collect discarded materials on their tricycles from across the city and sell them off to relatively bigger traders, furthering the processes of renewing urban economies and recycling.

However, even as waste pickers and kabadiwalas tirelessly and disproportionately bear the burden of capitalism’s detritus, they are barely recognised for their labouring-infrastructure. The way waste workers are pushed to the margins of the city and with the burgeoning increase in the dumping of materials, the waste crisis in nowhere near its end. Rather, it is very much endemic to the existence of profit-making economies. Unless a product is marked as ‘obsolete’, ‘useless’, ‘out of fashion’, there will be no room for new products and subsequent profits.

Moreover, the presence of waste has become such a visceral part of our lives that today it cannot be ignored by the ‘reel’ world. The interactions between the non-human (wasted materials) and human world has created in an ‘order of chaos’, which is difficult to escape in present times.

The cinematic presence of waste in the movie Joker symbolically maps onto the life of a dejected, exasperated and anxious being in a modern capitalist world, surrounded by trash bags in the fictional Gotham City. This projection of the trash crisis was illustrative of the emptiness of materials and ourselves, where, if deemed ‘useless’, humans and materials are pushed to the darkest corners of the cities.

A scene from the movie Joker. Photo: Warner Bros publicity still

Likewise, the recent Netflix series Leila showcases a state of urban dystopia, where sprawling landfills have become a central part of our lives and the drinking water from taps is black. However, if we scratch the surface, we aren’t looking at a dystopic future but are living in a toxic reality, where groundwater is highly contaminated, the disposable lives (waste pickers) carrying the burden of consumerist lives are suffering from skin diseases, tuberculosis and asthma.

Yet, the broader public discourse on waste is painted as a practice of discarding the trash in the ‘right place’. It is construed as our duty to not litter the city. The moral governmentality of waste disposal has overpowered the discourse around waste so strongly, that it is even difficult to ponder upon the social and political constellation surrounding the production of waste and the economies of waste disposal.

Both these fictional depictions reveal not just the visible crisis of waste, but rather how the continuous processes of interactions between humans and non-humans have altered our habitat along with the existence of our being, which is continuously striving to be more ‘useful’, ‘productive’ in such abject times.

As much as waste is stereotypically illustrative of disorder and chaos, an analysis of its ontological existence reveals the dark and shameful secrets of human society. As sociologist Zygmunt Bauman famously argued, “Waste is [the] mid-wife of all creations”. The irony of our times is that the more developed we are, the more wasted we are. Waste is both the antithesis of development but also a by-product of development.

The present order of living, based on the capitalist model of development, produces by default disorders of waste. Thus, waste as an individual managerial entity doesn’t mean anything. It is pertinent to acknowledge and understand the way it gets embedded in our daily lives from the moment we are born.

For example, from the surgical material which is used when we are born to the time we die, the materiality we leave behind constitute waste and are disposed of in some manner or the other. This constitution of waste is defined not just by virtue of a matter and disposability but also by the ecology, space, time social relations and the afterlife it acquires.

A worker sorts used plastic bottles to be recycled. Photo: REUTERS/ Johannes P. Christo/ File Photo

The unequal times we live in force us to oversee the totality of the waste crisis through the smokescreen of development, hierarchical clean spaces and imposition of a particular form of aesthetically built environment. Unless we question these socio-economic structures associated with the production of waste and waste management, we can’t really overthrow the waste crisis.

Mitigating waste production is not a matter of behavioural change and the associated moral governmentality around it – for example the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan. Rather, it requires engaging with the hegemonic cultural practices and stigma (of impurity and dirt) associated with waste and waste work. It requires dealing with the profit-led order which demands the continuous production of materials in order to sustain itself and the hierarchical stigmatised spaces and disposable lives which sustain these processes.

Ironically, though not surprisingly, as we struggle to maintain the usual order of living in the time of COVID-19, we have generated a disorder of medical waste, lying across the landfills and streets of Delhi. Waste pickers, who are anyway exposed to the dirt and pollution of humans on a daily basis, are not repulsed and scared by the presence of discarded personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, masks and gloves in the way the middle class is.

Maidul, a waste dealer, who is now forced to climb up the landfill due to lack of earning, told me “Anyways on a daily basis, we deal with all kinds of waste. There is certainly an increase in medical waste, but prior to COVID-19 also, we saw half-dead animals, syringe and blood around the landfill. We are not surprised and bothered by the current situation. The moment we jump into the waste work, we leave our destiny to god. That is all we have.”

Many workers like Maidul, who have literally been reduced to ‘wasted lives’ – unable to sell their collected objects, forced to beg on streets, while also carrying out the work of waste – continue to sustain themselves amidst this chaos, maintaining the order of our cities.

Aparna Agarwal is a PhD scholar at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on ‘Politics of Waste’ in Delhi.

From Troop to Poop, Difficult Terrain Brings Its Own Challenge for Army, and Officer

Men in uniform must answer the call of nature, whether they are in the deserts of Rajasthan or the icy heights of Ladakh and Siachen.

Chandigarh: Over centuries, defecation has posed a trial, if not a persistent challenge, for operationally deployed armies.

Such essential but rarely talked about activity invariably elicits embarrassing reactions even in macho soldierly circles, possibly because pooping is a decidedly private endeavour that renders each one of us highly vulnerable.

But the sheer helplessness it manifests amongst crouching or squatting soldiers  – their trousers bunched up around the ankles as they attempt to relieve themselves in proximity to an enemy – is somehow even more pronounced.

Alternately, the subject of soldiers defecating in combat gear whilst on exercise or deployed on field manoeuvres, prompts bawdy, albeit sotto voce scatological humour.

But this response too, it seems is a dodge to cover up with braggadocio a fundamental chore most people are basically ill at ease with, and furthermore loath to discuss or even mention. In a sense, pooping is the covert or invisible part of all of our critical, though gratifying, daily routines.

Adam Linehan, a former US Army medic who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and went on to become a well-known journalist and film maker in Brooklyn, put it in perspective when he wisely stated that “we don’t talk about pooping enough – at least not in earnest”. He then goes on to hilariously recall how he learnt to do it squatting from an Afghan soldier, and how he taught his entire platoon to follow suit whilst on counter-insurgency operations in and around Kandahar.

While no soldier in India needs to learn how to squat, the Indian Army – possibly amongst the world’s most widely and diversely employed – has to manage the daily execution of defecations on an industrial scale for tens of thousands of its personnel in the field. And to complicate matters it has to do so in diverse environments where little or no infrastructure, leave alone, toilets exist.

These settings stretch from the world’s coldest and inhospitable Himalayan regions, where temperatures average minus 25 degrees Celsius round the year, plummeting to minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter, to places in the Rajasthan desert, where the mercury tops 50 degrees Celsius in summer.

Delicately put, this renders the entire exertion of pooping into a major undertaking, especially for officers in the field, who are forced to resort to extremes of jugaad or innovation to perform this most private of activities in utmost seclusion, which is often not easily possible.

There is a delicate, but rarely talked about reason behind this search for solitude by officers to poop: fear of exposure of their genitalia to jawans and even to junior colleagues. After all, it’s a universally accepted if unstated tenet that authority back in the unit would be adversely impacted if a jawan who espies his senior officer pooping reports back to his formation langar that the man in question is poorly endowed.

In all command-and-control settings, even outside the military, claims regarding inadequately hung seniors spread swiftly, often with disastrous consequences in a largely male-centric environment.

Irrespective of psychologists’ claims that size does not matter, the issue preys on the mind of males everywhere, and the army is no exception.

One former armoured corps officer said he was thankful for the old Willys Jeep, which for a generation of soldiers, was an indispensable commode-on-wheels. During desert manoeuvres in Rajasthan, he said he would invariably drive out into the sand dunes, far from his tank formation each morning in his Willys for his morning poop. He would stop the vehicle in the deserted desert, perch preciously over the gap between the fender and the engine bloc, resting one arm on the bonnet, and comfortably relieve himself in utmost privacy.

The advent of the Maruti Gypsy jeep in his later years, he lamented, had ended the comfort provided by the Willys, leaving him little choice but to squat furtively behind some sand dunes away from the prying eyes of his regimental risaldars.

High in the mountains

But pooping in the Himalayas is, without doubt the most arduous, to say the least, claim a host of veterans who have served at vertiginous heights along the line of control with Pakistan, and later at Siachen, in unbelievably freezing conditions.

After 1984, when India seized the Siachen Glacier and surrounding areas, veterans said they faced a Hobson’s choice in defecating at heights of over 17,000 feet and in temperatures that dipped to below 45 degrees Celsius during winter, and an even more formidable wind chill factor.

Till the late 1990s, when bio-digester toilets designed by the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) at Gwalior were installed at Siachen base camp, soldiers and officers alike were directed to strategically located ropes for defecating. After swiftly lowering their arctic leggings, they pooped speedily over the mountain edge into a snowy abyss, completing the entire exercise within seconds, officers said.

However, over years, with tens of thousands of soldiers defecating similarly, this led to a major environmental crisis: growing mountains of poop, as perennially low temperatures in the region do not facilitate the natural microbial decomposition of waste, which continues accumulating throughout the ice layers. Technically, and on a lighter note, the waste of the first soldiers to take a dump at Siachen in 1984 would still be in existence.

Other than being an aesthetic monstrosity, this accumulation runs the risk of getting mixed up with the snow that remains the sole supply of drinking water for the deployed brigade. And though some of these problems have been partially resolved, thousands of soldiers deployed to forward posts still face pooping hazards, for which there seems to be little or limited redress, despite advances in technology and disposal of human waste. One officer jocularly said that this heap of waste could be rolled down the hillside towards Pakistan, but this remedy remains just that: a shitty joke.

Alternately, however, the soldiers at these posts can descend a ladder down into crevices that are located a little distance from their living quarters; but even for this, agility and litheness are necessary and, no doubt a skill developed over time. But one saving grace most Siachen veterans were thankful for during their tenure on the glacier – if it can be called that – was that with loss of appetite at those forbidding heights and consequent limited intake of food, their need to defecate was considerably mitigated. Hence, so were the associated tribulations.

Similar ordeals of mass defecation are expected to surface imminently with the impending winter deployment, October onwards, of over 20,000 additional troops to the disputed line of actual control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. With a daily consumption of hundreds of kilos of foodstuff by these soldiers, the ordeal of evacuating it at remote posts at heights of over 15,000 feet will be enormous.

This deployment is expected to stretch 250-300km along the precipitous expanse from the Depsang plains in the north to Galwan, the Hot Springs-Gogra region and Pangong Tso lake and onto Chushul, to safeguard multiple ingress points along the LAC. Virtually no infrastructure exists in this region to house these many supplementary troops in freezing conditions.

Perforce, whatever arrangements the army makes will need to incorporate defecating facilities too.

Up in the air

Fighter pilots, including those from the Indian Air Force (IAF), seem to have a somewhat temporary solution to the calls of nature by regressing to their childhood and using diapers. Whenever deployed on extended missions like flying to Europe or the US for exercises, or in the neighbourhood for extended manoeuvres, IAF pilots strap themselves in with diapers to deal with their physical urge to urinate and defecate.

In 2010, for instance, when IAF fighter pilots participated in an exercise to bomb mock targets on the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, they were also armed with diapers. At the time senior IAF officers said they would have to get used to carrying additional loads in their diapers as future missions would be more complex, requiring pilots to remain airborne for 12 to 15 hours.

“Human endurance should not be a limiting factor in the cockpit’ then Air Chief Marshal Homi Major had sanguinely declared on that occasion.

Down in the sea

Pooping in submarines is possibly the most hazardous, as the chances of the sewage coming right back and hitting the sailor with great impact are not unknown if the toilet tank is over-pressurised hundreds of feet underwater.

It’s instructive to recall that in WWII, an advanced German hunter submarine of the U-1206-class, on its maiden combat voyage in the North Sea in April 1945, sank thanks to its poop after its captain used the boats hi-tech toilet improperly.

Ingenious German engineers had developed what they believed to be the ‘next generation in undersea plumbing’ by discharging waste directly into the sea. Eight days into its first patrol, the captain decided to try out the submarines toilet some 200 feet under water.

He accidentally turned a wrong valve, unleashing a torrent of sewage and water back into the submarine. “The situation escalated swiftly with the unpleasant liquid filling the toilet compartment and beginning to stream down onto the submarine’s giant internal batteries – located directly beneath the bathroom –which reacted chemically and began producing chlorine gas,” writes Elliot Carter in Motherboard.

As the poisonous gas filled the submarine, the captain frantically ordered the boat to the surface where it was attacked by Allied combat aircraft, giving the crew no option but to scuttle the boat.

Apocryphally speaking, Shit happens.

How I Started Composting Organic Waste at Home

Barring a very small percentage of garbage that is treated, most of what we throw ends up in the nearest landfill. 

I can’t remember the last time I gave away wet kitchen waste to the garbage collector. Before you jump to any conclusions about me living in a smelly house, I must clarify that I have been making compost from my kitchen waste for the past couple of years.

It started as a project to test whether home-composting was indeed just an ideal that one aspired to. A fad which, after running its course, will fade away.

But why did I even want to start the project?

To answer that, it is important to talk about waste. I have lived a large part of my life without ever thinking about how much household waste I generate and where it all disappears. My daily engagement with it usually stopped when I handed the household refuse to the local garbage collector. I was completely oblivious to its journey thereafter. Out of sight, hence, out of mind. It took the collapse of a mountain of garbage at the Ghazipur landfill in Delhi a few years’ ago to get me thinking.

Do we have a garbage problem?

And this is what I found out about the journey and impact of household waste on our environment. Consider the daily household waste produced by each of us. About half of it, if not more, is organic kitchen waste. Apart from this, recyclables and non-biodegradable waste (like plastic and cardboard etc.) are the usual suspects in our dustbins. This trash is usually deposited with the local garbage collector and eventually reaches a landfill site near the city.

Barring a very small percentage of garbage that is treated, most of what we throw ends up in the nearest landfill. These dumpsites are a toxic mix of organic, plastic, bio-medical, hazardous and electronic waste material. The numerous health hazards emanating from this mix affects not just the people living in the vicinity, but also the entire city. Causes for concern include the emission of methane gas from accumulated waste, disease-causing germs housed in the dumpsites and the contamination of soil and groundwater through seepage from solid waste of landfills.

Also read: Want to Help Sanitation Workers? Segregate Your Waste

With every passing day, the landfill grows, eventually becoming a colossal, odious mountain of waste. A mountain that could just break under its own weight, causing irreparable loss to life, as it did in Ghazipur, Delhi.

While solving the garbage problem requires co-operation from all stakeholders, I realised that a small but important step to the solution involves each of us taking control of our household waste at once.

How can I solve the problem?

I wanted to find ways in which I could do my part in effectively handling household waste. Under an ideal waste management system, only non-recyclable and non-biodegradable waste would be routed to landfills. However, the scenario on the ground was (and still is) far from ideal with both organic waste and recyclable waste being dumped at landfills.

Does it make a difference if we segregate the organic waste at the time of disposal? It does. But segregation at source would be effective only if every local body ensures that the segregated waste is collected and transported separately to processing.

Also read: What Growing up in an Indian Middle-Class Household Taught Me About Sustainability

Would it help if I segregate the organic waste and compost it at home? I realised that it would. Through home-composting, the amount of garbage thrown away by each household reduces drastically. By segregating and composting organic waste at home, one ensures that the recyclables at landfills are not contaminated. Their re-use potential increases. When more of us adopt composting, it could go a long way in easing the burden on municipalities and landfills. 

Does composting at home work?

Tiered composting apparatus. Photo: Nityapriya Subash

A simple search on the interest reveals multiple easy ways of composting. Simply put, the process involves mixing nitrogen-rich green material (such as organic waste) with carbon-rich brown material (such as sawdust, coco peat and dry leaves).

As someone looking for composting infrastructure that could work in small spaces, I adopted one involving terracotta tiered pots that could be placed in an out-door corner. It is compact and efficiently handles waste generated by two people. Having engaged with this process for a while now, I can certainly say that it could involve a lot of trial-and-error to find a suitable method but the important element is persistence.

Regularly mixing my greens with browns, I have generated plenty of crumbly compost and fed it to the plants in my nascent garden! If you don’t have a garden, don’t despair. I use fully made compost from earlier rounds in the next round of composting kitchen waste.

Each of us can play a small but effective role in solving the garbage problem by choosing to compost organic waste at home.

It is time we started learning ‘C’ is for composting.

Nityapriya is a corporate lawyer who is currently trying to find ways to minimise her carbon footprint.

Featured image credit: Nityapriya Subash (Edited by: LiveWire)