Thrashing out trash
ALTHOUGH the repulsive sight of waste and garbage lying strewn around and putrefying on our roads, parks, greens, and neighbourhoods is no new phenomenon for urban India, it has become a cause for concern only in recent times. Garbage, even toxic waste, is not what it is now suddenly being made out to be: this sensational, "new" environmental danger has always existed. In fact, it is a much older problem, which is only today beginning to find its place in the context of modern living, and in the schemes of the urban planner, environmentalist, and even the average citizen who is more conscious about disposing off her/his daily waste.
Trash, however, is not that simple: not only is there far too much of it, municipal agencies entrusted with its disposal have their hands, and clearing trucks, full. The informal recycling sector, with ragpickers as its backbone, and small and medium scale factories, also plays a crucial role, for it bequeaths upon discarded paper, plastics, metals and glass a second life as recycled products.
But this cleaning up involves thousands of people, predominantly children, who scavenge through garbage dumps for a few rupees daily, working and living in the unhealthiest of conditions, often cutting themselves on broken glass and metal, and getting their injuries infected from the putrefying matter in the dumps. Any waste management strategy, therefore, cannot ignore this sector, and must take into account its working conditions. It is from such an understanding that there is an emphasis in this book on ragpickers as an essential part of the existing solid waste management in Bangalore. The studies of Marijk Huysman, based on fieldwork in 1989-90 for her MA thesis, examines the socio-economic backgrounds of female ragpickers, in the context of their scavenging role.
However, some of the effort is immediately dissipated as she examines them within the upper caste Brahminical framework of the "model wife". Although Huysman finally presents some valuable findings about how women switched to this profession, and the kind of support they are able to give to each other, she lends herself to several generalities, particularly those concerning social inequalities and hardships, equating these rather simplistically with ragpicking.
The inadequate understanding is reflected in the final suggestions of the editors to abolish scavenging as one solution to the conditions of these ragpickers. Much more pragmatic and sustainable is their other suggestion of effectively organising ragpickers, which emerges from the recognition of economic realities.
Most interesting, however, is the case made for certain waste imports, in the light of the distress faced by the recycling industry, and the authors make a reasonable demand for objective second thoughts about an issue which otherwise prompts emotional reactions.
Apart from a few highly focused papers spread out over the past decade and a half, 2 recent reports addressing the system of recycling in Delhi, and some work relating to other cities, there has hardly been an enquiry into the trash India produces. This study of solid waste management in Bangalore is therefore, a welcome addition, for it offers a platform to "trash out" solutions before we get consigned to the dumps.
---Bharati Chaturvedi is a founder-member of the Delhi-based NGO Srishti, and is studing waste management and recycling in Delhi.