Challenges in 'Community organisation' of scrap pickers for Swachh Bharat: Reflections from Ahmedabad

Abstract

'Community Participation' in solid waste management is a desired outcome advocated by Government of India through the Swachh Bharat Mission and the Solid Waste Management Rules 2016. However, the SWM rules, 2016 as well as the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) guidelines conceptualise, only the 'generators of waste' (mostly domestic waste) as a 'community' in order to carry out advocacy for better primary collection and recycling practices. A large part of waste collection and recycling in India happens in the informal sector and there are variations in the waste picking households. Thus, the nuances of these households and their operational conditions need to understand as a 'heterogenous community' for their effective community organisation. The lack of such conceptualisation results in ignoring the possibility of waste picking as a livelihood mode that can be a vehicle for 'community development' of this informal livelihood group. This paper tries to identify the challenges and fissures in this simplistic techno-managerial conceptualisation of the waste pickers as homogenous individuals who could be registered and readily organised into groups to integrate into current practices of municipal solid waste management.