Privatising
waste collection has been bad news for Delhi wastepickers
The privatisation
of waste collection and transportation in Delhi has turned out to be
a poverty-enhancing policy, taking away from wastepickers their customary
right to recyclable waste and giving it to private companies instead.
According to the
Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Act of 1957, amended in 1991, waste
is the property of the municipality. Privatisation has handed over this
public property to private agencies without any meaningful public consultation.
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Naorem
Ashish |
As one of the groups
concerned about the informal sector, the Chintan Environmental and Research
Action Group was requested to help make a list of items that would remain
in the domain of the wastepicker, as a means of addressing livelihood
issues. The items on that list, comprising 40 recyclables, are now listed
as belonging to the private party. The situation has been further complicated
by the fencing of the dhalaos. Each dhalao, or dump site, is now the
zamindari of the contractor, who won’t let anyone get in or access
waste anymore.
The logical outcome
of such a policy is already playing out. In the RK Puram area, Delhi
Waste Management (DWM), a private company, has begun buying waste at
low rates from wastepickers and has itself become a junk dealer. In
a recent testimony, wastepickers who take waste from houses explained
that all dhalaos now come under DWM. If they are to dump their waste
here, they are bullied into selling to DWM and its allies. Those who
don’t go from house to house have lost all access to waste and
can only watch as their livelihoods become feed for a capital intensive
company.
Dump sites are now
the zamindaris of private contractors who do not allow any access
to them |
The DWM recently
declared that junk dealers deserved to be hit hard because they are
exploitative. The irony is that the junk dealers are often very badly
off themselves. About 78 percent of them are former wastepickers who
had saved up enough money at great difficulty to invest in this business.
Chintan tried initially
to dialogue with the DWM to include the wastepickers. Since there was
no essential government facilitation, and our views on conditions of
work were divergent, this broke up. Now, an NGO, whose founder was also
a DWM employee, has taken over. In his last meeting with me, he said
he wanted to ‘handle’ the waste of Delhi and recycle it
himself, ideally on an old landfill. Who wouldn’t? When recyclables
aren’t divided amongst 80,000 wastepickers, they’re a lot
more valuable!
Unless the mcd suspends
this contract and re-negotiates it on new terms, India’s own stated
policies on poverty alleviation, the Urban Renewal Mission and the Millennium
Development Goals, will be trivialised in this context.
Chaturvedi
is the director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group
