The politics of garbage

Time was when rag pickers were the lowest of the lowly urban poor. It was hard to find an adult male among them. Women and children made up their ranks.

Garbage collection has now become organized. NGOs of rag pickers have been set up for collection of garbage from housing societies. Men are visible in garbage collection and processing now that it has become a visible and even important activity involving interaction with the well off. Men are crowding out women and children.

 Local municipalities are trying to get away from this work. Dumping collected garbage at some far away spot is not possible any more as violent protests are made by the locals. So citizens are asked to segregate wet and dry garbage themselves and housing societies are expected to treat their own wet garbage.

Bigger housing societies must start carrying out this work immediately. Otherwise municipal authorities levy a big fine.

Our society is small and so the above rule does not apply to us right now. Still, as a part of planning and adopting possible best practices, we have set up a vermi-composting plant for wet garbage in our society. It is not cheap and so other members were not interested. The office bearers of the society persevered and the plant became operational from 1^st August 2019. The day-time watchman has been trained to process the wet garbage in it every day and his salary has been hiked for this additional work.

The NGO that picked up society garbage was not amused. “You have suddenly stopped our collection. We will tell the supervisor and he will call on you”, its collectors threatened.

Members of the society do not segregate waste properly. The watchman has to do the segregation himself. So rubber gloves were issued to him. However, the person who collects the garbage by going from door to door is another fellow. He comes every morning and his wife sweeps the premises. The watchman was asked to give a pair of gloves each to them.

Two days ago, I saw the garbage collector working with only one glove.

“Where is the other glove?” I asked him.

“The watchman has kept it with him in his cabin and cannot find it.”

“Nonsense! Tell him to give it to you immediately.”

On the second day also the sweeper came with only one glove. I told the Chairman about this and requested him to fire the watchman. I called him up and asked him to give me the sweeper’s gloves. He showed them to me and promised to hand them over the next morning.

“I will do that.” I told him but he protested.

Today the sweeper came with gloves on both his hands and he was looking happy. His wife is yet to get her pair though. Then we want to issue face masks to them and are prepared for another round of feet dragging over it. The watchman has been told that new gloves will be given to him as soon as the present ones wear out but his stinginess and guile know no bounds.

Back in 1985 I participated in a public information experiment by a well-known public health NGO – FRCH. Pamphlets were prepared to give information to villagers about various welfare schemes of the government from which they could benefit. The free pamphlets were distributed directly, through postmen, village Sarpanch (chief of village local body) etc. to the villagers. It was found that these middlemen just sat over the pamphlets and did not issue them. They made it out to be some big, confidential matter and demanded a large sum of money before handing them over.

Designing programs for the down-trodden is one thing. Ensuring that they actually reach the intended beneficiaries is an altogether different proposition. Implementation therefore remains a big problem.

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