Challenges in ‘Community Organisation’
of Scrap Pickers for Swachh Bharat:
Reflections from Ahmedabad
R. S. Sannabhadti
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.
Keywords Community organisation · Community development · Civil society ·
Waste pickers · Scrap pickers · Scrap collectors · Swachh Bharat Mission ·
Municipal solid waste management
1 Introduction and Background
‘Community participation’ in solid waste management is a desired outcome advocated by Government of India. The solid waste management (SWM) rules, 2016
state ‘involve communities in waste management and promotion of home composting, bio-gas generation, decentralised processing of waste at community level subject…’ Moreover the ‘manual for municipal solid waste management’ circulated
R. S. Sannabhadti (B)
CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India
e-mail: raviss@cept.ac.in; shriravi@gmail.com
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
S. K. Ghosh (ed.), Solid Waste Policies and Strategies: Issues, Challenges
and Case Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1543-9_16
175
of Scrap Pickers for Swachh Bharat:
Reflections from Ahmedabad
R. S. Sannabhadti
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.
Keywords Community organisation · Community development · Civil society ·
Waste pickers · Scrap pickers · Scrap collectors · Swachh Bharat Mission ·
Municipal solid waste management
1 Introduction and Background
‘Community participation’ in solid waste management is a desired outcome advocated by Government of India. The solid waste management (SWM) rules, 2016
state ‘involve communities in waste management and promotion of home composting, bio-gas generation, decentralised processing of waste at community level subject…’ Moreover the ‘manual for municipal solid waste management’ circulated
R. S. Sannabhadti (B)
CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India
e-mail: raviss@cept.ac.in; shriravi@gmail.com
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
S. K. Ghosh (ed.), Solid Waste Policies and Strategies: Issues, Challenges
and Case Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1543-9_16
175