Challenging inequality: rights of the waste workers of Delhi

The COVID-19 pandemic did not create any new problems for the working class in India but amplified those that have been prevalent for ages due to an economic system that prioritises profit. Particularly, the collecting and disposing of garbage in the Indian subcontinent has always been associated with a particular caste group, ranked low in the caste hierarchy of the Hindu social order. Though this system can be traced back to Hindu religious texts, it has long percolated into practice in other faiths, with people who converted from these communities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the waste collectors living in informal settlements on the peripheries of New Delhi faced a peculiar exclusion from basic infrastructural amenities and the right to work. The parlance of social distancing provided an environment adverse to the manual door-to-door waste collection in which the workers were engaged. As a substitute, the state machinery employed private companies whose modus operandi is not very different from independent waste workers. However, when things were restored to normalcy, the workers continued to find themselves out of work. The Solid Waste Management Act 2016 recognises the rights of waste workers, but they are yet to be enforced. In this paper, we look at the exclusion of the waste workers from accessing the city who, by their profession, are seen as polluting the very city which they keep clean.