the lives of safai karmacharis (sanitation workers)

Kachra Kondi (titled "The Garbage Trap" in the below English-subtitled version)
a documentary on the lives of sanitary workers in Pune,
directed by Atul Pethe,
produced by the Pune Municipal Corporation Workers' Union

Before giving you the video, here are two poems I've extracted from the documentary

1

The fragrance of a thousand rotten

ravishing corpses rushes out

as the lid of the manhole is lifted

The shit-pot, emptied by Savali’s mother

And far away, waking naked, heir to my generation

Is this the “reservation” for us?

(Poet: Jayanti Makwana, drainage worker)

(translated in the documentary from Marathi - or maybe Gujarati?)

2

With no inkling of the beginning and end

The living dead, me, was given birth

And so I was born

Had organs just like humans

And so identified as a human being

But human just for the sake of recognizing

You mash my whole life in your filth

Your shit

Don’t humans have the body parts?

Hands, feet, nose, throat, eyes, trunk

If that is so, then where are my body parts?

Who locked them?

In which cell of freedom?

Scrub me

It will only yield filth

Just filth

Trash, vermin and a breath of stink

Look at my lungs

Look at my heart

Look at my eyes

X-ray me

For the negative and positive results

Search for the complete human body with all its organs

Then you will see

How you have sucked life out of me

How you look down on me

Just to keep you clean

You force this work on me

That put humanity to shame and ruined me

I step fearlessly in your shit

Bare-bodied

Insects bit me

Nostrils flared by the filth

Sucked through breath, stomach, blood

Took the rod, pulled the wire, broke open the choke

Your blocked gutter gurgled

Oh people!

I suffocate in this living hell

Living through this death throes

I die in life

Living through this death throes

I die in life

I die in life

(Poet: Dhurandhar Mithbaonkar, former drainage worker)

(translated in the documentary from Marathi, though I suspect a better translation might be possible)

mumbai: where does the garbage go?

I have been trying to understand Mumbai's water and sanitation infrastructures. How many of us know where our water comes from, where our wastewater and garbage goes, who lives next to the immense amounts of garbage we generate, whose livelihoods are linked to it? We are so disconnected from all this thanks to the tap, the flush, pipes, the overhead water tank, the garbage bin and garbage truck, and the thousands of workers who keep these technologies working.

One piece of information I have come across is that Mumbai generates more than 6000 tonnes of garbage per day (one tonne > 2000 pounds, so imagine what 6000 tonnes of garbage means). Most of it ends up untreated at the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai's (MCGM) three garbage dumping grounds - the Deonar Disposal Site, the Mulund Disposal Site and the Gorai Disposal Site. I've been doing research in a slum settlement next to the Deonar site which is the largest of the three dumping grounds. Spread over 132 hectares, the Deonar dumping ground has been receiving Bombay's garbage since 1927! Today, it receives some 4000 tonnes of garbage each day. This garbage originates from 15 of the city's 24 municipal wards, mostly from the entire area from south Mumbai to Juhu as well as areas in central-eastern Mumbai.

Deonar dumping ground:
In the distance what you see is a HUGE pile of garbage, some two stories high

Garbage sorting and recycling: The livelihood of over 50% of this settlement's 5000 families is linked in some way or the other to the dumping ground. Men, women and children sort through the garbage, clean whatever they can, prepare it for recycling it, etc. Most of them manage to make Rs.100-150 a day.

While the dump is indeed economic sustenance for many of the settlement's families, the health effects of living next to the dump (in some cases, on the dump) and working in it are severe.