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Waste Pickers

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SILENT FRIENDS OF IIM BANGALORE

Walking through the green and clean campus of IIM Bangalore the thought of an area where the wastes from the entire campus are dumped hardly comes to our mind. The search for the waste pickers working at IIMB took us to a remote corner of the college which was surrounded by the remains of some ongoing construction work and had garbage thrown here and there along the path. The sight wasn’t pretty and the stench in that place was repulsive .We wondered how anyone could work in such a place where it was not even possible to breathe .With our noses covered with handkerchiefs we stood there watching a few women wearing gloves and a mask on their faces and bent over the pile of wastes dumped there, indifferent to the stench around and busy in picking through them .This is how our research about the life of waste pickers at IIMB began.

total of 6 women who work as waste pickers and are employed by Saahas: an organization that works towards waste management. After segregation, food wastes are used in Biogas plant inside the campus, remaining wastes are sent outside the campus for recycling or dumping. 200-300 kilograms of food wastes are generated in IIM Bangalore campus every day. IIM Bangalore manages about 75% of all wastes generated within the campus and has a composting capacity of 100 kiligrams of food wastes. The 6 waste pickers who work inside campus are supervised by Vijaya, a 38 year old woman who was very friendly and talked at length about the waste pickers .Despite having studied till class 7th Lata who has worked as a waste picker for over a decade now, decided she had no right to deprive her daughter of a formal education and hence entered into this line of work as a last resort. She toils entire day picking garbage in the IIMB campus so that she can pay for her kid’s education .The meager 5000 Rs that she earns per month is not enough for her to pay the rent and have a square meal .But she has never thought of compensating that by sending her daughter to work because she wants to ensure that she gets a better life, a life as far away as possible from sorting and collecting garbage. While on the other hand we have Usha who has three daughters and a son. Two of her daughters were married at the mere age of fourteen .Her third daughter is thirteen years old who left school after 7th grade and currently stays at home. She tried to get some work but could not find any job as people don’t find her eligible to work because she is a child as well as a girl. Usha’s son is fourteen years of age. He left his school after 3rd class and currently works at some local shop. She is totally unaware of the fact that child marriage and child labour is illegal in our country.

“Waste pickers at work” The sweepers and waste collectors carry the wastes to the garbage picking site and then waste pickers segregate the wastes into recyclables and non-recyclables. There are a

Though most of them were very shy to talk to us, maybe because they couldn’t speak or understand Hindi or English, there was a lady Kamala who was very cheerful and came forward to talk to us. Like Lata even her main concerns were the school fees for her children. And she has the entire burden of raising her kids and family as her unemployed husband drinks a lot and never assists her monetarily. Infact we found this common among almost all of them. Most of these women’s husbands work either as porters or manual laborers and stay away from home for months. Be it a chilly winter morning or a rainy day, their day starts at 5 am. After finishing all their household chores like cooking, cleaning and sending their kids to school they make their way to the IIMB campus. They have lost all hopes and come to terms to the fact that there is no way out of this for them. Scrounging through the wastes the entire day they are left with no time to relax or indulge in any other activities. Still they take out time to talk to their fellow workers and share their stories to find some way to forget the hardship that life has offered them. Their job is not that easy says Lata. The wastes sometimes contain broken glasses which lead to cuts in the hands even after wearing gloves and their greatest fear is of catching a fever due to the foul smell coming out of the garbage dump. One day of absence from work would mean loss of that day’s salary which would hurt them more than the physical hardship caused by the decay. Since these women work in a secluded area they have zero contact with any student of IIMB or any other person inside the campus. The only friend they have is their supervisor Vijaya. They are infact too shy to interact with anyone in the campus be it the security guards or the mess workers. However there is person Venkatesh, (An IIMB staff) who visits them and asks them about their health and general concerns. When we interviewed the students we

came to know that most of them did not even know where the garbage dumping ground is, knowing about the waste pickers was a far off thing .While entering the campus they show their Saahas I-card at the entrance gate and ask the guards to enter their details in the register at the entrance. Supervisor, Vijaya also marks their attendance in a register which contains arrival and departure time. If Vijaya is not there, then the entry at the entrance gate acts as the basis for their attendance. So those are the only occasions when they interact with any other member of IIMB. They are the people who silently come and go after finishing their job inside the campus.

“Work environment” “Just because we pick garbages doesn’t mean we have no respect” says Bagyamma with a smile on her face. The story goes that IIMB administration had initially promised them that they would be provided lunch and tea by the institute. However, when the women went to mess they were denied food by the mess workers and the reason given to them was that they were few minutes late after 2pm.Similar reasons were given every time they went to have lunch. Such behavior by the mess workers offended and intimidated them and so they stopped going to mess. “I prefer to buy my food instead of repeatedly requesting the mess people for it” says the peeved supervisor .The only thing these

women ask for is a little respect for them, continues Vijaya. All of the waste pickers working inside IIM Bangalore campus live in different slum areas of Bangalore. These slum areas are located in 3rd phase , J.P. Nagar and 3rd phase J.D.M. Except for one the others stay in rented houses . All of them migrated to these slum areas from nearby villages of Bangalore in search of improved livelihood in terms of employment ,education and other facilities. Some came to the city with their parents during their childhood and there were few who were born in Bangalore. Inadequate food was one major problem back there in their village which forced them to migrate to Bangalore, said most of them. When it comes to economic conditions of these waste pickers they can earn a maximum of Rs five thousand per month. However, it’s not fixed as whenever someone is absent for a day her salary for that day gets deducted. For most of them this is the only source of income and too meager for running their households .It becomes difficult for them to make ends meet after spending their maximum salary in paying house rents and paying for their kid’s education. Though the supervisor Vijaya has Ration and Id cards and is able to get benefits from government subsidies, the waste pickers don’t

have any of those things. However these women have labor net Insurance and medical cards provided by Saahas. There are several organizations which use services from Saahas. Those organizations come in contact with Saahas mostly by words of mouth. Saahas organizes some events to increase the awareness towards waste segregation so that more number of organizations start to avail their facility. Saahas has two parts, one is working as an NGO while the other is working as self sustainable organization. Saahas charges some fees towards waste segregation so that it can afford the transportation and employee costs. It has a total number of 70 workers , 51 waste pickers out of which 6 work in IIMB .These waste pickers generally come in contact with Saahas with the help from some other waste pickers working under it. Saahas approaches only slum areas generally Kanakpura road, Mysore road etc for hiring new waste pickers. All the time, we went to meet them we found that all of them were working to keep IIM Bangalore campus clean ,very silently. They are really silent friends of IIM Bangalore. There should be some improvement in the work conditions of these waste pickers. Above all, they must be included in the society of IIM Bangalore.

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