Waste of a nation : garbage and growth in India /

Waste of a nation : garbage and growth in India /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Doron, Assa, author.
Imprint:	Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018. ©2018
Description:	xv, 393 pages ; 25 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	Refuse and refuse disposal -- India. Salvage (Waste, etc.) -- India. Sewage disposal -- India. Caste -- India. Caste. Population. Refuse and refuse disposal. Salvage (Waste, etc.) Sewage disposal. India -- Population. India.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11448598

Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:	Jeffrey, Robin, author.
ISBN:	9780674980600 0674980603
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"Why is India so filthy?" This book draws on four years of research by an anthropologist and historian to tease out reasons for India's public-sanitation agonies. From the days of Mahatma Gandhi to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has struggled with garbage and human excrement. In the twenty-first century, the problems grow urgent as an urbanizing middle class expands, consumes, excretes and throws things away at increasing rates. In 2014, the new Modi government began to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a Clean India! or Swachh Bharat! campaign to change habits, build toilets, purify water and tame domestic, industrial and medical waste. The authors argue that many of India's problems were shared by other countries over the past 150 years and that India can benefit from such experience and the science of the digital world. But two challenges are unique and formidable. First, the density of population is surpassed only by Bangladesh. India has less space in which to dump its huge volumes of waste than any major country in history, including China. The second obstacle lies in ideas and prejudices relating to caste. Some people are born into castes (once called "untouchables") that are still widely regarded as tainted by birth and associated with foul and demeaning tasks. Such attitudes reinforce NIMBY attitudes found throughout the world. India's diversity, however, means that throughout the country the efforts of women and men from waste-pickers to executives demonstrate exceptional achievements in dealing with waste, though they provide no single recipe for a Clean India.--

Description
Summary:	In India, you can still find the kabaadiwala, the rag-and-bone man. He wanders from house to house buying old newspapers, broken utensils, plastic bottles--anything for which he can get a little cash. This custom persists and recreates itself alongside the new economies and ecologies of consumer capitalism. Waste of a Nation offers an anthropological and historical account of India's complex relationship with garbage.<br> <br> Countries around the world struggle to achieve sustainable futures. Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey argue that in India the removal of waste and efforts to reuse it also lay waste to the lives of human beings. At the bottom of the pyramid, people who work with waste are injured and stigmatized as they deal with sewage, toxic chemicals, and rotting garbage.<br> <br> Terrifying events, such as atmospheric pollution and childhood stunting, that touch even the wealthy and powerful may lead to substantial changes in practices and attitudes toward sanitation. And innovative technology along with more effective local government may bring about limited improvements. But if a clean new India is to emerge as a model for other parts of the world, a "binding morality" that reaches beyond the current environmental crisis will be required. Empathy for marginalized underclasses--Dalits, poor Muslims, landless migrants--who live, almost invisibly, amid waste produced predominantly for the comfort of the better-off will be the critical element in India's relationship with waste. Solutions will arise at the intersection of the traditional and the cutting edge, policy and practice, science and spirituality.
Physical Description:	xv, 393 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:	9780674980600 0674980603