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.--
Review by Choice Review

Doron and Jeffrey's model study of India's garbage problem impressively integrates geography, demography, religion, economics, politics, environmentalism, and the history of sanitation. Clean streets and scientific medicine are new things, little practiced in Europe or the US in the 19th century. An environmental "binding crisis" of plagues or stench has historically been required to jolt politicians into sanitation projects. The British Raj and independent India long recognized that India needed cleaning, but much worked against it. Handling filth was relegated to dalits (untouchables), so higher caste Hindus did not need to worry about it. Mohandas Gandhi disliked cities and ignored their needs. Indian use of night soil lagged behind Japan's and China's. India's population growth, urbanization, and new middle class, however, have vastly outstripped traditional waste handling. Frugal India has two pluses: it is used to recycling and has abundant cheap labor. Several layers of scavengers, collectors (kabaadi), and processors systematically gather and recycle. Elected with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014, Prime Minister Modi has made Swachh Bharat (Clean India) a priority. Advanced countries need to think about the waste problem too. Integrates scholarly literature, fieldwork, and interviews. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Michael G. Roskin, emeritus, Lycoming College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review

The Leo J. and Celia Carlin Book Fund bookplate

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