delhi’s waste pickers - informal workers in an aspiring global city
TRANSCRIPT
DELHI’S WASTE PICKERS
-‐
INFORMAL WORKERS IN AN ASPIRING GLOBAL CITY
by
Sven Schiltz
Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Philosophy
October 2012
School of Social Sciences
University of Lincoln
i
To Armand Schiltz, in loving memory.
ii
ABSTRACT
In this thesis I offer a theoretical intervention into the global city theory by proposing
a holistic approach of analysing the global city. Through the unprecedented inclusion
of waste pickers and informal recyclers into the theorisation of the global city I
propose an analysis of the global city from below. Thereby, I offer a critique of
mainstream academic theory that tends to portray the global city in an overly
glamorous way. By studying Delhi’s waste pickers, who constitute an academically
neglected occupational group, I highlight a side of the global city that mainstream
theorists frequently choose to neglect. I move away from the typical consideration of
the global city as a measurable and quantifiable condition. I argue that the global city
needs to be understood as a project which requires political will and financial
investment. This allows me to overcome the dualist bias in contemporary
scholarship according to which cities are either regarded as ‘global’ or as ‘non-‐global’.
In this way, I include the cities of the developing world, which are often thought of
as poor and non-‐global megacities, into global city theory. By focussing on Delhi’s
waste pickers, who I regard as ‘ordinary’ urbanites, I show how Delhi’s global city
project negatively affects the lives of many of those who contribute towards the
everyday functioning of the city. They are people upon whose labour the global city
project relies. I show that Delhi’s global city project predominantly takes place on an
aesthetic level and that, due to this, signs of poverty such as the slum and informal
waste recycling processes are increasingly considered as the antipode to the
imagination of Delhi as a modern and global city. As a result, waste pickers and other
sections of the urban ‘poor’ have become demonised and are increasingly subject to
socio-‐economic, political and spatial marginalization. Based on this cognition, I
analyse concepts such as urban citizenship, the right to the global city and, most
importantly, the purpose and the aims of global city theory creation in the academic
realm. I propose that existing global city theory should be supplemented by an
awareness of the connections between the global city as project and the
marginalised communities that live within these rapidly changing urban
environments.
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DECLARATION
This is to certify that
1. the thesis comprises my original work towards the MPhil except where
indicated in the preface,
2. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material
used,
3. the thesis is less than 40,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps,
footnotes, bibliographies and appendices.
__________________________
SVEN SCHILTZ
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PREFACE
The arguments presented in this thesis are predominantly informed by a review of
the existing literature and the usage of secondary data. However, some parts of the
study also make reference to interviews, observations and photographs, which I
collected in Delhi between January and March 2011. In this period I worked as a
research-‐intern for Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, a local non-‐
governmental organisation that aims to empower waste pickers in Delhi through
research, education and advocacy. The data and photographs that I have included in
this thesis were gathered in accordance to the ethical guidelines of Chintan. Bharati
Chaturvedi, the director of Chintan, kindly authorised me to reproduce this data
here. It is part of a larger data-‐set which is yet to be published. The photographs that
I have included were taken during my internship in Delhi. There are two exceptions
to this. Seth Schindler from Clark University took Photograph 1 in 2006. Seth kindly
gave his permission for me to reproduce it in my thesis. Photograph 10 is the
property of Foreign Policy Magazine (Fung and Monschein 2010). Any persons that I
portrayed in my own photographs granted me permission to take their picture.
Chapters 1 and 2 include some brief text passages and ideas that were previously
included in various conference papers and a poster that I presented in Glasgow,
Boston and London between 2010 and 2011 (Schiltz 2010; 2011c; 2011d). Chapter 4
includes ideas that I expressed in the form of two articles published in Brennpunkt
Drëtt Welt in 2011 (Schiltz 2011a; 2011b). Any monetary figures are expressed in
United States dollars at the conversion rates on 13th September 2012.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am delighted to be able to take this opportunity to thank a number of people
without whom this thesis would not have come together. Some of them have helped
me knowingly and willingly with my research through the discussion of ideas,
commenting on drafts, and suggesting literature. Others are probably less aware of
their impact upon my work. They are my friends and family who, through their
constant and loyal support, have helped me overcome the many challenges of life as
well as those associated with being a graduate student.
To start I want to thank my Director of Studies, Professor Carol Walker, who showed
a lot of trust after she took over from my original Director of Studies who was no
longer able to support me in my research endeavour. It is due to her repeated
recommendation to “Just get on with it!” that this thesis has been completed within
the scheduled time frame. I am also in deep gratitude to Dr Simon Obendorf who has
acted as my Second Supervisor and who has become a dear friend to me since the
commencement of this project. Simon has made an important intellectual impact on
my work and has provided me with a lot of invaluable academic advice. I also need
to thank him for sharing a mutual passion for delicious food and providing me with
unhealthy amounts of espresso coffee. I am grateful that he was there and offered
his emotional support at more difficult moments.
Another person who has made a deep impact upon this project is my friend Julie
Smit from the Action Solidarité Tiers Monde [Initiative for Solidarity with the ‘Third
World’] in Luxembourg. Julie was the person with whom I first discussed ideas on
Delhi’s waste pickers. She has commented on parts of this thesis and most
importantly, she helped arrange my internship with Chintan in Delhi. At Chintan, I
want to thank the director Bharati Chaturvedi who had a lot of time for my questions
and pointed me to the legal status of waste and informal recycling in Delhi. I also
want to thank Kajichew Pfoze who introduced me to tasty street food whilst taking
me on a bargain hunt for academic literature through Delhi. Seth Schindler, Varun
Srivastava and Devyani Mathur’s company enriched my time in Delhi tremendously.
Brij Kishore was my mentor at Chintan. He looked after me like a father, never got
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tired of my questions, and made sure that I got the most out of the time we spent
together in the field. He also acted as translator and safely chauffeured me through
the most busy and inaccessible parts of Delhi on the back of his motorbike. My
thanks also go to Brij’s wife whom I have never met, but who nevertheless, on many
occasions provided me with her divine prepared lunches. Further thanks go to Toxics
Link in Delhi who kindly allowed me to browse their library collection for useful
literature.
I am also in deep appreciation of the Centre de Documentation et d'Information sur
l'Enseignement Supérieur (Center for the Documentation and Information for
Further Education) in Luxembourg that provided me with a living allowance during
my postgraduate studies. At the University of Lincoln I want to thank the Graduate
School for entrusting me with a three-‐year studentship that covered the remaining
financial burden of my studies. At the School of Social Sciences in Lincoln, Anitha
Sundari and Gerry Strange need to be thanked for their advice on related literature.
Claire Randerson, Elena Chebankova, Jill Jameson, Joe Heslop, Katie Strudwick,
Kelvin Jones and Liam McCann helped me with my teaching duties. Mahmoud
Khalifa was a pleasant office companion and patiently sat though many of my work-‐
related rants. I am furthermore grateful to Dr Laura Stoller, Willy Brandt
Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies, for her
insightful comments on a conference paper that I presented in Boston in 2011.
I want to acknowledge my friends Anne Schockmel, Barbara and Derek Duncombe,
Claude and Monique Lahr-‐Tompers, Fabrice Shoshany, James Dewhurst, Jamie
McCabe, Jan Lux, Jérôme Hilbert, Liam Mitchell and Bethan Lloyd, Lioba Suchenwirth,
Pier Schroeder, Richard Knight, Richard van Neste, Roby Wies, Samantha Maw,
Stephanie Purchase and the members of Roses Hockey Club. They have all helped
keep me sane during the research process. An even bigger thank you needs to go to
Josepha Broman, Emily and Phil Hearing, and Ruth and Aaron Koch. I am privileged
to count these people as my friends. Without them this thesis would not have come
together. Emily Hearing, Jane Kirkpatrick, Julie Smit and Stephanie Purchase also
need to be thanked for commenting on different chapters of this thesis. They have
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made an important contribution towards grammar, style and content. Any remaining
errors or inaccuracies are of course solely my responsibility.
It also means a great deal to me to use this occasion to thank Jane Kirkpatrick who
has become a very important person in my life. Jane has made an important impact
on this thesis by discussing ideas, suggesting reading and commenting on various
chapters. She has also been a huge help in stopping me worry about work and
rediscovering a more balanced lifestyle. Jane has been a great travel companion and
cycling partner and is never too scared to volunteer as a guinea pig for my cooking.
She puts a smile on my face.
My final thanks must go to the members of my family. My grandparents Jeanne
Schiltz-‐Koch and Suzanne Bleser-‐Dunkel have helped me in many different ways and
I am thankful that they accepted my decision to absolve my studies in higher
education so far away from home. I am grateful to my brother Ben Schiltz who has
been a great support throughout my studies. Our chats always put me in a good
mood. Finally and most importantly, I want to thank my parents Diane and Gerry
Schiltz-‐Bleser who have encouraged me since a very young age to ask questions and
to be a critically minded person. I know that my undergraduate studies and first year
of postgraduate research came at significant financial costs to them and I want to
thank them for all the trust they put into me during this time.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ii
DECLARATION iii
PREFACE iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v
TABLE OF CONTENTS viii
TABLES, MAPS FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS xi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I: A WORLD OF GLOBAL CITIES -‐ THE FRAGMENTARY NATURE OF
THE NEW WORLD MAP 9
1 Globalization and Global Cities 10
2 Global Cities as Divided Cities 12
3 A Divided World of Global Cities 14
4 Understanding the Global City as a ‘Project’ 18
5 Acknowledging the Role of ‘Ordinary People’ in ‘Neglected’ Cities 23
CHAPTER II: UNDERSTANDING RAG PICKING – FRAMING COMMON FEATURES
OF A GLOBAL PHENOMENON 26
1 Defining Rag Picking 26
2 The Public Conception and Awareness of Rag Picking 29
3 Existing Areas of Research 30
4 Making Sense of Waste Picking in the Capitalist City 36
4.1 Rag Picking in the European Industrial City 37
4.2 Rag Picking in Contemporary Cities Of the Developing World 41
4.3 Theorising Rag Picking in a Broader Context 46
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5 Towards a ‘Multi-‐Dimensional’ Model of Rag Picking –
A Political Ecology Approach 47
5.1 Universal Features of Rag Picking 48
a) Rag Pickers as Part of the ‘Informal Recycling Sector’ 49
b) Rag Picking as Commodity Production 51
c) The Multi-‐Dimensional Character of Rag Picking: Societal,
Environmental and Economical ‘Benefits’ of Informal Waste Recovery 53
5.2 A Different Perspective 59
CHAPTER III DELHI’S GLOBAL CITY PROJECT -‐ THE CREATION OF DUALITIES THROUGH
NEW AESTHETIC NOTIONS 63
1 The Death of the Dream of a ‘Grand’ Delhi? 65
2 Delhi’s New Global Dreams 68
3 Delhi’s Global City Project 70
4 The Westernisation of Delhi 72
5 Delhi’s Middle Class and the New Rhetoric of Aesthetics 73
6 The Rise of an ‘Aesthetic Governance’ 75
7 Consequences of Delhi’s Global City Project
and its Aesthetic Mode of Governance for the Poorer Sections of Society 77
8 Understanding New Dualities in ‘Global’ Delhi 80
CHAPTER IV: WASTE PICKERS AND INFORMAL RECYCLING IN DELHI,
AN ASPIRING GLOBAL CITY 86
1 Rag Picking in Delhi 88
1.1 Rag Pickers as Part of the Informal Recycling Sector 88
a) The Structures of Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector 88
b) Problems with the Pyramidal Representation
of Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector 90
c) Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector as Part of a Global Network 93
x
1.2 Delhi’s Rag Pickers 94
a) Demographic Features 94
b) Religious Background 95
c) Health and Socio-‐Economic Features 96
1.3 Invisible Work – A Political Ecology Evaluation of Rag Picking in Delhi 98
a) The Generation of Income and Added Social Value 98
b) Rag Pickers’ Role in Municipal Solid Waste Management 99
c) Environmental Benefits 100
d) The Reduction of Carbon Emissions 101
e) Cheap Secondary Raw Material 101
1.4 Waste Picking and Delhi’s Global City Aspirations 101
2 The Impact of Delhi’s Global Aspirations on Waste Pickers
and Other Members of Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector 102
2.1 MSWM in the Global City 102
a) The Privatisation MSW Recovery from Dhalaos 105
b) The Privatisation of Waste Recovery in New Delhi Railway Station 106
c) The Incineration of MSW 107
d) Bourgeois Environmentalism and Informal Recycling 108
2.2 The ‘Underclassisation’ of Waste Pickers in the Global City 111
CHAPTER V: THEORETICAL INSIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT 119
1 The Perpetual Reinforcement of the ‘Global City-‐Myth’ 120
2 ‘Ordinary People’ in the Global City 124
3 Challenging Existing Theory 126
4 A View from Below 129
5 The ‘Right to the Global City’ 131
CONCLUSION 138
BIBLIOGRAPHY 145
ADDITIONAL SOURCES 174
xi
TABLES, MAPS, FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS
Table 1: The Mori Memorial Foundation’s (MMF) Global Power City Index 2011 15
Table 2: A Comparison of Formal and Informal Sector
MSW Recovery Proportions for Recycling Purposes 57
Table 3: Socio-‐Economic and Environmental Benefits of Informal Recycling 58
Table 4: Post-‐Millennial Eviction Estimates 78
Table 5: Some Key Actors in Delhi’s Informal Waste Recycling Sector 90
Table 6: Average Incomes and Deprivation Index Figures for Workers
in the Informal Plastic Recycling Industry 97
Table 7: Added Value to Waste Materials in Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector 98
Table 8: Consequences of Privatisation of Waste Recovery
from Dhalao Spaces on Delhi’s Waste Pickers 106
Table 9: Industrial Units Inspected and Closed Down
During the Legal Proceedings of Mahavir Singh vs. Union of India and Others 110
Map 1: The World Map of Most Populated Urban Areas in 2005 16
Map 2: The World Map of Global Cities According to GaWC in 2008 16
Map 3: Areas in which Recycling Units were Closed Down by the Authorities 110
Figure 1: The Informal Recycling Sector 51
Figure 2: The Waste Flow in the Informal Recycling Sector 52
Figure 3: Structure of Delhi’s Informal Waste Recycling Sector 89
Photograph 1: Emerging Dualities in Delhi 85
Photograph 2: Child Waste Pickers Near India Gate 115
Photograph 3: Tooth-‐Paste Tube Recycler in Nagloi 115
Photograph 4: Plastic Segregators in Nagloi 116
Photograph 5: Aluminium Recycler Operating Smelter 116
Photograph 6: E-‐Waste Recycler in Shastri Park (Dismantling DVD Drives) 117
Photograph 7: Rag Picker Community near the Ghazipur Landfill Site 117
Photograph 8: Formalised Waste Pickers at New Delhi Railway Station 118
Photograph 9: ‘Melting Wok’ Like that of Shambhu 118
Photograph 10: Foreign Policy Magazine’s Photographic Portrayal of Global Delhi 121
xii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
$ -‐ Dollar ADB -‐ Asian Development Bank A.T. Kearney -‐ Andrew Thomas Kearney BCE -‐ Before Current Era CBO -‐ Community Based Organisation CDM -‐ Clean Development Mechanism CO2 -‐ Carbon Dioxide DDA -‐ Delhi Development Authority EIU -‐ Economist Intelligent Unit E-‐Waste -‐ Electronic Waste e.g. -‐ exempli gratia [for example] etc. -‐ etcetera [and so forth] FDI -‐ Foreign Direct Investment GaWC [Network] -‐ Globalisation and World City Network GIZ -‐ [Deutsche] Gesellschaft für Internationale
Zusammenarbeit [German Institute for International Cooperation]
GTZ -‐ [Deutsche] Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit [German Institute for Technical Cooperation]
HDPE -‐ High Density Polyethylene IPD -‐ Investment Property Databank i.e. -‐ isto es [that is] IGI [Airport] -‐ Indira Ghandi International Airport ILA -‐ Informationsstelle Lateinamerika ILO -‐ International Labour Organisation/Office IMF -‐ International Monetary Fund IT -‐ Information Technology ITES -‐ Information Technology and Enabled Services JNNURM -‐ Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission KPMG -‐ Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler kWh -‐ Kilowatt Hour MA -‐ Massachusetts MCD -‐ Municipal Council of Delhi MMF -‐ Mori Memorial Foundation MNC -‐ Multinational Corporations MPD -‐ Master Plan for Delhi MSW -‐ Municipal Solid Waste MSWM -‐ Municipal Solid Waste Management n.d. -‐ no date n.p. -‐ no pagination NGO -‐ Non-‐Governmental Organisation NURM -‐ National Urban Renewal Mission PIL -‐ Public Interest Litigation
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PVC -‐ Polyvinyl Chloride RWA -‐ Residential Welfare Association SSC -‐ Subaltern Studies Collective tCO2e -‐ tonnes of Carbon Dioxide equivalent TNC -‐ Transnational Corporation ULCRA -‐ Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act UN -‐ United Nations UNEP -‐ United Nations Environment Programme US -‐ United States USAID -‐ United States Agency for International Development WEEE -‐ Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
1
INTRODUCTION
“Delhi is now a megalopolis, sprawling beyond its own borders, swallowing up
villages and farmland, sucking in migrants, spewing out pollution. There are no
natural limits to this rampant city, nothing to stop it growing, except perhaps, if it
fails to live up to the new Indian dream. […] Delhi, the city of Sultanates and
Mughals, of Djinns and Sufis, the poets and courtesans, is now also a city of
cybercafés and multiplexes. It is the past and it is the future” (Miller 2009: 1).
Delhi is frequently depicted as a city of dualities. Tourist guides and travel reports
refer to the city’s many contrasting features. Some, for example, point out the
juxtaposition that exists between Old and New Delhi. Old Delhi is marked by a vast
density in population and built infrastructure and stands in stark contrast with New
Delhi’s open green spaces (e.g. Brown and Thomas 2008: 88). Other travel literature
highlights how, in most parts of the city, sights of poverty and wealth can often be
found within close spatial proximity (e.g. Kassabova and Ghose 2010: 31). Miller’s
statement above draws our attention to an additional and slightly different kind of
dichotomy, which marks India’s capital in a very distinctive manner. Miller’s reading
of Delhi is that of a city of the past and the future. It reminds us that on the one
hand, Delhi is a city of ruins, which act as nostalgic reminders of the heydays of
former rulers. On the other hand, the city is increasingly becoming a city of
“cybercafés and multiplexes”, as its future is being steered according to “the new
Indian dream”. This dream encompasses the idea of transforming India’s larger
metropolitan areas into ‘modern’, prestigious, and internationally recognised ‘global
cities’. The imagined future of cities like Delhi increasingly contrasts with these cities’
conceived past and, as a result, new kinds of tensions have started to emerge. It is
the analysis of these tensions emerging from Delhi’s attempt to fulfil its global
aspirations that lies at the heart of this thesis.
In the past three decades, the emergence of ‘global cities’ has received considerable
academic attention. The academy has witnessed the growth of various institutions
that have made it their aim to gather data allowing the ranking and comparison of
different global cities. Rankings based on this data tend to be of a hierarchical nature
2
and are frequently used to measure how embedded different metropoles are in the
global economy. They are also used to determine the specific types of service
provision in which various global cities are specialised. Furthermore, they can be
used to establish to what extent a city is recognised for its ‘global’ status.
In this thesis I show that there are some important limitations to the use of such
rankings as well as a need to question the data on which they are based. In Chapter I,
I argue that rankings frequently neglect cities in the global South. In fact, I show how
global city theory more generally, disproportionately draws on the experiences of a
handful of Westernised cities, which have established themselves as ‘showcase’ or
‘model’ global cities. The way, in which these cities are portrayed in academia, the
media, and in publications of international consultancy firms, has started to create a
dazzling and awe-‐inspiring image of what a global city is supposed to look and be like.
This image of the ideal global city has started to inspire many cities around the world.
Metropoles in the developing world have been particularly affected by the
glamorous depiction of model global cities. They increasingly try to improve their
image according to the standards set by internationally renowned global cities.
Usually depicted as ‘Third World’ cities or ‘poor megacities’, they want to transform
their images to that of wealthy and modern global cities. This is often done through
the processes of infrastructural modernisation, economic liberalisation and socio-‐
cultural transformation.
It is for this reason that I steer away from the mainstream approach that considers
the global status of a city as a quantifiable condition. The alternative that I propose
in this thesis is the analysis of the global city as a project that requires political will
and substantial financial investment. The global city project thus describes the
implementation of policy as well as the actions taken by policy makers, politicians
and urban planners in order to transform their cities into internationally recognised
global metropoles. This method encourages attention to those cities, particularly
those of the global South, who are involved in such processes of urban restructuring.
It furthermore opens up a route to include the poorer sections of these cities’
societies within global city theory.
3
I explore these issues through a case study of Delhi’s waste pickers a particular part
of society that has so far not been given much academic attention. Significantly,
waste pickers as an occupational group have until now been completely disregarded
in the creation of global city theory. My analysis of this group of Delhi’s society is
especially compelling since, in contemporary Delhi, waste pickers tend to be
associated with those parts of the city’s past that need to be overcome if the city’s
global dreams are to become true. This thesis is the first serious attempt to include
waste pickers in the theorisation of the global city. I therefore offer a unique and
extensive review of the academic literature that deals with this occupational group
in Chapter II. This review is important, as it helps close the existing gap in knowledge
surrounding the role of waste pickers in the global city. Given the absence of clear
definitions of this occupational group within the existing academic literature, I
develop a definition of the terms ‘waste picker’ and ‘rag picker’. I explain why I use
both terms interchangeably and how a clear definition of this group allows a
differentiation between different kinds of formal and informal solid waste collection.
I show that the occupation of waste picking has existed since pre-‐industrial times
and that it is a means of livelihood sustenance that has regularly been depicted as an
occupation belonging to a pre-‐industrial and pre-‐capitalist past, especially since the
industrial revolution and the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
I then review the academic literature that deals with the role of waste pickers in the
capitalist city. This review includes an unprecedented historical overview of public
and academic attitudes towards waste pickers that reveals negative stigmatisations
by scholars and the general public alike. I show that this attitude still underlies some
contemporary scholarship. Through my review I demonstrate that attempts to
theoretically classify waste pickers in the capitalist city have resulted in a debate that
remains unresolved. I argue that the reason for this is the fact that theorists have
until now only analysed waste picking in terms of commodity production. I overcome
this narrow conceptualisation through the identification of globally common
features of waste picking. Doing this, I am able to show that in order to delineate the
role of waste pickers in the capitalist city, their occupation must be understood as an
integral part of informal waste recycling. I prove that waste pickers are not just the
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producers of a commodity, but that they provide a number of important services
that enable the daily functioning of the city, and which also sustain cities’ global city
projects. The theoretical approach that best suits this analysis is political ecology,
which I adopt for the case of Delhi’s rag pickers in Chapter IV.
Before doing this, I elaborate more generally on Delhi’s global city project in Chapter
III. I argue that contemporary Delhi is the result of a long period of political, religious
and ideological tensions, and that historically, the rulers of the city have aimed to
transform Delhi into a grandiose place. Currently, this is reflected in the aspiration of
the Municipal Council to transform Delhi into a ‘world-‐class’ city. I explain how
Delhi’s global dreams have resulted in infrastructural modernisation, the
organisation of grand events as well as a more general Westernisation of the city-‐
space. I argue that new forms of consumer culture and infrastructure, which reflect a
Western understanding of ‘modernity’, have also significantly increased. I show that,
as a consequence, Delhi’s global city project is predominantly based on aesthetic
notions. This has led to the growing use of an aesthetic rhetoric by the city’s middle
class, politicians and the English speaking media that has resulted in an aesthetic
mode of governance. A consequence of this has been the reinforcement of old, and
the emergence of new, dualities within the city. Delhi’s imagined global self is
constantly compared to an aesthetically ‘less appealing’ Other past, which comprises
sights of poverty such as the slum and the informal workspaces of poorer Delhiites.
Slum dwellers are increasingly becoming associated with the place in which they live
and have been downgraded to an ‘underclass’ with decreasing political rights. As a
consequence their livelihoods have been jeopardised and they have progressively
been shifted towards the outskirts of the city.
Delhi’s rag pickers make part of this marginalised section of the city’s society. I
analyse their recent plight in Chapter IV. As suggested in Chapter II, I examine their
role in Delhi by considering them as part of the city’s informal recycling sector and by
using a political ecology approach. In this way I am able to highlight their
contributions to the everyday functioning of the city and the project of transforming
Delhi into a global city. I am also able to show how Delhi’s global city project affects
rag pickers’ livelihoods. I provide evidence that Delhi’s rag pickers make an
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important contribution to the global transformation of the city. However, regardless
of this contribution, recent changes in policy and planning have impacted upon
waste pickers’ livelihoods in an undeniably negative manner. In fact, my analysis
reveals a contradictory tendency: rag pickers are part of a much needed, but equally
unwanted, labour force. There are thus new tensions between the city’s daily need
for their cheap labour and the city planners’ and policy makers’ urge to free Delhi
from sights of poverty that form the city’s Other.
In my final chapter I ask how focusing on Delhi’s waste pickers contributes to our
existing knowledge about the global city. I show that an analysis of occupational
groups such as waste pickers in aspiring global cities offers a deeper insight into the
‘darker’ side of global city development. The latter is largely ignored in mainstream
academic accounts. I show how key scholars tend to over-‐glamourise the global city
and, in this way, create a mythical aura that surrounds those cities internationally
recognised for their global status. I argue that as a result of this, our understanding
of global cities is increasingly becoming that of wealthy metropoles free of the sights
of poverty. This on the one hand discourages academic attention on the affects of
the global city project on poorer people living in aspiring cities of the global South.
On the other hand, it encourages policies and city planning that aim at freeing
aspiring global cities from an aesthetic association with poverty. The latter leads
policy makers to push the urban ‘poor’ out of the central parts of the city, instead of
combatting poverty and working towards the creation of more equitable cities.
My thesis thus asserts that, if we start looking at workers such as Delhi’s waste
pickers, we discover important flaws in the global city project and the current way in
which the global city tends to be theorised in academia. The former amplify socio-‐
economic and spatial dualities, which pose important questions in regards to urban
citizenship as well as the right to the global city. I argue that global city theory must
start recognising this side of the global city project, for if we ignore it, then we
become guilty of propagating the growth of global cities that create and reinforce
inequalities. Mainstream theory currently propagates the idea of global cities in
which the glamorous lifestyle of a minority is supported by the hard and often
dangerous labour of a marginalised majority that lives in lamentable conditions and
6
is increasingly excluded from the benefits of the global city project. As a corrective to
this tendency I call for the greater levels of recognition of rag pickers’ contribution to
the global city project and for a reconceptualization of urban citizenship and
belonging within the contemporary global city.
Rag pickers can in many cases be identified as ‘ordinary’ urbanites. Their neglect in
mainstream global city theory can for this reason no longer be tolerated. The
solution that I propose is to supplement global city theory to account for the role
that these people play in the transformation process of a metropolis into a global
city. I argue that we must take more seriously the consequences that this
transformation has on rag pickers’ and other marginalised groups’ livelihoods. This
will enable a rectification of existing shortcomings in contemporary global city theory.
It will also enable gaps to be closed in our knowledge about the role that waste
pickers play in the daily functioning of aspiring global cities. Including the stories of
the ‘poor’ and marginalised must become an integral part in the creation of global
city theory. Using the case of Delhi’s waste pickers demonstrates that this approach
can change the way we conceptualise the global city. It allows us to call into question
what makes a ‘successful’ global city and to begin the task of thinking and working
towards more just and inclusive urban futures.
The arguments I put forward in this thesis are predominantly informed by an analysis
of published secondary data as well as existing academic literature on waste picking,
informal recycling, the global city, political ecology and Marxist theory. To enable a
better understanding of the global city project, I also make use of media reports on
different (aspirational and model) global cities, the reports and rankings of global
cities published by multinational consultancy firms, as well as sources such as the
web sites of tourist boards, that show up the auto-‐promotional use of the global
city-‐label used in model global cities.
In light of Delhi’s global city project and the changing attitude towards municipal
solid waste management in Delhi I furthermore refer to policy documents published
by different municipal bodies in Delhi. In order to understand the historical and
contemporary role of waste pickers in the (global) city, my literature review on rag
7
pickers includes previously overlooked historical scholarly texts on the waste picker
figure and an insight into the historical evolution of socio-‐cultural representations of
rag pickers. I do this by drawing upon poetry, theatrical plays, paintings and novels.
My analysis of Delhi’s waste pickers greatly benefits from the inclusion of activist and
NGO publications. The latter consists of the most important source of contemporary
data on Delhi’s waste pickers and the city’s informal recycling sector. The discussion
of Delhi’s waste pickers and Delhi’s global city project in this thesis is furthermore
informed by data that I collected as a research intern for (and under the ethical
guidelines of) Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, a Delhi-‐based NGO
that promotes the rights of Delhi’s waste pickers on a grassroots level. Chintan is
actively involved in the collection of data on waste picking and informal recycling in
Delhi.
As a research intern with Chintan, from January to March 2011, I worked on
different research projects, some of which I draw upon in chapters III and IV. I offer
insights gained from a report on the legal status of informal recycling in Delhi that is
based on several semi-‐structured qualitative interviews with legal staff as well as the
analysis of the case documentation of the case Mahavir Singh vs. Union of India and
Others. Also included in this thesis are passages taken from case studies on the plight
of individual informal recyclers in Delhi. These studies are based on semi-‐structured
qualitative interviews with waste recyclers operating in different recycling hubs in
the city. The full case studies make part of a consultancy report that was
commissioned by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee.
Additional to oral and written data I have included photographic evidence, which
makes part of a larger collection that has been shared with Chintan in Delhi and the
Action Solidarité Tiers Monde, which is an NGO in Luxembourg. I collected this
photographic evidence whilst working in the field with Chintan, under their ethical
guidelines. Seth Schindler from Clark University took Photograph 1 in 2006 and
kindly gave his permission for me to reproduce it in my thesis. Photograph 10 is the
property of Foreign Policy Magazine (Fung and Monschein 2010).
8
Finally, Chapter 4 includes ideas that I previously expressed in the form of two
articles published in Brennpunkt Drëtt Welt in 2011 (Schiltz 2011a; 2011b). Both
articles are based on notes and a diary kept whilst working in the field and visiting
different projects that Chintan has implemented.
9
CHAPTER I: A WORLD OF GLOBAL CITIES -‐ THE FRAGMENTARY NATURE OF THE NEW WORLD MAP
In the introductory lines of an essay on the world city network, Beaverstock, Smith
and Taylor (2000) use an interesting metaphor. They remind us that, as we picture
Earth from outer space, we cannot recognise any of the artificial borders which are
defined by the imagination of a Westphalian cartography (see also Cosgrove 1994).
In fact, it seems that apart from the Great Wall of China (itself a remarkably strong
symbol of a pre-‐Westphalian border), little or no human-‐made structure can be
identified from outer space1. Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor (2000) however, remark
that this changes the moment we look down onto those parts of the Earth, which are
no longer illuminated by the rays of the sun. Indeed, orbital pictures of our planet
taken at night are marked by a pattern of lit-‐up dots and sprinkles that indicate the
geographical location(s) of human urban settlements.
“The fact that these ‘outside views’ of Earth identif[y] a world-‐space of settlements
rather than the more familiar world-‐space of countries has contributed to the
growth of contemporary ‘One-‐World’ rhetoric (…), which has culminated in
‘borderless world’ theories of globalization” (ibid.: 123).
Beaverstock and his colleagues use this metaphor to open up a line of argument that
favours an understanding of the world in terms of a network composed of world
cities. In this chapter, I will argue that this idea can and must be taken a step further.
That is to say that nocturnal pictures of our planet must not merely be considered as
a metaphor for a globalized world that is defined by a network of inter-‐connected
urban areas. The city-‐lights identifiable from an orbital view should also be regarded
as the allegory of the primary focus of twenty-‐five years of global city research.
During this time, scholarship has primarily been concerned with those features of
the global city that are symbolised by the very structures and spaces that illuminate
the city at night; skyscrapers, airports, and sports stadiums, just to name a few. The
global cities’ informal spaces and settlements -‐ its bidonvilles, favelas and
shantytowns – i.e. those parts of the city, which remain comparatively dark at night,
1 For a brief non-‐academic discussion see Loy (1997).
10
have however largely been ignored in the theorisation of global cities. More
importantly, the people who live and work in and around these informal spaces have
also been left out of global city theory. These people nevertheless, constitute a
significant segment of many (global) cities’ overall populations. The neglect of these
people within the mainstream global city literature is therefore hardly justifiable.
The aim of this chapter is to show that it is not only, as critics of the global city
paradigm argue, cities that risk disappearing off the map that defines the world by
its global cities (Robinson 2002), but that the neglect of the slum and its inhabitants
has resulted in a major gap in our knowledge about the role slum dwellers play in
the daily functioning of the global city and how they contribute towards making a
city ‘global’.
1 Globalization and Global Cities
It can be argued that since the 1970s the international stage has undergone some
significant structural changes. A global crisis that had emerged from the failures of
the post-‐war, Fordist-‐Keynesian accumulation regime, resulted in the establishment
of an era of post-‐Fordism (Lipietz 1992). Neoliberal ideologies quickly turned into a
state project (Peck and Tickell 2002) and despite constant tensions between
neoliberal and social-‐democratic forces (Gough 2002; Peck and Tickell 2002; Gough
2003), ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ has since considerably shaped social and
economic policies around the world (Brenner and Theodore 2002a). Markets have
become increasingly global(ized) (Held et al. 1999; Scholte 2000) and the role of the
state has altered considerably (Evans 1997). Despite the fact that the novelty of the
principal features which mark these processes of globalization has been contested
(e.g. Hirst and Thompson 1999), there can be little doubt that recent technological
developments have enabled flows of data, information, culture, and people on an
unforeseen scale.
Despite the impact the forces of globalization have made upon the authority and the
autonomy of the nation state, our world’s cities invariably remain very important
arenas for social struggle. In addition, they have become “central to the production,
11
mutation, and continual reconstitution of neoliberalism” (Brenner and Theodore
2002a: 28). In fact, neoliberal states generally promote cities and their respective
regions as favourable locations for transnational capital investment (Brenner 1998;
Brenner and Theodore 2005). Also, for the first time in history, the world’s urban
population now outweighs its rural counterpart (UN Habitat 2008: IX). It is therefore
unsurprising that academic attention towards cities is now greater than ever before.
This is of course not to say that academic inquisitiveness for the urban is something
new. It is not! However, the recognition that the degree of a city’s ‘creativeness’, is a
determinant for regional economic growth (Jacobs 1969), as well as the
acknowledgement that inter-‐city relations are an imperative condition for such
growth (Jacobs 1984), have both made a significant impact on how the urban is
conceived today.
Sure enough, in 1986 Friedmann suggested that, to understand the spatial
organisation of the world’s post-‐Fordist division of labour, we should turn our
attention to what he called ‘world cities’2. These are cities that have emerged as
centres for capitalist accumulation. They attract international capital and migrants
and are key points in the spatial organisation and articulation of economic markets.
For this reason they possess global control functions and can be ranked
hierarchically in a global city-‐matrix. Representing a spatial articulation of global
capitalism they evidently also reflect capitalism’s internal contractions. World cities
are socially divided and spatially polarised metropoles (Friedmann 1986).
Friedmann’s hypothetical statement has since its first publication become the basis
for much research and debate. It has also led to the formation of the Globalization
and World City (GaWC) Research network. A primary focus of GaWC contributors has
been the empirical collection of data that allow a ranking of cities according to the
significance of their economic command functions. Such a ranking is frequently used
for a mapping of a network/roster of world cities (Taylor 1997; Beaverstock, Smith,
and Taylor 1999; Beaverstock, Taylor and Smith 2000; Taylor 2000; 2001). Despite
some exceptions (e.g. Smith and Timberlake 1994; Benton-‐Short, Price and
2 Note that the term ‘world city’ was firstly coined by Geddes (1915) in the early twentieth century. Friedmann’s understanding of the term varies significantly however.
12
Friedmann 2005) the criteria chosen to rank world cities are mainly based on
economic measurements. Knox (1995) for example rates world cities according to
the importance of their international corporate, finance and telecommunication
functions.
The work of one specific contributor to the GaWC, namely that of Sassen (1994;
2001; 2005) has become particularly influential. Sassen’s publications have led to a
rhetorical shift from the notion ‘world cities’ to that of ‘global cities’, which she
regards as concentration points for firms in the leading industries of finance and
specialised producer services. She (2001) bases her work on a limited number of
global cities, i.e. London, New York and Tokyo. These cities, together with a handful
of other metropoles such as Paris, Singapore, or Hong Kong seem to have become
model global cities on which other cities are measured in wider literature (e.g. Taylor
1997).
Apart from standing as a symbol for cities that are embedded in global economic
networks, such model global cities, as well as their wider city-‐regions3 have become
an icon for new possibilities of individual fulfilment. Different inward flows of a
plethora of multinational and multi-‐ethnic cultures, customs, and social behaviour
patterns that originate from all around the world, shape the global cities’ different
milieus. Whereas some people feel threatened in these milieus, others find them all
the more stimulating (Dürrschmidt 2003). Global cities have thus been celebrated as
cities of diversity, which are able to produce the conditions for cosmopolitanism
(Jacobs 1999).
2 Global Cities as Divided Cities
It becomes clear that the way in which global cities are portrayed in academia can,
on occasion, appear almost overly glamorous. The fact that this does not happen
without reason is a reflection of how the academic idea of the global city has
changed since Friedmann’s original theoretical proposition. Global cities are no
3 For a discussion on global city-‐regions see Scott (2001), Scott et al. (2001) and Pain (2008).
13
longer ‘just’ regarded as the spatial expression of a post-‐Fordist division of labour,
but have become a strong symbol for technological development, economic
prosperity, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitan citizenship. Apart from being the
‘place-‐to-‐be’ for businesses which seek to network and to foster face-‐to-‐face
relationships with customers and service providers, global cities also stand as places
of hope for those seeking cultural diversity4, a change of life-‐style, or maybe even a
space enabling the liberation of their sexual selves [for this see Obendorf (2012) as
well as Dürrschmidt (2003)].
According to Friedmann’s original statement, there ought to be a less sparkling
flipside to this dazzling image of the global city. According to his proposition
(Friedmann 1986), the global city should also be thought of as a divided city that is
marked by spatial polarisation and severe class divisions. This claim has been
confirmed on many occasions. Castells (1989) for example has observed the rise of a
‘dual city’ in which flexible and informal work practices have been on the increase.
Davis (1990) explains how the cityscape of Los Angeles is highly divided. Here, gated
communities, on the one hand, stand in contrast with ghettos and run-‐down
settlements, on the other. Expressed more specifically in line with the global city
discourse, Sassen (Sassen-‐Koob 1987; 1989) has observed an increasing numbre of
informal and casual labour practices in model global cities. She (Sassen 2001)
explains how the growing number of specialised professionals who concentrate in
global cities has led to spatial and socio-‐economic inequality. High-‐income
gentrification has emerged from the growing number of specialised professionals.
These professionals create an increasing demand for customised and locally
produced goods and services. This has led to a growing low-‐wage sector that
frequently operates under casual and informal working conditions (ibid.).
There is thus evidence for widening wealth divides within global cities, even in those
with the most developed global city functions. Global cities are not only “places of
extreme wealth and affluence, but they are also places of severe disadvantage and
deprivation” (Clark 1996: 139) (see also Walks 2001; Lipman 2002; Patel, d'Cruz and
4 See Chang (2000) who discusses the ‘Global City for the Arts’.
14
Burra 2002). The global city can therefore be described by the features of the
modern city with all its sensual stimuli as described by Simmel (1903), as well as by
socio-‐spatial divisions, similar to those described by Engels (1976 [1845]) in the
Condition of the English Working Class. As a result, different social groups and
geographical areas within cities seem to remain excluded from the prosperous side
of global city development (Madon and Sahay 2001: 276).
3 A Divided World of Global Cities
In the megacities, i.e. those cities with a population of more than ten million
inhabitants (Davis 2006), of the developing world, the discrepancy between the two
sides of global city development is particularly clear. In these cities only a very small
elite profits from the relative embeddedness of the city in global economic networks
(Scott et al. 2001: 26; Taylor 2007). The megacities of the global South are therefore
often associated with poverty and not thought of as global cities (see also Chapter V).
As result they are largely ignored in the mainstream global city literature.
This neglect of the developing world’s megacities is rather surprising. Ninety-‐five
percent of the world’s urban population growth over the next generation is expected
to take place in the global South (Dawson and Edwards 2004:1). This means that the
population in the developing world’s megacities will grow and that an even greater
proportion of the world’s overall population will be living in these megapoles. Such
cities, especially those of the African continent, are frequently absent from different
global city rankings (see Table 1). Table 1, for example, places cities according to an
index that “explores the comprehensive power of cities to attract creative people
and excellent companies from around the world“ (MMF 2009: 1).
As we can see in this table, cities from South America, South Asia and Southern
Africa are significantly underrepresented. This absence of Southern cities in different
scholarly global city hierarchies is also evident in the cartographic representation of
the world defined by its global cities. A glance onto the world map of global cities
does not reflect the growing population patterns of the Southern (mega)cities,
15
especially those of South Asia. This can be observed by comparing Map 1 with Map
2.
Table 1: The Mori Memorial Foundation’s (MMF) Global Power City Index 2011
1 New York 16 Boston 2 London 17 Geneva 3 Paris 18 Beijing 4 Tokyo 19 Copenhagen 5 Singapore 20 Madrid 6 Berlin 21 San Francisco 7 Seoul 22 Vancouver 8 Hong Kong 23 Shanghai 9 Amsterdam 24 Brussels
10 Frankfurt 25 Toronto 11 Sydney 26 Chicago 12 Vienna 27 Milan 13 Los Angeles 28 Fukuoka 14 Zurich 29 Taipei 15 Osaka 30 Bangkok
Adopted from MMF (2011: 9)
In an influential critique of the global city-‐model, Robinson (2002; 2006) comes to
the conclusion that due to the disproportionate scholarly focus on a limited number
of global cities in the ‘developed’ world, cities in developing countries are
increasingly neglected. Robinson (2002) claims that the primary aim of global city
research has become putting cities in ‘boxes’ and creating hierarchical listings of the
world’s cities, upon which the new global city-‐cartography is based. This claim is
certainly true. Members of the GaWC research network have been involved in
Conceptualising and Mapping the Structure of the World System’s City System (Smith
and Timberlake 1994) through the search for Hierarchical Tendencies Amongst
World Cities (Taylor 1997). Robinson (2002: 538) however warns that “[i]t is one
16
thing […] to agree that global links are changing. […] It is quite another to suggest
that poor cities and countries are irrelevant to the global economy.”
Map 1: The World Map of Most Populated Urban Areas in 2005
Source: Nordpil (2005)
Map 2: The World Map of Global Cities According to GaWC in 2008
Source: GaWC (2008)
17
Other criticisms about understanding the world as a world of global cities include too
great an emphasis being put on ‘GaWC-‐cities’ (Luke 2006 [2003]) and hierarchical
city rankings (Robinson 2005). The reason why cities located in the global South
often cannot be found on maps of the world’s global cities is claimed to be the
Western-‐centric approach to data collection by institutions such as the GaWC
network (Simon 1995; Clark 1996; Yeung and Olds 2001; Smith 2002; Benton-‐Short,
Price and Friedmann 2005; Grant and Nijman 2006 [2002]; Mayaram 2009). Some
argue that this has led to a dualistic conception of urban areas. Cities are considered
to be either global or ‘non-‐global’ (McCann 2004).
Often neglected by mainstream studies of the global city, and thus thought of as
‘non-‐global’, depictions of the megacities in the South actually provide an antipode
to the glorious images with which the Northern (and regularly Western) model
global cities are epitomised. Metropolitan areas in the South are regularly described
in terms of their growing numbers of slums and informal settlements (Davis 2004;
2006; Rao 2006) and have rhetorically been downgraded to ‘shadow cities’
(Neuwirth 2005), which “embody the most extreme instances of economic injustice,
ecological unsustainability, and spatial apartheid ever confronted by humanity”
(Dawson and Edwards 2004: 6). What is seldom acknowledged is that the forces
causing the marginalisation of many urban areas in the South are the same as those
which have led to the economic growth of the model global cities in the North. In an
essay that differs quite significantly from the usual focus of the GaWC-‐network,
Taylor (2007), one of the network’s main contributors, explains that neoliberalism,
which is now globally embedded, has had a dual outcome. On the one hand
neoliberal globalization has led to the emergence of global cities, whilst on the other
hand it has increased the tendency towards a ‘planet of slums’. Taylor concludes
that in the cities of the South these processes, both triggered by neoliberal
globalization, have led to an extreme wealth divide. Adopting a world systems
approach (e.g. Wallerstein 1974; 1979) he argues that, in this way, some cities of the
global South have emerged as the ‘semi-‐peripheral’ outcome of neoliberal
globalization (Taylor 2007).
18
Thus, despite being ‘different’ from the global cities in the North, cities in low-‐
income countries nevertheless do not remain unaffected by globalization (Grant and
Nijman 2006 [2002]). A question that has therefore been asked is what impact has
global economic change had on the cities of the developing world (Madon and Sahay
2001)? Within the global city literature, apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Varma
2004; Wong, Yeow and Zhu 2005), scant attempts to answer this question can be
found. This of course is a direct outcome of the disproportionate interest in cities
ranked at the top of the most common hierarchical city rankings, a matter that will
be further discussed in Chapter V.
To overcome this problem, the very concept of ‘the global city’ has been put into
question and alternative ways of understanding the urban world have been
proposed. Mayarman (2009) for example develops a ‘non-‐Western’ methodology
that aims at defining global cities through centres of faith and organised religion, in
which trade is not based on neoliberal markets. Others (King 1990; Yeoh 1999; 2001)
argue that an understanding of what constitutes a global city of should take the
colonial history of cities into account, as well as economic, socio-‐political and
discursive dimensions which their colonial past has informed. Some even advocate
that we should move away from the global city terminology altogether and instead
focus on the ‘ordinary city’5. This approach, still recognising global urban links,
appreciates the varying features of different cities. From this perspective, cities need
to be looked at in their entirety and not just in terms of their global command
functions or their integration into global networks based on economic
measurements (Amin and Graham 1997; Robinson 2002; 2006).
4 Understanding the Global City as a ‘Project’
The above criticisms are all valid. However, I assert that a move away from the global
city-‐model is not the appropriate solution required to shed light back onto
5 Note that different understandings of the ‘ordinary’ city tend to vary. Especially Amin and Graham’s (1997) concept would more rightly be expressed using the terminology of a ‘just’ city.
19
‘neglected’ cities. In fact, it can be argued that such a move has now become almost
impossible.
It has already been shown that no city remains unaffected by the forces of neoliberal
globalization. It is for this reason that Castells has claimed that
“the global city phenomenon cannot be reduced to a few urban cores at the top of
the hierarchy. It is a process that connects advanced services, producer centres, and
markets in a global network, with different intensity and at different scale
depending upon the relative importance of the activities located in each area vis-‐à-‐
vis the global network” (Castells 2000: 411 – italics added).
Therefore, no city can be entirely unaffected by the global city process, and equally,
no city can be entirely disconnected from the global city-‐network. We must
consequently steer away from a strictly dualistic understanding that recognises cities
either as ‘global’ or ‘non-‐global’. Therefore, instead of changing our perspective
entirely by giving up the idea of global cities altogether, it seems more appropriate
to ask ourselves how we can bring the neglected cities of the global South back ‘on
the map’. In other words, how can we find a way to re-‐introduce them into the
global city theory?
To answer this question we actually need to revisit the map (see Map 2 above) of
the world defined by its global cities as it stands at the moment. It has been shown
that this map is marked by a Western-‐centric bias that emerges from the criteria
chosen to define what makes a city ‘global’. Because of this bias, some have claimed
that the global city narrative is a developmentalist tool (Rodriguez-‐Bachiller 2000;
Dawson and Edwards 2004; Robinson 2006). There is certainly some truth in this
claim, as I will further discuss in Chapter V. However, “theory is always for someone
and for some purpose” (Cox 1981: 128 -‐ emphasis in original) and the initial purpose
behind the describing the world as a network of global cities was not to dictate the
path for development to cities in the developing world. Rather, Friedmann’s (1986)
hypotheses aimed at opening a way in which we can better understand the spatial
division of labour under post-‐Fordism, which is marked by neoliberalism, with its
reliance on Western concepts such as free market competition (Harvey 2010: 10).
20
The Western bias within measurements of global cities should therefore not be
looked at with astonishment; instead it should be regarded as a natural consequence
of what the World City Hypothesis originally set out to do. However, it is unfortunate
that an attempt at knowledge-‐creation about a world (and from within a world) that
is significantly marked by the forces of a neoliberal ideology is now regarded as a
‘tool’ of neoliberalism itself6.
If we take this problem seriously we can better understand the new cartography of
the world as defined by global cities. This result of knowledge-‐creation is no different
from any other cartographic account. That is to say that cartographic
representations are, and have always been, the outcome of knowledge-‐power
relations (Harley 1989; Cosgrove 1994: 272). Indeed, “[m]aps are authoritarian
images” which can “reinforce and legitimate the status quo” (Harley 1989: 15). This
in effect means that maps contain arguments about a certain world-‐view. They
create hierarchies and are propositional in nature (ibid.). Such prescriptive qualities
have become omnipresent in global city-‐cartography. It reflects an important
element showing how not only the academic, but also the popular understanding of
the global city has developed.
As elaborated earlier on, the idea of the global city changed very quickly after
Friedmann’s (1986) initial proposal. Especially model global cities have become
celebrated for their prosperity, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. It is now
conceived ‘good’ for a city to have a ‘global’ status, and to move upwards within
various global city hierarchies (see Robinson 2006). This celebration of global cities in
the academy has sparked over to the public, the private, and the political domains,
as we will see in later chapters (Chapters III & V). That a ‘global’ status is thought of
as something positive can for example be observed in the way in which global cities
are fêted by A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm that publishes its
own global city rankings. For the researchers at A.T. Kearney, global cities represent
“the ports of the global age, the places that both run the global economy and
influence its direction. […]. They are where you go to do business, yes, but also to
6 For a more thorough discussion see also Surborg (2011).
21
see the greatest art, hear the greatest orchestras, learn the latest styles, eat the best
food[,] and study in the finest universities. […] [T]hey are crowded with those who
are creating the future, noisy with the clash of deals and ideas, frantic in the race to
stay ahead. They have money and power. They know where the world is going
because they’re already there. To be a global city in this sense is a splendid thing.”
(A.T. Kearney 2010: 1 – emphasis added)
Such remarkably positive illustrations of what it means for a city to be ‘global’ make
it easy to understand why model global cities such as London nowadays use their
‘global’ status for branding purposes. A description of London found on an official
tourism website, for example, states the following:
“London is a global city that offers almost everything you might wish to see, do or
experience. There really is something for everyone in London today. […] [T]here's
simply no excuse to be bored!” (London and Partners n.d.: n.p.)
Model global cities such as London use the global city rhetoric not only to attract
tourists, but also investors and businesses (see Jacobs 1996: 53-‐58). The way in
which the idea of being global is used has thus become increasingly powerful. It is no
wonder then, that cities in the developing world are now also showing ambitions to
become global cities themselves. Chapter III will show, for example, how the latest
Master Plan for Delhi accords the utmost importance to Delhi’s transformation into a
global city that is internationally recognised for its ‘world-‐class’ status.
Recognising that decision makers in cities all around the world have started to
introduce policies that aim at transforming their cities into global metropoles can
help us to incorporate previously ‘neglected’ cities into global city theory. In fact, it
can be argued that megacities of the global South should no longer just be judged
and analysed according to their actual position, or indeed their absence, in global
city-‐rankings such as those generated by GaWC contributors. In this thesis I propose
that our focus should be on the consequences of their aspirations to become a
global city. We need to look at what impact these aspirations have on economic,
social and public policies, which aim at making these ‘neglected’ cities global. It has
been claimed that the cities of the South which want to ‘upgrade’ and match the
22
status and the celebrated experience of model global cities, need to spend
significant proportions of their often scarce resources on projects that aim at
promoting their global statuses. As a result, these resources are steered away from
urgent domestic needs (Lemanski 2007: 449). Attempts to move up in the global city
hierarchy can therefore have severe distributional and economic consequences and
the drive towards a ‘global’ status even encourages segregation within aspiring cities
(Robinson 2005; Lemanski 2007).
Becoming ‘global’ is thus not only, as Castells argues, an externally configured
process. It requires political will (Yeung and Olds 2001: 15) and should therefore also
be seen as a project upon which city planners and policy makers embark, having
been inspired by the sparkling representations of model global cities. This is the
reason why moving away from the global city narrative in the academy has become
very difficult if not impossible. The global city is no longer an abstract and purely
theoretical academic concept. It has emerged as something tangible, with a reality
that can (at least arguably) be found, felt, and lived in the model global cities of the
‘developed’ world, whose existence, and more importantly, whose depictions have
started to impact upon the imagination of city planners and urban policy makers all
around the world.
An explicit analysis of the global city as project is nevertheless a rather rare
occurrence. However, studies in which an understanding of the global city as project
undoubtedly becomes apparent do exist. Kim and Young for example explicitly point
out that the state often plays a fundamental role in the making of global cities (Kim
and Young 2000: 2188; 2001: 2542). Comparing New York, Tokyo and Seoul’s
pathway to becoming global cities, they show that dissimilar political and economic
strategies have led to these three cities having achieved global city status. This
allows the authors to criticise mainstream theory, according to which global cities
would need to be produced by very similar structural processes (Kim and Young
2000).
Olds and Yeung also agree that “cities around the world […] are being proactively
globalised by a myriad of policies, programmes and projects that are shaped by
23
global/world city discourses” (Yeung and Olds 2001: 15). Elaborating on the
examples of global city projects of Hong Kong and Singapore, they draw on empiric
research to analyse urban planning and regionalisation. In doing this they
differentiate between the ‘becoming’ (i.e. a process) and the ‘being’ (i.e. a state) of
global cities. Thereby they offer a more nuanced understanding of global cities,
which they argue, should be categorised either as ‘hyper global cities’, as ‘emerging
global cities’, or as ‘global city states’ (ibid.; Olds and Yeung 2004).
Also showing an awareness of the global city as a project are Jessop and Sum (2000),
whilst focusing on the case of Hong Kong. They show how urban entrepreneurialism,
i.e. the “innovative strategies intended to maintain or enhance its economic
competitiveness vis-‐à-‐vis other cities and economic spaces” (ibid.: 2289) is a vital
tool for not only shaping urban hierarchies, but even the characteristics of the world
city-‐network altogether. Lipietz (2004) concludes that a neoliberal-‐style global city
project might be the most realistic (or unavoidable) solution for urban regeneration
and the de-‐criminalisation in some of Johannesburg’s city quarters.
5 Acknowledging the Role of ‘Ordinary People’ in ‘Neglected’ Cities
Against its initial intentions, global city research has led to a dualistic outlook that
distinguishes between global and non-‐global cities. Whereas model global cities have
become a symbol of progress and prosperity, the cities in the global South are
generally neglected in the global city paradigm. They have rather become renowned
for their vast slums, their rapid population growth, and their crumbling
infrastructure and are usually described as megacities. As they try to improve their
statuses and become ‘global’, their poorer and often informal districts remain
marginalised and forgotten (Lemanski 2007). However, the people who work and
live in the informal urban milieu are high in number. Davis (2004) estimates that the
total number of slum dwellers will rise to 2.5 billion by 2030. This section of urban
society is “the fastest-‐growing and most novel social class on the planet” (ibid.: 11).
24
If indeed our most critical task in urban theory is to ask how different people
respond to the challenges set by a world marked by neoliberal globalization (Shatkin
2007), then we can no longer neglect this growing section of urbanites in our
discourse on the global city. We need to ask what role these people play in their
cities’ global projects. Another important issue that we need to address is if, and
how, the implementation of policies and projects that aim at fulfilling their cities’
global aspirations affects these people’s livelihoods. If we ignore these questions,
then we neglect large parts of urban populations. In that case, our knowledge
remains limited to the glamorous side of global city development. Then, it is not just
cites, but the spaces in which these people live (the slums, favelas and bidonvilles)
that disappear off the map of the world’s global cities. This leaves significant lacunae
in our knowledge of the global city and consequently also the theory with which we
explain the world of global cities.
The United Nations (UN Habitat 2003: 12) estimates that in South and Central Asia,
262 out of 452 million urban inhabitants live in slums. It can thus be said that in this
part of the world living in a slum is not an exception. It can therefore be suggested
that slum dwellers need to be conceived of as ‘ordinary’ people (see also Chapter V).
Since they tend to be employed in the urban informal sector (Breman 2010 [1999]b:
221), and often provide services, which assist formal sector companies to participate
in global economic activities (Madon and Sahay 2001: 283), we can no longer justify
not including them in discourses surrounding the global city. Our task must therefore
not lie in a rhetorical switch from the global to the ordinary city, but an increased
focus on those cities that have embarked upon a global city project. More
particularly, we need to put our attention towards those people who live in these
cities’ slums and work in their informal economic sectors. This allows us to
understand the role that ordinary people play in their cities’ global projects and fill a
significant gap in the current state of knowledge on the global city. In a time in which
the right to the city has been discussed by some of the main authorities in urban
studies (e.g. Harvey 2008; Lefebvre 2009 [1968]) it is now also time to question the
‘right to the global city’ (Purcell 2003).
25
The generation of knowledge on, and the theorisation of, the less glamorous side of
global cities is indeed at the core of this thesis. I will for the first time ever bring a
very important group of ordinary people into the theorisation of the global city:
Delhi’s waste pickers. Global city theory has hitherto completely disregarded the
world’s waste pickers. The city of Delhi, even though increasingly mentioned in
studies on the global city, is still far away from achieving an internationally
recognised global status. However, Chapter III will show that Delhi’s politicians and
urban elite have recently initiated what I have termed a global city project. Making
Delhi a world-‐class city has become official municipal policy. I will analyse how this
policy has started to be implemented and will give evidence of how this has started
to affect the poorer parts of Delhi’s society. In Chapter IV I will more specifically
analyse how Delhi’s global city project has impacted upon the city’s waste pickers. I
will also determine how waste picking fits into the imagination of ‘global Delhi’.
Before doing this, I will provide a singularly extensive overview of literature on waste
pickers in order to determine what role waste pickers play in the contemporary city.
26
CHAPTER II: UNDERSTANDING RAG PICKING – FRAMING COMMON FEATURES OF A GLOBAL PHENOMENON
The sight of rag pickers salvaging through piles of garbage vividly reflects one
extreme end of the wealth divide in urban areas. It also reveals that there is a lot of
truth in the saying ‘one person’s waste is someone else’s treasure’. However, up to
the early 1970s, academia had almost completely disregarded the plight of those
people who sustain their livelihoods through the collection of other people’s trash.
This seems rather surprising; historically humans always attempted to re-‐utilise as
much of their waste as possible and, whenever a family was no longer able to make
use of their household wastes, then there were usually other people, such as ‘rag
and bone (wo)men’, for whom a wide range of these superfluous household items
were still valuable (Vogler 1981; Strasser 1999; Ackroyd 2000; Medina 2007). That
some people make use of items, which others consider to be worthless, is thus not
at all a new occurrence. What has changed however, is the amount of household
waste that people generate. This has considerably increased with the growth of
consumer culture (Strasser 1999; Falasca-‐Zamponi 2011) and it is no surprise then,
that people collecting and re-‐utilising other people’s trash has become an ever more
visible global phenomenon (Strasser 1999; Medina 2007).
1 Defining Rag Picking
Since the 1970s, academic interest in waste picking has steadily grown. This is
reflected in the publication of a large number of mostly localised studies. However,
waste pickers have thus far been ignored in the global city literature. Compounding
this problem is the lack of a commonly recognised definition for the term ‘rag
picking’. The absence of a universally applied definition can certainly be explained by
the fact that studies on waste pickers come from a whole range of very diverse
disciplines and fields. With a few exceptions [most notably Sicular (1991) and
Medina (e.g. 2007)] not much thought has been put into defining ‘rag picking’ in a
thorough and universal way. In fact, the term often seems so self-‐explanatory that
27
no definition is given whatsoever. The lack of, or too vague a definition, can however
be problematic as we shall now see.
Whenever no clear definition for the term rag picking is given, readers might for
example just assume that rag picking is ‘the informal recovery of waste’. Even
though such an understanding might make sense in some cases, this simple
conception might prove more problematic in other instances. Studies have for
example shown that even in high-‐income countries the informal recovery of waste is
a relatively common activity. In the United States, some people regularly scavenge
through garbage bins in search of valuable objects (Rendleman and Feldstein 1997;
Ackerman and Mirza 2001; Medina 2001; Ferell 2006). What differentiates this
behaviour from what technically appears to be the same activity in lower-‐income
countries is that in the West, the informal recovery of waste is not always the result
of the raw struggle for survival (Ferell 2006). On some occasions it reflects the
expression of an alternative lifestyle-‐choice (see Rufus and Lawson 2009). In
countries of the developing world on the other hand, the activity is usually a matter
of the most basic livelihood sustenance (Meyer 1987; Köberlein 2003; Muller and
Scheinberg 2003; Gerold 2004). There can thus be a difference in what motivates
people to go about recovering other people’s trash. The present analysis will
therefore make a differentiation between ‘rag picking’ and those forms of informal
recovery of solid waste in high-‐income countries to which Ferell (2006) has allocated
the rather unfortunate term ‘scrounging’7. Rag picking will thus be regarded as an
activity that allows people to sustain their livelihoods, and not as the expression of a
lifestyle choice.
This differentiation is however, only the first step in defining the term ‘rag picking’.
In order to define the term more thoroughly it is important that another important
feature associated with waste recovery is taken into consideration. Daniel Sicular
notes that ‘scavengers’ are those people who collect waste and who regard “waste-‐
as-‐ore” (Sicular 1991: 138). This differentiates them from other workers who collect
7 Note that there is also a significant difference between the composition of household waste between high and lower income countries (e.g. Medina 2005: 4) even though some argue that the waste in the developing world is now ‘in transition’ (Scheinberg et al. 1999: 10).
28
“waste-‐as-‐waste” (ibid.). These include for example sweepers (see Streefland 1979)8
who do not necessarily sell on any of the collected waste items9. Another example of
such persons are municipal sanitation workers [i.e. ‘bin-‐(wo)men’ paid by the
municipalities], which some of the literature has also referred to as ‘scavengers’ (e.g.
Perry 1978). Sicular’s differentiation helps to clearly separate both categories of
waste recovery.
However, this thesis will not adopt the term ‘scavenger’, which Sicular, as well as a
large number of other scholars use. In some former British colonies, such as India,
the term has to the present day been used for persons who clean dry toilets and
transport human excrement10. Thus, in these countries ‘scavenging’ refers to a
different and oftentimes formal occupation (see for example Pathak 1991; Sharma
1995; Vivek 1998; Mishra 2000; Bandyopadhyay 2001; Sachchidananda 2001;
Ramaswamy 2005). Some people furthermore consider the term ‘scavenger’ to be
an insult (Furedy 1990; Köberlein 2003: 99). To overcome this negative connotation
as well as the semantic problems with the term ‘scavenger’, the terms ‘rag picker’
and ‘waste picker’ will henceforth be used in this study.
After these sematic clarifications we can now move towards the establishment of a
working definition of the terms ‘rag picking’ and ‘waste picking’. In this thesis, both
terms will be used interchangeably11 to describe the collection of waste that is
primarily motivated by reasons of livelihood sustenance. ‘Rag pickers’ or ‘waste
pickers’ are those actors, who recover solid waste materials, and who regard
collected waste materials as valuable goods. They are usually informal actors and
can be of any age and gender. It should be noted that waste picking is not an
occupation exclusive to urban areas. Recently there have, for example, been reports
on river waste pickers in Guatemala (Abd 2011) and people collecting unexploded
8 Streefland’s monograph has inexplicably been regarded as an early study on rag pickers. 9 Note that some sweepers do take advantage of having access to saleable household wastes (Searle-‐Chatterjee 1981: 35; Vivek 1998). 10 It is estimated that there are 1.3 million people who clean dry toilets in India today (Ramaswamy 2005: vi -‐ see also chapter 6 for a discussion). 11 Even though the word ‘waste picker’ might appear more accurate, the term rag picker reminds us of the rag and bone (wo)men, and therefore also that the recovery of waste for livelihood sustenance is a long-‐standing occupation. Using both terms furthermore improves the readability of the text.
29
bombshells in the jungles of Laos (BBC World Service 2008). It also needs to be noted
that the informal nature of the occupation can vary as in some places waste pickers
get more official recognition than in others. They are thus sometimes in a grey area
between the formal and the informal sectors (van de Klundert and Lardinois 1995:
20-‐21). In some cities, waste pickers are for example required to buy licences, which
means that their work is recognised to some extent (Poerbo 1991: 67; Rankokwane
and Gwebu 2006; Samson 2008: 4). The nature of work in the informal sector and
the fact that formality and informality are just two extremities of a scale will be
discussed further below in this chapter.
One can generally differentiate between three different ways in which rag pickers
make use of the waste they collect (see Scheinberg et al. 2011). First, they can make
use of waste materials to satisfy their personal consumption needs. Rag pickers
utilise recovered foodstuffs, clothing, and items suitable for the construction of
shelter. Sometimes, waste is also used in a creative manner and can be fashioned
into saleable consumer goods (Grothues 1988). Most commonly however, waste is
sold to traders in a network of informal recycling. Here, it is transformed into
secondary raw material constituting the source for a wide range of new products
(Schiltz 2011d).
2 The Public Conception and Awareness of Rag Picking
We will shortly see how academic interest in waste picking has gradually grown since
the 1970s. In recent years, the Western public’s interest in rag picking has started to
emerge. Every so often one can now read about rag pickers in the news. The
coverage of such reports ranges from tales about quite dramatic events, such as the
trash-‐slide of ‘Smokey Mountain’, a landfill site in Manila (the Philippines) that
buried a large number of rag pickers (BBC 2000), to more ‘amusing’ anecdotes, as for
example how rag pickers supply bottles used in the Indian counterfeit whisky trade
(The Age 2011). Recent reports also echo a slowly growing political awareness about
informal waste recovery (e.g. The Dakshin Times 2010). More critical journalists have
highlighted the consequences that the privatisation of urban solid waste
30
management (SWM) has on the livelihoods of rag picker communities in cities of the
developing world (e.g. Mirkes 2010). Waste pickers have also recently become the
focus of televised documentaries (Livon-‐Grosman 2006; Channel 4 2008; BBC 1 2010;
Channel 4 2010; Walker, Jardim and Harley 2010). One of the underlying themes of
such documentaries is an attempt to educate people about the everyday problems
that rag pickers and their families face. This idea is also apparent in some literary
accounts12 such as those of Urrea (1996) and Pomonati (1993). The latter, for
example, offers a very convincing fictitional look into the life and problems of child
rag pickers in Phnom Penh (Cambodia). There has also been an outstanding attempt
to include the issue of rag picking into the pedagogical realm of Anglophone primary
school education (Wolf et al. 2002). The Philippines’ waste pickers are furthermore
the main protagonists in a recent fictional book by Mulligan (2010) that is directed at
a younger audience. More obscure, on the other hand, is Subramanian’s (1996)
poetic use of the term rag picking as a metaphor for the religious and political
desensitisation of India’s society. However, in general it can be said that the Western
public’s awareness of the phenomenon of rag picking is only slowly growing.
3 Existing Areas of Research
The academic body dealing with rag picking has since the early 1970s grown to a
sizeable proportion. Studies on rag picking all around the world 13 have been
12 See also Boo (2012) who tells the story of an Indian waste dealer. 13 For example: Bangladesh (Maqsood Sinha and Nurul Amin 1995; Rouse and Ali 2001), Botswana (Tevera 1994; Rankokwane and Gwebu 2006), Brazil (da Coura Couento and Codj 1990; Boyer 1999; dos Santos 2000; Gutberlet 2008a; 2008b; do Carmo and de Oliveira 2010; Pacheco, Ronchetti and Masanet 2012), Cameroon (Mochungong 2010), Chile (Reding 1983), China (Yang and Furedy 1993; Li 2002; Chi et al. 2011), Columbia (Birkbeck 1978; 1979; Pacheco 1992), Egypt (Haynes and El-‐Hakim 1979; Meyer 1987; Assaad 1996; Fahami and Sutton 2006; Didero 2009; 2012), Ghana (Post et al. 2003), India (Furedy 1984; 1990; 1992; Furedi and Almagir 1992; Prasad and Furedy 1992; Bose and Blore 1993; Nath 1993; Huysman 1994; van Beukering 1994; Venkateswaran 1994; Hunt 1996; Singh 1996; Sudhir, Srinivasan and Muraleedharan 1997; Beall 1997b; Chaturvedi 1998; Schenk et al. 1998; Manimekalai and Kunjammal 1999; Singh 1999; Trettin 1999; Snel 1999a; 1999b; Chaturvedi 2001; 2003; Köberlein 2003; Patel and Thu 2003; Post et al. 2003; Sarkar 2003; Gill 2004; Agrawal et al. 2005; Bhowmik 2005; Efran 2005; Gidwani 2006; Gill 2006; Hayami et al. 2006; Rankokwane and Gwebu 2006; Sharholy et al. 2008; Taylan et al. 2008; Khullar and Trey-‐White 2009; Gill 2010; Pattnaik and Reddy 2010; Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011), Indonesia (Versnel 1982; Baldisimo et al. 1988; Poerbo 1991; Sicular 1991; 1992; Nas and Jaffe 2004; Sembiring and Nitivattananon 2010), Jamaica (Nas and Jaffe 2004), Japan (Taira 1969), Mexico (Long 2002; Bernache
31
conducted. A categorisation of the published research is not an easy task as the
majority of existing studies can be allocated to different overlapping disciplines and
fields. Identifiable research themes are often highly interrelated and cannot
generally be analysed in isolation from one another. Studies that focus on rag picking
as an occupation in the informal sector, for example, will struggle to avoid a
discussion of strategies of livelihood sustenance and/or on urban poverty. Despite
these difficulties, an attempt to categorise the hitherto published research has
several advantages. For one, it helps to highlight the gaps in the current state of our
knowledge on rag picking. It furthermore allows us to identify common global
features of waste picking that I consider later in this study. This is an important first
step for everyone who wants to attempt the challenging undertaking of locating rag
picking within the capitalist mode of production. This task is important as it also
allows studying the role of waste pickers in the global city which is central to this
thesis. What therefore follows is a categorisation of the vast majority of the
academic literature dealing with the phenomenon of waste picking. My presentation
of this literature is unique in its scale and detail.
Taira (1969) conducted a pioneering study on rag picker communities in the late
1960s mainly focusing on urban poverty. Taira analysed how far rag picking helped
improve the living conditions of a poor community in Tokyo (Japan) (ibid.). Since this
early publication, urban poverty has remained a central focus for a number of
studies dealing with waste picking (Furedy 1984; Kalpagam 1985; Fernadez and de la
Torre 1986; Tevera 1994; Bhattacharya and Kundu 1998; McLean 2000a). Hayami
and colleagues combine a focus on urban poverty, with a more specific analysis of
the ways in which the work of the urban poor (i.e. the rag pickers) is beneficial to the
environment (Hayami, et al. 2006).
2003; Castillo-‐Berthier 2003; Chapman and de los Reyes 2007), Nigeria (Adeyemi et al. 2001; Nzeadibe 2009; Oguntoyinbo 2012), Pakistan (Ali and Ali 1993; Beall 1997b; Rouse 2006), Paraguay (Holz 2010), Peru (Drackner 2005), the Philippines (Keyes 1974; Fernadez and de la Torre 1986; Baldisimo et al. 1988; Bubel 1990; Nadeau 1990; Gunn and Ostos 1992; Gerold 2004; Gaillard and Cadac 2009; Paul et al. 2012 -‐ in press) Senegal (Waas and Diop 1991), South Africa (McLean 2000a; 2000b; Langenhoven and Dyssel 2007; Samson 2008; Schenck and Blaauw 2011), Sri Lanka (van Horen 2004), Tanzania (1991; Yhdeyo 1995; Kaseva and Gupta 1996), Thailand (Baldisimo et al. 1988; Kungskulniti et al. 1991; Mutamara et al. 1994), Vietnam (DiGregorio 1994; Ngo 2001; Chalin et al. 2003; Chi 2003; Huang 2003; Tran 2003; Mitchell 2009) and Zimbabwe (Masocha 2006).
32
Considering that rag picking is in most cases an informal occupation, it comes as no
surprise that there have been a wide range of studies, which have analysed rag
picking in terms of an informal sector activity (Ali and Ali 1993; van Beukering 1994;
Maqsood Sinha and Nurul Amin 1995; Assaad 1996; Snel 1999b; dos Santos 2000;
Rogerson 2001). Whereas some of these studies look more specifically into the
possibilities that rag pickers have to organise as unions and cooperatives (Lohani
1984; Bhowmik 2005; Medina 2005; do Carmo and de Oliveira 2010), others are
more concerned with the role that the informal sector plays in urban solid waste
management (Trettin 1999; Wilson et al. 2006). It is probably this very realm of
waste management studies that has received most academic attention (Haynes and
El-‐Hakim 1979; Bubel 1990; da Coura Couento and Codj 1990; van Beukering 1994;
van de Klundert and Lardinois 1995; Yhdeyo 1995; Schenk et al. 1998; Ngo 2001;
Zurbrügg 2002; Post et al. 2003; Ahmed and Ali 2004; van Horen 2004; Agrawal et al.
2005; Chapman and de los Reyes 2007; Sharholy et al. 2008; Taylan et al. 2008;
Pattnaik and Reddy 2010; Sembiring and Nitivattananon 2010; UN Habitat 2010).
Scholars in this field of research have also put emphasis on the environmental
benefits of rag picking (Bernarche 2003) as well as social aspects of different solid
waste management strategies (Furedy 1990). However, whilst most of these
publications look at rag picking in relation to municipal solid waste management
(MSWM), other studies have turned their attention to the management of clinical
waste (Mochungong 2010), electronic waste (Chi et al. 2011; Ciocoiu and Târtiu
2012), recycling of MSW (Pacheco, Ronchetti and Masanet 2012), as well as systems
of community based or integrative and sustainable solid waste management, which
integrate and officialise the services of waste pickers (Furedy 1992; Kaseva and
Gupta 1996; Sudhir, Srinivasan, and Muraleedharan 1997; Hasan 1998; Ali and Snel
1999; Long 2002; Efran 2005; Rouse 2006; Gutberlet 2008a; 2008b; GTZ 2010;
Didero 2012; Oguntoyinbo 2012; Paul et al. 2012 -‐ in press). Tran (2003) more
specifically analyses the role which women play in such community organisations.
Gender, has indeed been the focus of many studies (Huysman 1994; Beall 1997b;
Loan 2003; Patel 2003; Madsen 2006). Such studies often look into a wide range of
issues such as livelihood sustenance strategies (Scheinberg et al. 1999; Muller and
33
Scheinberg 2003), and the role which women rag pickers play in organising solid
waste management systems (Chi 2003; Huang 2003). Additional to a focus on gender,
there are of course also a number of studies with a particular focus on child waste
pickers (Gunn and Ostos 1992; Hunt 1996; Singh 1996; Manimekalai and Kunjammal
1999; Singh 1999; Hayami et al. 2006). There is also a growing trend within the
literature to analyse rag picking in terms of livelihood sustenance without the
specific focus on gender (Meyer 1987). The sustainable livelihood approach that was
developed for use in the rural context has been applied to rag picker communities in
urban environments (Rouse and Ali 2001; Köberlein 2003; Gerold 2004). Another
common theme under which waste pickers are analysed is health (Nath 1993; Chalin
et al. 2003; Ray et al. 2004; Mochungong 2010).
Apart from these more ‘conventional’ ways of looking at waste picking and waste
pickers, which have all helped shape our existing knowledge, there have also been
studies with a less conventional focus. Nadeau (1990) for example, focused on a rag
picking community in Cebu City (the Philippines) and offers a critique of ecclesial
development strategies14. Gidwani (2006) philosophises whether we should regard
rag pickers as ‘subaltern cosmopolitans’. Reding (1983) mentions rag pickers in an
anthropological diary that draws its title Menschen im Müll (‘humans amongst
waste’) from the author’s encounters with waste pickers in Santiago de Chile. Khullar
and Trey-‐White (2009) offer a powerful and evocative photographic account on
Delhi’s rag pickers. Even scholars specialised in foreign aid (Hunger, Spies and
Wehenpohl 2005) and disaster studies (Gaillard and Cadac 2009) have shown
interest in rag pickers. Bose and Blore (1993) look more closely into the interesting
topic of who can claim ownership of discarded household waste. In the late 1980s
Grothues (1988) published an illustrated volume that studies waste pickers’ petty
recycling practices. In this the inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit of some
waste pickers is highlighted. A book by Vogler (1981) also deals with (petty) informal
recycling. It has however a completely different approach, offering technical
guidelines for informal workers (including rag pickers) to either start, or optimise
14 This refers to the establishment of small faith-‐based communities. Christian activists seek to transform prevailing societies in an equitable and ‘just’ way.
34
their own informal recycling enterprises. The vast amount of recycling specialisations
is highlighted in a study by Waas and Diop (1991).
Another domain of research that needs to be mentioned is the analysis of the work
of CBOs (Community Based Organisations) and NGOs (Non-‐Governmental
Organisations), which cooperate with rag pickers in various ways (Schenk et al. 1998;
Schindler [2012 -‐ forthcoming]). The number of such NGOs has been growing
steadily and they have become another source for research outputs (e.g. Chaturvedi
1998; 2001; Chintan 2003; Sarkar 2003; Toxics Link 2005; Samson 2008; Chikarmane
and Narayan 2009; Samson 2009; Chintan 2009a; 2009b; 2010; 2011; Chikarmane
and Narayan n.d.). Apart from these publications by NGOs working in the field, there
has also been some work conducted by NGOs not directly connected with rag pickers
such as an edited volume published by the Informationsstelle Lateinamerika
(Information Point for Latin America) (ILA 2010) and many other publications (e.g.
Schiltz 2011a; 2011b).
An important set of theoretical accounts (Birkbeck 1978; Gerry 1978; Birkbeck 1979;
Gerry 1980; Gerry and Birkbeck 1981; Blincow 1986; Sicular 1991; 1992; DiGregorio
1994) has dealt with a critical issue. It has asked whether rag picking should be read
as a pre-‐capitalist form of production, or, whether it can be explained as an integral
part of the capitalist system. Unfortunately the numbers of contributors to this
debate is relatively limited and many authors ignore this issue altogether15. As a
result, the theoretical debate that emerged from the discussion of this issue is still
far from resolved. The few scholars who have contributed to the debate have thus
far also failed at acknowledging earlier attempts to theoretically classify waste
picking activities under capitalism as I will show further below. Authors commenting
on a classification of rag pickers in the nineteenth century have to date been ignored
altogether. This is however not to say that the history of rag picking has remained
unacknowledged. Several studies offer very insightful accounts on a history of petty
15 A discussion of this problematic is for example fully absent from Köberlein’s (2003) doctoral thesis on the livelihood strategies of Delhi’s waste pickers.
35
recycling and waste picking (Strasser 1999; Ackroyd 2000; Medina 2001; 2007)16.
However, early attempts at classifying the class position of waste pickers in the 19th
century European city have been ignored in more contemporary theory-‐building. In
my development of the theory on waste picking below, I will rectify this neglect of
19th century scholarship and show how these texts still influence our thinking on
waste pickers. This allows showing up a classist bias in some contemporary
scholarship, which urgently needs to be overcome.
With the exception of the work of Martin Medina (1997; 2007), what also seems to
be missing from the literature however is a consistent approach that describes rag
picking more generally as an occupation with globally common features. This is not
surprising as, at first sight, rag picking activities seem to vary quite significantly from
place to place. In Egypt for example, the zabaleen who are mainly Coptic Christians,
collect, sort, and then sell a diversity of non-‐organic waste materials. Organic
household wastes are on the other hand used to feed pigs, which can afterwards be
sold for a further monetary return. The zabaleen waste pickers pay monthly fees to
the Muslim wahiya, who control the access to household wastes in specific
neighbourhoods. This system has historically evolved and used to be recognised by
the authorities (Haynes and El-‐Hakim 1979; Meyer 1987; Fahami and Sutton 2006)
(for recent developments see Didero 2009; 2012). At first sight this form of waste
management appears completely different from accounts of rag pickers who collect
waste on illegal dumpsites in Nigeria (Adeyemi et al. 2001), or even the behaviour of
some Mexican cartoneros who regularly cross the Mexican border into the United
States to gain greater access to discarded cardboard items (Medina 2007: 145-‐146).
As has become apparent from the above review of the existing literature on waste
picking, there remain important gaps in our knowledge of this occupation. The
literature commonly represents waste picking in light of localised studies that have
their theoretic roots in a plethora of different academic fields. As a consequence,
attempts that depict rag picking as a global occupation with common features that
16 Unfortunately Medina’s first chapter of The World’s Scavengers, despite being well researched offers a historical account that fails to clearly differentiate between waste removal, recycling and rag picking practices (Medina 2007). This weakens Medina’s claim about the historic omnipresence of rag picking activities to some extent.
36
are not space-‐specific, are exceptional. Identifying such key features of waste picking,
which are recognised by a majority of local studies is however of vital importance,
for it is the only way for us to make sense of rag picking in the contemporary city.
This will be the task of the remainder of this chapter. What the review of the current
state of the academic literature has also shown is that the figure of the waste picker
has so far altogether been ignored by global city theory. The lack of an analysis of
the role that rag pickers play in global cities represents a significant gap in our
knowledge. It is this very lacuna that the present thesis addresses. In the following
chapters, I will discuss the reasons for this omission of the waste picker figure from
the theorisation of the global city. I will show why and how we must include waste
pickers into global city theory and will explore how this undertaking enhances our
understanding of who, and what, makes a city ‘global’.
4 Making Sense of Waste Picking in the Capitalist City
In order to make sense of waste picking in the global city, as well as to show why and
how we need to incorporate waste pickers into our theorisation of the global city, let
us now turn to a critical assessment of existing attempts to theorise the occupation
in the capitalist system. Despite the increasing academic attention towards rag
picking, the question of how rag picking can be classified under the capitalist mode
of production has scarcely been discussed. Since the 1970s, when rag picking started
to be more widely analysed in the academic domain, academics have labelled rag
pickers ‘urban miners’ (McLean 2000a), or ‘waste harvesters’ (Masocha 2006).
Unfortunately, such classifications are rarely theoretically informed. So far only a
handful of scholars have tried to seriously tackle the difficult task of creating a
theory that makes sense of rag picking activities in the capitalist world. As
mentioned earlier, a theoretical debate that emerged out of these few assessments
has not as yet been resolved. Determining the place of rag pickers in the capitalist
system is however essential to understand the role of rag pickers in the cities of
today’s world and indeed also their role within global cities. This section will review
the existing theoretical accounts dealing with this issue and will argue that the
occupation needs to be examined as an integrative part of a broader network of the
37
informal recycling of waste. Before doing this, it will however be shown that the
question of the rag pickers’ position under capitalism is in no way new. Indeed, the
difficulties that lie in making sense of rag picking activities under capitalism is
reflected in the readings of the literature and academic studies of the nineteenth
century. Before introducing the more recent theory, this chapter will firstly introduce
nineteenth century accounts, which have up to now been completely ignored in this
context.
4.1 Rag Picking in the European Industrial City
Recovering other people’s waste for livelihood sustenance goes back a long way
(Melosi 2005: Introduction), and histories of rag picking have been studied by
authors such as Strasser (1999), Ackroyd (2000: chapter 36) and Medina (2001;
2007: 26-‐47)17. It can be said that even after the industrial revolution and the rise of
capitalism, the sight of European rag and bone (wo)men continued to remain rather
common in European cities. Indeed, they only gradually disappeared during the
twentieth century. The German Lumpensammler for example lost parts of their
occupation to an officially organised recovery of waste materials by the Hitler Youth
in the times of the Third Reich (see Ringel 2009: 79-‐80). Evidently, rag picking
activities in Europe did not remain unobserved by scholars and artists of the time,
and consequently rag pickers were mentioned in scholarly texts as well as in many
creative narratives of the 1800s. Examples of the latter are Édouard Manet’s 1869
painting Le Chiffonnier (The Rag Picker), Charles Baudelaire’s (1993 [1857]) poem Le
Vin des Chiffonniers (The Rag Pickers’ Wine), Paul de Kock’s (1842: 184) La Grande
Ville – Nouveau Tableau de Paris (The Great City -‐ A New Painting of Paris), and Le
Chiffonnier ou le Philosophe Nocturne (The Rag Picker or the Philosopher of the
Night) by Théaulon de Lambert and Etienne (1826).
Henry Mayhew (1861) was one of the first scholars to offer an in-‐depth analysis of
London’s ‘street-‐finders’ and ‘collectors’. His work describes the different kinds of
waste picking activities, ranging from ‘bone-‐grubbers’ and ‘rag-‐gatherers’ to ‘pure’ 17 See footnote above.
38
(i.e. dog dung) finders, in much detail. Doing this he repeatedly corroborated the
negative features that 19th century society attached to these occupations. Mayhew
for example described street finders as “the very lowest class of all the street-‐people”
and believed that the “vacuity of mind which is a distinguishing feature of the class
[wa]s the mere emaciation of the mental faculties proceeding from […] the [class’]
extreme wretchedness” (ibid.: 138). French ‘criminologist’ Antoine Frégier offered
most probably, the first serious attempted to theoretically classify rag pickers in
terms of societal structures. Frégier (1840), in an analysis of Paris’ poor communities,
put a lot of emphasis on waste pickers, which he identified as a stereotypical
grouping within an allocation that he called the ‘dangerous (and suspicious) classes’.
Frégier used this domain to capture the majority of the poorest members of Parisian
society. His suggestion that about half of Paris’ 4000 rag pickers were ‘corrupt’
explains his particular interest in the chiffoniers. Like Mayhew, Frégier‘s descriptions
dwell on negative stereotypes of this occupational group. However he did
acknowledge the tough conditions and the hard work that went along with waste
picking. Rather interestingly, he also stated that the rag picker’s ‘salary’ (le salaire)
was, just like the wages of industrial workers, highly affected by the affluence of the
industry (ibid.). This thought is important for two reasons. Firstly it shows that the
income of Paris’ rag pickers was believed to somehow be linked to capitalist forms of
production, even though rag pickers did not belong to the industrial work force per
se. On the other hand, it could also explain why Frégier’s definition of the ‘dangerous
classes’ was so vague and why it did not allow this very differentiation between
industrial work and other occupations performed by the poor, such as waste picking
(ibid.).
This specific differentiation was only made by Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, who
used the proletarian class to distinctively describe the domain of the industrial
labour force (Stallybrass 1990). Unfortunately Marx never offered a specific analysis
of rag picking activities. He did nevertheless mention rag pickers, so to say en
passant, as one of the many actors that belong to what he called the
Lumpenproletariat (Marx 2003 [1852]: 445). Marx had developed this term to
describe the ‘lowest’ layer of an ‘old’ society. The Lumpenproletariat lacks a proper
39
class conscience and therefore also lacks revolutionary spirit (Marx and Engels 2003
[1848]: 347; Marx 2003 [1852]: 445). It is thus clearly distinguishable from the
proletarian class, which under Marx’s model of capitalism needs to be limited to the
collective of industrial labourers. However, notwithstanding its name, the
Lumpenproletariat also does not belong to the proletarian class.
For Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production, this proves to be somewhat
problematic as his model of capitalism is based on the dichotomy between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Therefore, despite constituting a group on its own,
which is clearly identifiable, the Lumpenproletariat can itself not be conceived as a
class per se, as such an understanding would clash with the bourgeoisie-‐proletariat
dialectic. Consequently, the Lumpenproletariat has been described as a “class-‐which-‐
is-‐not-‐a-‐class” (Stallybrass 1990: 80). It is a category for those parts of society that
Marx could not theoretically frame; it represents an “undefined, dissolved and
distorted mass” (Marx 2003 [1852]: 445 – own translation), i.e. an intermediate
category representing “a group without [a] stable collective determination”
(Thoburn 2002: 441 -‐ emphasis in original). This demonstrates that Marx was unable
to locate rag pickers within the capitalist mode of production. Rag pickers according
to Marx have to be understood outside the class struggle between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie as left-‐over from pre-‐industrial times. Marx was however not
the only author who struggled with making sense of the position of waste pickers in
the capitalist society of the nineteenth century.
Stallybrass (1990) shows how Marx’s thought in regards to the rag pickers is
omnipresent in the literary accounts of the mid 1800s. He illustrates this by referring
to Jules Janin’s (1843) Un Hiver à Paris (A Winter in Paris), in which Janin (ibid.: 201-‐
203; 268) describes Paris’ chiffonniers as members of society who live outside
conventional categories. Stallybrass also refers to Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in
which Hugo talked about the rise of an
“indigent class which begins to separate from the lowest of petty bourgeoisie in
straitened circumstances, and which extends from misery to misery into the lowest
depths of society down to those two beings in whom all the material things of
40
civilization end, the sewer-‐man who sweeps up the mud, and the ragpicker who
collects scrap” (Hugo 2007 [1862]: 41).
A certain ‘distinctiveness’ of rag pickers vis-‐à-‐vis the rest of the society does also
seem to be reflected in the literary accounts of that time. Rigier’s (1988) analysis of
the eighteenth century French literature on ‘the marginalised’ supports this point
even further. Rigier explains how the French rag picker tends to be represented as a
special case of marginalised communities in industrial Paris. Being used as a symbol
for marginality in the great city (la grande ville), that is marked by the economic
modifications caused by capitalism, the rag picker is also portrayed as an
autonomous actor (an ‘entrepreneur’), who does not belong to the bourgeoisie, and
who simultaneously stands apart from the proletarian class. The nature of the rag
picker’s class location is thus disparate. Rigier shows that this is particularly reflected
in the work of Jules Vallès (2007 [1882]: 51-‐64), who uses the rag picker as an
antithesis to the working class. Rigier (1988) compares this with Marx’s ideas on the
Lumpenproletariat. This once more proves the seemingly confusing class location of
waste pickers under capitalism.
It is interesting to note that the ‘special’ character of rag pickers also seems to be
reflected in the spatial confinement of rag picking communities in the nineteenth
century city. Rigier (1988) describes how Paris’ chiffonniers used to form
autonomous neighbourhoods and communities within the city. This is not explicit to
France but can also be recognised in the example of the Luxembourgish rag (wo)men,
the Lompekréimer who formed part of a marginal immigrant community (the
Lakerten) with their own slang (Jéinesch) and neighbourhood, namely
Weimerskierch, a divergent village located within the boundaries of the Luxembourg
City region (Tockert 1989; NET TV 2008a; 2008b; Haan-‐Duval et al. 2010).
Thus scholarly as well as literary accounts on rag pickers in the European industrial
city reflect a certain observers’ bewilderment about how to make sense of rag
pickers in the capitalist, industrial city (see also Skinner 2004: 46). On the one hand,
rag pickers were depicted as stereotypical members of the cities’ marginalised
41
communities, but on the other, were portrayed as autonomous ‘entrepreneur’
communities, which lived in distinctive spatial confinements. Observers were unable
to locate rag pickers in terms of the bourgeoisie-‐proletariat dialectic and as a result,
rag pickers were frequently allocated to categories such as the Lumpenproletariat18.
Attached to such categorisations was often a negative social stigma19. Marx (1978
[1850]: 62) on one occasion described the collective of the Lumpenproletariat as a
“recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of
society”. The term has thus been brought in association with people who are
unwilling to work and has been translated into English with such problematic
expression as ‘social scum’, ‘swell-‐mob’, or ‘ragamuffins’ (Stallybrass 1990: 85-‐86;
Thoburn 2002: 440). We shall see later in this chapter how this demonisation of
waste pickers still occurs in contemporary academic writing.
4.2 Rag Picking in Contemporary Cities Of the Developing World
The difficulties that nineteenth century scholars had in classifying rag picking as an
occupation in the capitalist city remain discernible in more contemporary
theorisations of waste picking. It was Chris Birkbeck (1978) who, in the 20th century,
firstly attempted to classify rag picking as an occupation in the cities in the
developing world20. In a study on waste pickers who collect cardboard and paper in
Cali (Colombia), he argued that rag pickers could be regarded as ‘self-‐employed
proletarians’ who work in an informal factory: the garbage dump. Birkbeck tried to
illustrate how working on the landfill is in many ways similar to working in a
capitalist factory. The main difference between waste pickers and ‘conventional’
factory workers is that they appear to be self-‐employed; they are in control of the
intensity and length of their working days.
18 Vivek (1998: 81) claims that ‘revolutionaries’ in India still attach the ‘Lumpen’ label to sweepers and those persons who remove human faeces from dry toilets. 19 The negative stigma of waste pickers can be traced back to pre-‐industrial times (see Boudriot 1988). 20 Waste picking was until then described as a pre-‐capitalist activity (e.g. Sjoberg 1960).
42
“It may seem rather strange to call Cali’s garbage dump a factory, for the first
impressions that the visitor gets have nothing in common with a typical industrial
workplace”, but “to describe the garbage dump as a ‘factory’ and its workers as
‘proletarians’ (…) remind[s] us that garbage pickers are not so different nor so
divorced from Cali’s industrial sector as we might think” (ibid. 1978: 1173).
For Birkbeck, rag pickers are thus an essential part of a recycling network that
supplies large factories and small industries. Even though they cannot be recognised
as formal employees of those factories, their income is dependent on the local
market price for the secondary raw material. The factories, as well as the waste
dealers, dictate this price. In doing so, they appropriate most of the surplus that rag
pickers generate. Since waste pickers lack the skills to organise themselves for the
promotion of their economic interests, they have little bargaining power and cannot
demand higher prices (ibid.). Birkbeck therefore concludes that they effectively work
for piece-‐wages. Yet, it appears that they are also self-‐employed as they have the
freedom to determine when and how much they work and because they are
seemingly in control of the means of production. The label ‘self-‐employed
proletarians’ thus aims at underlining this contradictory nature of their class location
(Birkbeck 1979).
A lot of these ideas are based on the work of Chris Gerry (1978; 1980). With a
particular interest in rag picking, Gerry had previously studied the relationship
between petty commodity producers and the larger industry in cities of the
developing world. He argued that petty commodity production is a very complex
concept in need of a more precise categorisation. He claimed that the traditional
distinction between wage-‐workers and independent workers no longer made sense.
Making reference to Wright (1976), who suggested that some occupational groups
under capitalism have contradictory class locations, Gerry (1980) distinguished
between different fractions within the labour force and concluded that rag pickers
belong to a category that he labelled ‘disguised proletarians.’ It is this idea that he
and Birkbeck eventually took up in a common paper in which they argued that rag
pickers persist as a type of industrial outworkers who occupy a contradicting class
location. They take on features of both, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat and
43
should therefore be recognised as ‘disguised wage-‐workers’ (Gerry and Birkbeck
1981).
An analysis of Gerry and Birkbeck’s theorem uncovers some parallels with the
accounts on rag picking of the European industrial city. Like Marx’s interpretation of
rag pickers, the Lumpenproletarians – who represent a “class-‐which-‐is-‐not-‐a-‐class”
(Stallybrass 1990: 80), Gerry and Birkbeck suggest that rag pickers occupy a
contradictory class location. However, whereas Marx’s writing indicates that rag
picking should altogether be disconnected from the capitalist mode of production,
by labelling rag pickers Lumpenproletarians, Gerry and Birkbeck, attempt to make
sense of the seemingly nuanced class features of rag pickers. Importantly, by moving
away from Marx’s classification of rag pickers as Lumpenproletarians, they also
distanced themselves from the negative stigmatisation that goes along with the
Lumpen-‐terminology.
Gerry and Birkbeck’s ideas have however not remained unchallenged. It has for
example been remarked that their analysis is too narrow because it mainly focuses
on the relationship of Cali’s rag pickers and the paper industry and thus ignores the
fact that rag pickers recover a large amount of other waste materials (DiGregorio
1994: 36). Blincow (1986) furthermore highlights the weaknesses in the argument
that rag pickers receive wages for a particular form of piece-‐work. He remarks that
the links between piece-‐work and capitalist wage-‐work do not become evident in
Gerry and Birkbeck’s analysis. More significantly, Blincow criticises them for
grounding their thesis on the argument that other actors in the waste-‐recycling
chain appropriate the surplus that rag pickers create. He claims that this
appropriation of surplus happens through operations in the market system.
Consequently, Gerry and Birkbeck’s classification is based on the circulation process
and not the process of production. Blincow therefore concludes that
“what is notable (…) is not so much that intermediaries through their
appropriation of surplus create wage workers, but that they prevent or
restrict an internal dynamic of stability and growth of petty commodity
44
production. There is no disguised wage worker, but rather a complexity of
forms of petty commodity production” (ibid.: 114).
Despite uncovering some important flaws in Gerry and Birkbeck’s argument, it
seems that Blincow fails to recognise the primary aim of their analysis. That there is
“a complexity of forms of petty commodity production” was in fact one of the
problems that led Gerry (1978; 1980) to work on a reclassification of different petty
commodity producers in the first place. Blincow thus only restates the initial
problem and is unable to offer an alternative approach to the classification of rag
picking activities under capitalism.
Daniel Sicular (1991; 1992) does offer such an alternative. He, similarly to Blincow,
criticises the idea that rag picking constitutes a special form of piece-‐work. He then
tries to establish that rag picking cannot be considered capitalist production at all.
Rather than comparing the garbage dump to a capitalist factory, he regards it as an
urban common. Rag pickers make use of the resources found on this common land
and should therefore be viewed as ‘hunter-‐gatherers’ who materialise their labour
by transforming waste into raw material.
Sicular’s analysis is based on social relations of production. This approach allows him
to focus directly on the relations between rag pickers and waste dealers who
“provide the pickers with tools, credit, leadership and the outlet for their daily
production and commodities” (Sicular 1992: 27). This relationship is marked by what
Sicular calls ‘tying’: dealers attain the rag pickers’ promise for future material
benefits in exchange for the instant provision of vital assets. Rag pickers voluntarily
abandon a significant part of the surplus that they create, which continuously
guarantees their physical survival. They get exploited openly and willingly through
means of unequal market exchange. Therefore they share a common ideology with
peasants who lack a revolutionary spirit. They do not want to change a historically
embedded system, in which they can rely on social relationships of both, horizontal
(through cooperation with their peers), and vertical (through tying to their dealer)
45
nature. Sicular thus concludes that rag pickers need to be seen as ‘urban peasants’21
who are engaged in hunting and gathering on common urban land and who can
therefore not be seen to be involved in capitalist production (Sicular 1991; 1992).
The argument that Sicular develops in terms of the relevance of ‘tying’ within the
relationship between rag pickers and waste dealers appears to be rather strong. A
description of the features of this ‘tying’ process can indeed be found in a reading of
a number of other studies, undertaken in different geographical regions (e.g. Keyes
1974; Versnel 1982; Kalpagam 1985; Fernandez and de la Torre 1986;
DiGregorio1994; Beall 1997a; Gerold 2004; Gill 2004; 2007; 2010).
Sicular’s theory can however be criticised on other accounts. DiGregorio (1994: 39)
for example notes that rag pickers, unlike rural peasants, are not in control of the
land on which they work. There is thus a difference between rag pickers and rural
peasants, which is reflected in the way both parties react when markets decline.
DiGregorio explains that in times of hardship, rag pickers can only rely on an increase
of their production, unlike farmers who can vary the amount of produce used for
their own consumption (ibid.). It has also been noted that agrarian societies are
fundamentally different from hunting and gathering societies. By implication, both
categories cannot simply be merged (Medina 2007).
Martin Medina (2007) offers the latest, but also least convincing attempt to make
sense of rag picking activities under capitalism. He generally agrees with Birkbeck
that there is a clear link between rag picking and the formal industrial sector.
Therefore, he proposes a theory of rag picking that is based on supply and demand
in the market. Rag picking, he believes, is nothing more than a response to the
scarcity of raw material that can emerge in any society, capitalist and non-‐capitalist
(ibid.). Unfortunately Medina fails to develop this thought in more detail and he
completely disregards the fact that both Birkbeck and Sicular had already highlighted
that, even though demand and supply do to some extent shape the rag pickers’
21 Regarding the work of (‘poor’) migrants in the cities of the developing world as a form of ‘urban peasantry’ is not an original idea however. In the 1970s, it had already been discussed in a debate between McGee (1973) and Isaac (1974).
46
incomes, on the lowest levels in the informal recycling chain, ‘rational’ market
principles do not apply (see Birkbeck 1978: 1177; Sicular 1992: 154)22.
Overall, the critique of the existing literature reveals that any attempt to classify rag
picking in terms of the capitalist mode of production is highly problematic.
Completely disjoining the occupation from capitalism and classifying rag pickers as
‘urban peasants’ ignores the strong ties between rag picking and the formal
industrial sector. However, due to the fact that such links are usually not formalised
(in terms of labour contracts etc.) an approach that recognises rag pickers as
‘disguised proletarians’ is also very thorny. Rag pickers remain in possession (be it
only for a short time) of their labour product, which is then sold on as a commodity.
Therefore they cannot strictly be seen as selling their labour force to industrialists.
The problem of theoretically classifying rag picking under capitalism thus remains
unresolved.
4.3 Theorising Rag Picking in a Broader Context
There exists however one further theoretical approach that has so far not had much
resonance. Michael DiGregorio (1994) argues that one can look at waste picking
from three different perspectives. Waste picking can be understood as an
occupation, as a labour process, or, as the basis of a specific urban industry that he
terms ‘the recovery industry’. The recovery industry includes, beside rag pickers, a
variety of other occupational groups such as waste dealers, agents, small traders,
and junk buyers. Tracing communal factors that shape market organisation and
regulation within Hanoi’s (Vietnam) recovery industry, DiGregorio argues that within
recovery communities, there is a strong village-‐like mentality that has historic origins
(ibid.).
DiGregorio explains that the vast majority of Hanoi’s recovery community is only
engaged in waste work on a seasonal basis when agricultural work is scarce. Moving
into the realm of waste recovery helps peasant households to diversify their income
22 For more discussion on this matter see also Chintan (2009b).
47
in times of agricultural employment shortages. It appears that people from different
villages tend to specialise in specific occupations within the recovery industry. This
practice, DiGregorio argues, can be compared to traditional Vietnamese ‘peasant
industries’ which are marked by independent and specialised communal networks.
This means that a division of labour can be found between different villages.
Production is relatively labour intensive and producers tend to be highly specialised.
Nevertheless they remain independent from advanced technological developments.
DiGregorio suggests that the community regulates the recovery market from within,
through patron-‐client relationships.
His model is very explicit and can certainly not be applied universally. Social
structures of Vietnamese society are too specific and Hanoi’s recovery industry only
seems to take on a significant proportion during the agricultural low seasons. Also,
the model is mostly concerned with the internal dynamics of Hanoi’s recovery
industry and is thus not helpful in determining the role of rag pickers under
capitalism. In fact, DiGregorio regards the recovery industry as a peasant industry
and consequently, rag picking, or indeed any other activity within Hanoi’s recovery
industry, cannot be understood as capitalist production if his model is applied.
However, there are some important strengths to this approach. Unlike most authors
before, DiGregorio does not try to classify rag pickers independently, but locates
them within a sector that he calls Hanoi’s recovery industry. Rag picking is thus
understood as part of a broader domain.
5 Towards a ‘Multi-‐Dimensional’ Model of Rag Picking – A Political Ecology Approach
It will now be shown that an understanding of rag picking as part of a broader
system is actually implicit in most of the existing literature. However, what
DiGregorio termed ‘recovery industry’ will in this study be called the ‘informal
recycling sector’. It will be shown that, portraying rag pickers in this fashion reflects a
common interpretation of their occupation. The latter is usually theorised in terms
48
of the production of secondary raw material, a commodity. Contrary to this limited
theoretical understanding, I will emphasise that commodity production is just one
dimension of rag picking. Due to the nature of how the ‘informal recycling sector’ is
usually represented, other dimensions of rag picking are frequently overlooked. I will
show that waste pickers, as members of the informal recycling sector, accomplish a
number of unpaid services thereby benefitting society, the economy, and the
environment in a conjoint manner.
5.1 Universal Features of Rag Picking
I have already shown that most studies are not concerned with an analysis of rag
picking as a global phenomenon. In this respect, Martin Medina’s work stands out as
a real exception. Medina, on several occasions, derives global common features
associated with waste picking (Medina 1997; 2007). His outline of such features
offers a good starting point for the development of a multidimensional model of rag
picking. Medina (1997) explains that:
Rag pickers -‐ tend to be relatively poor.
-‐ usually face a hostile social environment.
-‐ are often migrants.
-‐ supply raw materials to artisans and industry.
-‐ utilise organic wastes as fertiliser and/or food for livestock.
Rag picking -‐ can have economic and environmental benefits.
-‐ is a prime example of an activity within the informal sector.
-‐ comes at a number of social costs (e.g. health risks; spread of
waste in the streets; exploitation of rag pickers through waste
dealers etc.).
-‐ is an adaptive response to chronic poverty or extreme
circumstances (such as war).
Even though this outline has been criticised (Nas and Jaffe 2004), it is undeniable
that some of the features which Medina highlights are reflected in a significant
49
numbre of studies on rag picking. Firstly, rag picking is usually regarded as an
informal occupation and placed within a system that I will term the ‘informal
recycling sector’ in this thesis. Rag pickers are generally portrayed as part of a
production chain that represents the division of labour within this sector (see Figure
1). Secondly, production in the informal recycling sector and consequently also rag
picking leads to the production of secondary raw material. Another feature outlined
by Medina that this study takes very seriously is the idea that rag picking has a
number of economic and environmental benefits.
a) Rag Pickers as Part of the ‘Informal Recycling Sector’
The literature regularly describes rag pickers as the first link in a chain of waste
recycling, in which different actors turn inorganic solid waste into secondary raw
material (see Bubel 1990; Hasan 1998). This chain of production will henceforth be
termed the ‘informal recycling sector’. It is a very specific fragment of what is
generally termed the ‘informal sector’. The informal sector is a concept that was first
used by the International Labour Organisation (ILO 1972) and Hart (1973) in the early
1970s to describe labour activities that take place outside a strict legal framework,
and which are not recognised by official employment statistics. It was said to stand
in contrast with the formal sector, in which employment is organised according to
national laws and regulations. The dualist character of this differentiation has since
been criticised (e.g. Breman 1985; Roy 2005) and it is now recognised that informal
work frequently takes place in a grey area of legality (e.g. Maldonado 1995) and that
‘formality’ and ‘informality’ are just two opposite poles of one continuum (see
Bromley 1978: 1034; Altvater and Mahnkopf 2002: 87-‐88; 2003: 7; Chen 2007).
The informalisation of the labour force, and especially female workers (e.g. Kantor
2009), has become recognised as a growing global trend (Altvater 2005) that is no
longer limited to the developing world. Indeed, many studies have shown that
informal work practices are increasing in countries with higher average incomes,
50
too23 (e.g. Gershuny 1979; Pahl 1984; Gaughan and Ferman 1987; Henry 1987; Pahl
1987; Sassen-‐Koob 1987; 1988; Portes, Castells and Benton 1989; 1989; Stoller 1996).
Despite a comparatively disproportionate academic focus on urban informality,
informal work is not limited to the urban sphere but is also quite common in rural
areas (e.g. Felt and Sinclair 1992). The informal sector is vast and includes a myriad
of different actors and activities. It might be for this reason that many studies, rather
than working towards a definition of the informal sector, prefer to list a number of
such activities [including rag picking (e.g. ILO 2002: 2; Breman 2010 [1999]b: 202)] to
explain what they understand under the notion.
A universally recognised definition of what constitutes the informal sector does not
exist and what is considered informal work is space-‐specific and varies over time
(Portes, Castells and Benton 1989: 289; Mead and Morrison 1996). Castells and
Portes (1989: 11) therefore argue that it should be considered “a common-‐sense
notion whose moving social boundaries cannot be captured by a strict definition”.
This study consequently does not look at the informal sector as a strictly defined
entity. In fact, the debate around the informal sector goes very deep and a thorough
discussion of the diverse theoretical approaches lies beyond the scope of this study24.
Despite a relative vagueness of its conceptual boundaries it can nevertheless be
argued that acknowledging waste pickers as part of the informal sector is imperative
and, as the literature review at the beginning of this chapter has shown, this practice
is rather common. What I call the informal recycling sector is the sector in which
solid waste is revalorised into raw material through a number of different labour
stages accomplished by different stakeholders. This production is represented in
23 This disproves the (almost Rostowian) argument put forward by neoliberal thinkers such as de Soto (2000) who believe that informality is just a stage in the development process of less developed countries.
24 For a general overview of the literature see for example Charmes (1990) or Breman (2010 [1999]b). An exemplary overview of the theoretic debate is given by Komlosey and his colleagues (Komlosey et al. 1997) and for an indication on important empiric studies see for example Blunch, Canagarajah and Raju (2001). One issue that finds increasing recognition in the literature is that informality means socio-‐economic insecurity for those involved in this kind of work (Altvater and Mahnkopf 2002; ILO 2002; Altvater and Mahnkopf 2003; Altvater 2005; ILO 2006; Harris-‐White 2010; Breman 2010 [1999]a; 2010 [1999]b) .
51
-‐ CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION OF WASTE INTO COMMODITIES
-‐ OWN CONSUMPTION
-‐ USE OF ORGANIC WASTE IN AGRICULTURE
Figure 1 below. It should be noted that this is a simplified representation of this
sector, which often overlaps with formal work practices (Chi et al. 2011: 736).
Figure 1: The Informal Recycling Sector_
Flow-‐chart based on a general reading of the literature (see for example Keyes 1974; Baldisimo et al. 1988: 34; DiGregorio 1994: 68; Mutamara et al. 1994: 157; Maqsood Sinha and Nurul Amin 1995: 188; Snel 1999a: 27; Ngo 2001: 416; Rogerson 2001: 249; Efran 2005: 39-‐40; Hayami et al. 2006; Wilson et al. 2006: 800). _____________________________________________________________________
b) Rag Picking as Commodity Production
The above model illustrates the typical understanding of rag picking in the literature.
Rag pickers are portrayed as actors amongst a larger workforce that is involved in
the process of creating secondary raw material. Secondary raw material is
channelled back into the market and used as a resource in the formal and the
informal sectors (Schiltz 2011d). This understanding of commodity production
through rag pickers and informal recycling more generally, is neatly reflected in a
formula set out by Castillo-‐Berthier (2003: 6 -‐ emphasis in original):
“Garbage + Labour = Merchandise”
THE INFORMAL RECYCLING SECTOR
INFORMAL SECTOR
FORMAL SECTOR
RAG PICKERS (& ITINERANT WASTE BUYERS)
WASTE DEALERS
SPECIALISED WHOLESALERS
MARKET RECYCLING UNITS &
FACTORIES
52
This formula takes the labour process that waste undergoes in the informal recycling
sector to its upmost form of simplification. It reveals that the nature of waste
undergoes a qualitative alteration through labour. ‘Garbage’, once considered
worthless and thrown away, is recovered by rag pickers, and, by going through
different processing stages in the informal recycling sector, it is transformed into
‘merchandise’. The different processing stages that waste undergoes can be
illustrated in a waste flow diagram as illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The Waste Flow in the Informal Recycling Sector
The understanding of rag picking as commodity production is also reflected in the
writings of those who have sought to classify waste picking within the capitalist
system. As elaborated in much detail above, existing theories seek to make sense of
rag picking by either classifying the occupation as a specific type of capitalist
production, or a form of production that needs to be dissociated from the capitalist
mode altogether. Regardless of the specific approaches, which the different authors
have applied, they regard rag pickers merely as the producers of a commodity. It will
• Consumers
Waste is Discarded
• Bins • Open Space • Waste Collec}on Vehicles • Landfill
Collec}on and Segrega}on through Rag
Pickers & I}nerant Waste Buyers
• Small Dealers • Large Dealers
Further Segrega}on
• Recycling Units • Factories
Recycling: Waste à
Secondary Raw Material
• Formal Businesses • Informal Businesses
Secondary Raw Material à New Commodi}es
53
now be argued that this is too narrow an understanding of what waste picking
implies.
c) The Multi-‐Dimensional Character of Rag Picking: Societal, Environmental
and Economical ‘Benefits’ of Informal Waste Recovery and Recycling
In fact, more recent research has started to recognise that “[informal] recycling turns
materials that would otherwise become waste into valuable resource and generates
a host of [other] benefits” (Agrawal et al. 2005: 74). The following paragraphs will
look at identifying those other ‘benefits’. I will argue that rag pickers, as well as other
workers involved in the informal recycling sector, provide a number of services free
of charge. This realisation provides a novel way to conceive waste picking and
informal recycling activities under capitalism and can help us determine the role
which rag pickers play in the contemporary (global) city.
The ‘benefits’ of informal waste recovery and recycling can be recognised on three
distinct ‘levels’. They are societal, environmental, and economic. Increasing
evidence of such ‘benefits’ is given in the literature. Some quantitative evidence is
therefore available to support the claims, which will now be made. However, it
needs to be noted that it is very difficult to obtain accurate numbers on informal
waste recovery and recycling practices (Rogerson 2001: 248). The cited figures
therefore need to be treated with caution and mainly serve an illustrative purpose.
Rag pickers clean the streets and public spaces in cities of the developing world. In
this way, streets are cleared from waste that can clog drains and/or become the
breading ground for diseases and pests (see Venkateswaran 1994: 24-‐26;
Satterthwaite 2003: 78). In doing this, waste pickers contribute to municipal solid
waste management (MSWM), which, in a majority of the cases, is run by the
municipal services. “The informal [recycling] sector thus plays an important
environmental role, shoring up adequate local authority provision by recovering
large quantities of solid waste at zero cost to the public, and reducing the burden of
uncollected waste in the process” (Gill 2010: 10) (see also Efran 2005: 39). Informal
54
waste collection consequently saves a significant amount of public spending. Pune’s
(India) waste pickers save the municipalities an estimated US $3.87 million per year
(Chikarmane and Narayan 2009: 27). Figures of recovered waste in Delhi suggest
that about 17 percent of waste is recovered by Delhi’s informal recycling sector. This
results in government savings of about US $5 million a year (US $13,000 per day)
(Sharholy et al. 2008). Delhi’s informal recycling sector thus greatly benefits society
and the environment. Its positive contribution often goes unacknowledged, however
(Talyan et al. 2008: 1284)25. I will discuss the case of Delhi in more detail in Chapter
IV below.
Of course, the proportions of waste, which are recuperated by rag pickers
throughout the world, and which in this way are channelled through the informal
recycling sector vary greatly. It is estimated that in Guadalajara (Mexico), ‘only’
about 2.2 percent of municipal solid waste (MSW) is recovered by informal sector
workers. Despite this only being a small proportion of the overall waste volume that
is generated, it still adds up to more than 69 tonnes of waste per day (Bernarche
2003: 229). In Hanoi (Vietnam) a much larger estimated 20 percent of MSW passes
through the informal recycling sector. This equals an impressive 250 tonnes of waste
that is recovered for recycling on a daily basis (Ngo 2001: 207). In Dar es Salaam
(Tanzania) 11 percent of MSW is recovered by waste pickers each day (Kaseva and
Gupa 1996: 306). In Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) most of the 16 percent of recycled solid
waste will at some stage have passed through the informal sector (Pacheco,
Ronchetti and Masanet 2012). Table 2 below compares the informal and formal
MSW recovery rates for the purpose of recycling in different cities.
Various other studies, despite not offering proportional figures, offer more evidence
for the positive contribution that even a few rag pickers can make to local MSWM. In
São Paolo (Brazil) 700 organised (yet informal) waste pickers recovered 1230 tonnes
of waste per day in 2003 (Gutberlet 2008b). In 2006, in Londrina, another Brazilian
city, 18 recyclers recovered 90 tonnes of waste per day (Besen 2006 cited in
25 See also Patel (2003) who explores the success of a waste recycling project in a Delhi prison that generates an income for the prisoners’ welfare services.
55
Gutberlet 2008a: 663). The waste pickers of Bandung (Indonesia) recover 44.5
tonnes of plastic for recycling each day (Sembiring and Nitivattananon 2010). In
Manila (the Philippines) around 150,000 informal recycling sector workers re-‐
valorise 6,700 tonnes of waste per day (Chikarmane and Naryan 2009: 12). Another
recently completed study on six different cities of different sizes26 has revealed that
about 73,000 informal sector workers valorise a total of 3 million tonnes of waste in
these cities in one year27 (Scheinberg et al. 2011). Of course, not all of this waste is
recovered from streets and public spaces. Some of the waste is only recovered after
it has been tipped onto landfill sites. Nevertheless, reducing the volume of this waste
means increasing the life-‐span of landfills (van Horen 2004: 762), which has positive
impacts on public spending. Reducing the volume of landfills (as well as the volume
of waste burnt in incinerators) in many places also means a reduction in carbon
emissions. Waste that degrades on open landfills emits carbon dioxide and methane,
which are both greenhouse gases (see Venkateswaran 1994: 25; Satterthwaite 2003:
83; Royte 2005; Kennedy et al. 2010). It furthermore pollutes ground waters and can
spread diseases (Zurbrügg 2002: 1) if not properly managed.
The transformation of waste into secondary raw material has additional benefits for
the environment. Recycling reduces air pollution, energy consumption and water
usage (van Horen 2004: 762; Madsen 2006; Medina 2007; Anon 2009; Scheinberg et
al. 2011). Recycling one tonne of paper for example saves 3,500kWh (1.26 x 107J) of
electricity. One tonne of Aluminium that is recycled saves 62,200kWh (2.24 x 108J) of
energy (Bubel 1990: 64). Recycling glass saves 10 to 15 percent of energy compared
to the energy necessary for the extraction of the raw material from virgin sources.
Recycling plastics saves between 62 percent and 85 percent (Pacheco 1992). The
monetary equivalents of such energy savings are significant (Bubel 1990: 64) and the
savings in energy can in a vast majority of cases also be translated into savings of
carbon emissions (Chintan 2009a).
26 Cairo (Egypt), Cluj Napoca (Romania), Lima (Peru), Lusaka (Zambia), Pune (India) and Quezon City (Philippines). The same report suggests that the avoided costs for formal waste recovery resulting from the informal recovery of waste are US $18 million for Lima, US $15.5 million for Cairo and US $4.4 million for Quezon City. 27 This is the equivalent of 3 x 109kg or 64,755.7 times the mass of the Titanic.
56
As a consequence of such savings, secondary raw material tends to be cheaper than
raw material gained from primary sources (Trettin 1999) and there are thus clear
benefits of informal recycling for the economies of developing countries (van
Beukering 1994). “In many countries, e.g. India and China, major industries have a
strong dependency on the availability of secondary raw materials, either local or
imported” (Wislon et al. 2006: 801). In the 2000s, Mexico’s paper industry for
example tried to increase its competitiveness by upgrading its production processes
and by lowering overall production costs. The latter meant that in the production,
the proportion of paper that was originally collected by rag pickers (cartoneros)
increased (Medina 2005: 15). In Tanzania small-‐scale industries obtain between 50
and 60 percent of raw material that was initially recovered by rag pickers (Yhdego
1991: 263).
There are therefore numerous benefits that result from the initial action of rag
picking and the consequent transformation of waste into secondary raw material
through the various actors in the informal recycling sector. These are summarised in
Table 3. From this it becomes evident that, despite the problems associated with
informal work, the informal recovery and recycling of waste is beneficial for society,
the economy and the environment. In fact, some of these benefits of rag picking
have been recognised for a long time28. Spooner (1918: 20) for example stated that
in the last year of World War One Paris’ chiffonniers recovered waste materials of an
annual value of around £620,000 GBP, which is the equivalent of more than US $41.9
million in today’s money29.
28 In the 19th century, Munsell (1857) for example stressed the importance of rags in the paper making process. These were usually recovered by the rag and bone (wo)men. 29 Conversion made using the online converter of the National Archives (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/). The figures are based on the value of money in 1915.
57
Table 2: A Comparison of Formal and Informal Sector MSW Recovery Proportions for Recycling Purposes
City (Country) Informal Sector (% of MSW)
Formal Sector (% of MSW)
Informal Sector (tonnes/year)
Formal Sector (tonnes/year)
Bamako (Mali) 85 0 333,959 0 Bengaluru (India) 15 10 78,703 52,469 Cañete (Chile) 11 1 155 14 Cairo (Egypt) 30 13 979,400 433,200 Cluj (Hungary) 8 5 14,600 8,900 Delhi (India) 27 7 227,089 58,875 Dhaka (Bangladesh) 18 0 37,843 0 Ghorahi (Nepal) 9 2 33 7 Lima (Peru) 19 0.3 529,400 9,400 Lusaka (Zambia)*
2 2
4 4
349 5,400
698 12,000
Managua (Nicaragua) 15 3 11,826 2,365 Moshi (Tanzania) 18 0 2,010 0 Pune (India) 22 0 117,900 0 Quezon City (Philippines)*
31 23
8 2
89,271 141,800
23,038 15,600
Sousse (Tunisia) 6 0 250 0 Varna (Bulgaria) 26 2 9,728 748
11
* variations in sources
Based on yearly recovery rates found in UN Habitat (2010: 136) and Scheinberg et al. (2011: 15)
58
Table 3: Socio-‐Economic and Environmental Benefits of Informal Recycling
Service Agent ‘Benefits’
Informal
Waste
Recovery
form Streets
and Public
Places
Rag Pickers
ü Cleanliness of the city
ü Reduction sources for diseases and pests
ü Free service thus reductions of public spending
ü Reduction of volume of waste that ends up on landfill /
incinerator à reduction of carbon emissions
ü Waste channelled back into informal recycling chain à
recycling
Informal
Waste
Recovery
from
Households
Rag Pickers ü Free service thus reductions of public spending
Itinerant
Waste
Buyers
ü Free service thus reductions of public spending
ü Financial benefits for Households
Rag Pickers
& Itinerant
Waste
Buyers
ü Reduction of volume of waste that ends up on landfill /
incinerator à reduction of carbon emissions
ü Waste channelled back into informal recycling chain à
recycling
Informal
Waste
Recovery
from Landfill
/ refuse
collection
vehicles
Rag Pickers
ü Reduction of volume of waste that ends up on landfill /
incinerator à reduction of carbon emissions and ground
water pollution
ü Waste channelled back into informal recycling chain à
recycling
Recycling of
Recovered
Wastes
Informal
Recycling
Sector
ü Reduction of Energy Consumption
ü Reduction in Water Consumption
ü Reduction of Carbon Emissions
ü Provision of Secondary Raw Material which is cheaper
than raw material extracted from primary sources à
Benefit for Local, Regional and National Economies
59
5.2 A Different Perspective
From this, it becomes clear that existing theoretical understandings of rag picking
need to be re-‐evaluated. Existing theory focuses on commodity production and
describes the rag picker in terms of the social and economic relations of this
production. By doing this it ignores the multidimensional nature of rag picking and
thus fails to offer a holistic understanding of the occupation.
A further problem is that despite the theoretic shift from an understanding of the
rag pickers as Lumpenproletarians some academic misconceptions still remain and
rag pickers are in some instances unjustifiably portrayed in a negative fashion
(Medina 2007; Schiltz 2011c). Amar Nath Singh’s (1996; 1999) accounts of child rag
pickers in India, not only stand out for their exceptionally poor scholarship30, but are
also proof that negative stereotype creation in academia has not yet ceased to exist.
Singh’s writing is gendered and tainted with negative classist stigma. He refers to
slum dwellers as people of a “physical, mental, moral and social backwardness”
(Singh 1996: 47) and lists ‘positive’ aspects of child labour (ibid.: 27-‐8), which should
be regarded as a very controversial undertaking to say the least.
Castillo-‐Berthier (2003: 4) on the other hand claims that “the Third World [sic] with
its huge city dumps, has hundreds of thousands of people making a living from waste,
thereby polluting the environment and creating more poverty and marginali[s]ation”.
This statement reflects an idea that directly links poverty with ecological degradation.
This is an idea that was common in the 1980s [see for example the Brundtland
Commission Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987)].
However, it has since been rejected by some (e.g. Perera and Ami 1996; Duraiappah
1998) but is still an underlying theme in some publications on waste picking (e.g.
Castillo-‐Berthier 2003; Schenck and Blaauw 2011: 428). It is important that
statements such as the one cited above are rejected because they are simply
incorrect31. As was illustrated, rag pickers do not pollute the environment. On the
30 Any author cited on the pages 47-‐60 is missing in the bibliography. Singh’s methodological analysis is furthermore very poor. 31 Note that Castillo-‐Berthier, later in his paper, contradicts his own statement when he concludes that the work of rag pickers is “useful and helpful for the ecology” (Castillo-‐Berthier 2003: 25).
60
contrary, they are agents whose work is beneficial to the environment. However,
generally rag pickers are not primarily concerned about protecting the environment.
Their main aim is to earn an adequate income that helps them to sustain their
livelihoods (see Beall 1997b: 79; McLean 2000a: 19; 2000b: 3; Gerold 2004: 65;
Hunger, Spies and Wehenpohl 2005; Medina 2007: 16). In fact, it has been shown
that waste pickers are quite often not even aware of the environmental benefits of
their work (McLean 2000a). It therefore seems appropriate to call rag pickers
‘involuntary environmentalists’32 (Schiltz 2011a). Ironically, because of the nature of
their occupation, rag pickers tend to be those who suffer most from pollution caused
by waste disposal (Bernache 2003). Waste pickers who work and live on garbage
dumps are affected most severely by pollution-‐related health problems (Chapman
and de los Reyes 2007: 5).
It can be argued that a theoretical understanding of rag pickers must recognise the
positive impact of their work on society, the economy and the environment. An
approach that can offer such an understanding of rag picking is ‘political ecology’
(Greenberg and Park 1994). This approach regards specific social groups as part of a
system, which opposes them to each other as well as to their environment (Lipietz
1996: 219). Political ecology is interested in the impact of political and economic
forces on groups such as waste pickers. It is a critical approach that is particularly
interested in developments in developing countries. It asks questions about social
and environmental justice and equity (Bryant 1997: 10; Swyngedouw and Heynen
2003: 900) and allows the articulation of questions regarding the politics of
environmental changes generated by subaltern groups (Escobar 1999: 15). We can
thus use this approach to analyse the socio-‐economic and environmental impact of
rag picking.
One thought that is central to political ecology is that capitalism is a driver for
environmental change (Bryant 1992; 1997). It is argued that capitalism spawns free
trade competition, which negatively impacts upon environmental standards,
especially those of the global South (Muradian and Martinez-‐Alier 2001). Political
32 Note that this descriptive term can also be applied to other actors in the informal recycling sector.
61
ecology thus rejects the idea that poverty is a direct cause for environmental
degradation and argues that actors in the ‘developed’ world (e.g. transnational
corporations [TNCs]) are frequently responsible for environmental impairments in
developing countries. This thematic will be touched upon in Chapter IV which
discusses the illicit cross-‐border flows of waste into India.
Whereas political economy suggests that capitalism perpetually fixes its internal
contradictions through spatial expansion and re-‐modification (e.g. Harvey 1981;
2001), a political ecology perspective additionally emphasises the importance of
externalising any costs that are needed to restore potential environmental damage
caused by capitalist production (see Esteva 2010).
“From a political perspective, it is clear that the economic benefits of activities
which degrade ecosystems, usually benefit small powerful groups of individuals,
whereas the economic costs of degrading the ecosystem are spread in a more
aggregate way among society’s members“ (Howell 2007: 82).
Environmental costs are thus shifted to weaker social groups or less powerful (and
often less developed) countries. This principle has been described by many key
scholars (e.g. Lipietz 1996; Wallerstein 1997; 2000; Martinez-‐Alier 2002; 2003;
Wallerstein 2003; Deacon and Mueller 2004; Howell 2007). However, studies are
usually concerned with a macro-‐analysis of power-‐relationships that affect
environment (Bryant 1997: 11). It is nevertheless important to also look into the
relationships between different actors and their environment on a regional level
(Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003: 910-‐911). The idea that environmental costs are
shifted to weaker social groups becomes very evident if one looks at the occupation
of rag picking. Environmental services that go with the production of secondary raw
material through rag pickers are not reflected in the market price of the created
secondary raw material. Wallerstein argues that
”[t]he behavio[u]r that maximizes the profits of any given producer is to pay
absolutely nothing for the renewal of natural resources and next to nothing for
waste disposal. This so-‐called externali[s]ation of costs puts the financial burden on
everyone else” (Wallerstein 2003: n.p.)
62
This externalisation of environmental costs thus represents “gratis value to capital”
(Howell 2007: 89). Following this line of thought, one might be tempted to suggest
that rag pickers and other stakeholders working in the informal recycling sector are
expropriated from the ‘environmental surplus’ 33 which their work entails. This
eventually calls for a re-‐evaluation of waste picking using a more traditional Marxian
methodology. Such an undertaking does however go beyond the scope of this study.
What needs to be retained instead is that rag picking benefits capital and that
therefore the occupation should not be theoretically classified in dissociation of the
capitalist system. A political ecology perspective will indeed help us to acknowledge
the rag pickers’ provision of socio-‐economic and ecological services, which come free
of charge for the municipalities and the taxpayer. This understanding goes beyond
the traditional understanding of rag picking as commodity production. In fact, the
case of Delhi’s waste pickers (Chapter IV) will show that, through their service
provision, as well as the creation of secondary raw material, the different
stakeholders within the informal recycling sector (including waste pickers) help
sustain the everyday functioning of a city and contribute towards its project of
becoming an internationally recognised ‘world-‐class’ city. To situate this task, I now
analyse Delhi’s global city project in more detail.
33 I would like to thank my friend Seth Schindler from the Clark University (MA) who helped developing this idea. Please note that the term ‘environmental surplus’ was used in a different manner by Howell (2007). Howell uses the term to describe the energy embedded in goods (‘emergy’) exported from the North into the South. Howell argues that ‘emergy’ costs are usually not reflected in the prices paid for such goods (e.g. fossil fuels) and that some stakeholders from the North therefore appropriate environmental surplus.
63
CHAPTER III: DELHI’S GLOBAL CITY PROJECT -‐ THE CREATION OF DUALITIES THROUGH NEW AESTHETIC NOTIONS
“The imagined city in South Asia symboli[s]es the belated attempts of defeated
civili[s]ations to break into hard ‘realism’ of the world of ‘winners’ where […]
specialist skills in hydrology and water management transform the waters of dream
into a scarce commodity called H2O” (Nandy 2001: viii-‐ix).
“The slum is understood [… and] consumed as an image: flat, without history,
without structure and emptied by those who live in it. This reduction […] has to be
seen in conjunction with the emergence of the discourse of the ‘world class city’ in
millennial Delhi. Just as reducing the impoverishment of the poor to the aesthetics
of their built environment leads to a singular environment of both ‘the poor’ and
‘the slum’ the city in which this slum is located is itself being turned into an image, a
commodity called a ‘world class city’” (Bhan 2009b: 140).
With its approximately 16.8 million inhabitants (Census of India 2011: 8) Delhi is one
of the most populous cities on our planet. As yet, there seems to be no end in sight
for the city’s population growth; estimates indicate that the population will rise to a
potential 27 million in the year 2021 (Thapar 2005). It is estimated that slightly more
than half of Delhi’s current populace lives in slums (Bhan 2009b; Ahmed 2011: 48-‐
49). The city is therefore often described as a ”Third World [sic] Megacit[y]” (Davis
2006: 4) marked by slums and poverty (e.g. Verma 2002). However, very recently
there has emerged a newly oriented literature that regards Delhi as a metropolis
with the ambition of becoming an internationally recognised global city (e.g. Dupont
2008a; Butcher 2010; Dupont 2011; Ghertner 2011b). Taking aside the obvious
presence of Delhi in ‘official’ global city-‐rankings, such as those by the Globalisation
and World City (GaWC) Network (e.g. GaWC 2010), there is indeed growing evidence
that Delhi has embarked upon a global city project.
“What is being promised [is a] Manhattan-‐like skyline with skyscrapers kissing the
sky, a complex web of flyovers, fast lanes for speeding cars, multi-‐storied housing
64
complexes and a line of shining, teeming-‐with-‐people malls. This is a picture-‐perfect
global city, something Delhi is aspiring to be” (Pandey 2004: n.p.).
The Indian capital is however not the only city in the country that holds ‘global’
ambitions; Delhi stands in direct competition with other metropoles such as Mumbai
(Fernandes 2000b; Verma 2002), Bangalore (Shaw and Satish 2006) and Kolkata
(ibid.). Indeed, since the progressive liberalisation of India’s economy in the late
1980s and especially since the adoption of, what has been called, ‘the New Economic
Policy’ in 1991 (Ahmed 2011; Peet 2011), a global city rhetoric has become apparent
in the national media, but also in diverse public and political discourses. This has
resulted in the embedding of the idea of the global city in projects such as the
Jawaharal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM -‐ usually referred to as NURM)
(Dupont 2008a; 2011; JNNURM 2011) and in policy documents such as the most
recent Master Plan for Delhi (MPD) (Ministry of Urban Development 2007).
In this chapter Delhi’s global city project will be examined in more detail. However, it
will not be my aim to give evidence that Delhi has already become a ‘fully-‐fledged’
global city. Neither shall Delhi’s global ‘features’ be compared with those of other
cities using diverse global rankings. Instead, as was reasoned in Chapter I, I will
examine how planners and policy makers are attempting to realise Delhi’s global
aspirations. My inquiry will look at who the main drivers behind the city’s global
project are, and what impact the project is making on the poorer parts of society. I
will demonstrate that Delhi’s global city project is creating new and enforcing old
dualities whilst decision makers and city planners try to overcome old stereotypes
and clichés that have for a long time been the cause for the negative portrayal of the
city. Whereas socio-‐spatial dualities in the city have often been portrayed with
reference to the contrast between Old and New Delhi (e.g. Ernst n.d.), I will argue
that contemporary Delhi needs to be understood in terms of those dichotomies that
emerge out of, and are reinforced by, the tensions between the city’s imagined
‘global’ self, and the actualities of its past Other. Such tensions tend to be fought out
through a rhetoric of aesthetics defined by specific middle class-‐values and ideals. I
will show how, in this process, sights of poverty are increasingly regarded as
aesthetically ‘out of place’ and pushed towards the periphery of the city. It will be
65
argued that the development of the city, as well as the functioning of everyday life
nevertheless remains dependent on services provided by the urban poor, i.e. the
city’s slum dwellers, who are engaged in informal work practices. The chapter will
therefore conclude that, Delhi must continuously compromise between the need for
cheap labourers and the urge to get rid of the associated sights of poverty (forming
the city’s Other), such as the spaces that provide shelter for this part of society.
These tendencies will be discussed in more detail with regards to the city’s waste
pickers and its informal recycling sector in the following chapter.
1 The Death of the Dream of a ‘Grand’ Delhi?
The history of ‘urban’ Delhi is usually traced back to the advent of Indraprastha in
the tenth century BCE. Its 3000-‐year history makes Delhi one of the oldest urban
settlements on our planet (Sivam 2003) and the cityscape of present-‐day Delhi
remains significantly marked by the many different layers of the city’s historical
heritage (Ernst n.d.). Sites like the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid mosque in the ‘old’
part of the city, or India Gate and the parliament complex in ‘New Delhi’ are just
some examples of how contemporary Delhi is shaped by sites that reflect a history of
political power struggles (e.g. Mithal 2005; Khosla 2005a; Sharan 2006; Batra 2010)
and religious prestige (e.g. Thapar 2005).
One constant aim of Delhi’s past rulers has been to transform the city into a
‘heavenly place on Earth’. This means that there has always been some kind of vision,
or dream, that spurred on the development of the city (Mithal 2005). Such visions
and ideas of a grand Delhi usually resulted in architectural projects tainted by
political symbolism. A brief look at the city’s role during the British colonial rule in
India illustrates this point.
The British first took control over Delhi in 1803. At that time, the capital of imperial
India was Calcutta. Delhi was predominantly marked by Mughal infrastructure, which
the British at first left undisturbed. However, after the Indian rebellions in the late
1850s (1857-‐1859) the imperial rulers destroyed about one third of the city through
66
large-‐scale demolitions and urban clearances. These were undertaken to ease
military access to the city centre (Khosla 2005a). More significant transformations to
Delhi’s topology took place after King George declared in 1911 that the capital of
imperial India was to be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Reasons for this geo-‐political
shift were both practical and symbolic. Delhi had traditionally been a hub of political
power, especially under the Mughal reign. It became imperative for the British to
demonstrate their political dominance in India through an institutionalised
imposition of their political might upon the last Mughal stronghold. In addition the
British wanted to geographically dissociate Calcutta, at the time the most important
commercial hub in India, from the centre of their political institutions in the colony.
They also believed that relocating the capital to Delhi would accelerate the
geographical expansion of their Empire towards central India (ibid.).
To demonstrate their political superiority, and to diminish Delhi’s architectural
heritage, which embedded a large degree of symbolism of the power of former
rulers, the British decided to build a new city within Delhi (Thapar 2005; Khosla
2005a). ‘New’ Delhi was to become the ‘jewel’ in King George’s crown (Khosla
2005b; Chaturvedi 2010) and according to the British imperial vision, it was to
overshadow any remaining Mughal sites with ‘superior’ architectural projects,
inspired by Greek and Roman classicism. Architect Lutyens was commissioned to
make these visions of a grandiose imperial city become a reality. Lutyens’ New Delhi
became a city marked by monuments, open (and often green) spaces, and wide
boulevards. It thereby spatially separated the city’s colonisers from native Dehliites
and emerged as a contrast to the crowded and unplanned ‘old’ Mughal Delhi, in
which workshops, living quarters, and spiritual centres were not spatially divided and
were often piled on top of each other. From a British perspective, the New (planned)
Delhi symbolised an imperial dominance through ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ in India,
as well as Britain’s global might as an imperial hegemon (Baviskar2003; Khosla
2005a; 2005b; Sharan 2006). Lutyens’ ideas for New Delhi were later even compared
to Albert Speer’s architectural designs for Berlin that were to last ‘the millennial rule’
of Third Reich Germany (Baviskar 2003). This is but one example of how a ‘greater’
(politically tainted) idea made a significant impact on Delhi’s cityscape.
67
India celebrated its independence in 1947, and even though the British colonial
system was ended, the idea that the development of Delhi needed to be planned
remained intact. Due to a massive influx of Pakistani refugees in the first decade
after India’s independence, the population of Delhi started to grow at an unforeseen
rate. Especially in Old Delhi, population figures rose very rapidly and the divisions
between Old and New Delhi that the British had deliberately created during the
colonial era became even starker. There was a significant growth in the city’s slum
population, which did not fit into prime minister Nehru’s vision of Delhi as an
‘inclusive city’. In response to this, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was
founded in 1957. Its principal task was to secure the development of Delhi through
Master Plans (MPD – Master Plan of Delhi). With the help of the Ford Foundation
and based on a Nehruvian understanding of socialism, the first five year Master Plan
(MPD-‐1962) for Delhi aimed at enabling balanced growth of the city and to improve
the living and housing conditions for all its inhabitants (Baviskar 2003; Kacker 2005).
With hindsight it can be argued that the DDA has never been able to fully and
successfully implement successive Master Plans. In the eyes of certain Delhiites, the
independence of India was therefore not entirely positive, especially not in terms of
the aesthetic development of the city. Critics feel that the dream of making Delhi a
grandiose metropolis has been lost. Nowadays “[t]here is no central idea or theme
and no question of a dream”, says Mithal (2005: 43) before despondently remarking
that many of the sites that used to embody the ideas and dreams of former rulers
now bear the scars of Western-‐style consumer culture. He claims that the idea of
transforming Delhi into a ‘paradise on Earth’ “has truly died and [that] an ugly reality
has taken over” (ibid.: 43).
Quite contrary to this pessimistic claim, recent studies (e.g. Dupont 2008a; 2011;
Ghertner 2011b) have suggested that the emerging signs of Western-‐style
consumerism represent the very opposite of an ideological demise in making Delhi a
grandiose place. Such signs give evidence that a new dream for Delhi has emerged. It
is the dream that envisions the future Delhi as a fully-‐fledged global city.
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2 Delhi’s New Global Dreams
This dream of Delhi is in fact not entirely new. It has been argued that the idea of
creating global cities in India has gradually gained prominence since the mid—1980s
(Dupont 2008a; 2011). However, it was only in the early 1990s that physical
‘indicators’ showing the rise of global cities in the country started to emerge. This
development can be related to two important reforms that have both made a
substantial impact on India’s urban development. Firstly, India’s economic agenda
changed radically in the late 1980s, and especially in 1991. Secondly, urban
development in most Indian cities has become subject to the Jawaharlal Nehru
National Urban Renewal Mission (henceforth NURM) which was established in 2005
(Dupont 2008a; 2011). This led to the embedding of India’s global city aspirations
into policy documents such as the Master Plan of Delhi.
The abandonment of India’s License Raj (mixed economy) resulted in the adoption of
the country’s New Economic Policy. It can be seen as the initial trigger for the
neoliberal globalization of India’s cities. In the late 1980s, India went through a
number of geopolitical crises and there was a rise in extremist political activity. This
peaked with the assassination of Congress Party President Rajiv Gandhi (India’s
former Prime Minister), on 21 May 1991. The country ran into societal turmoil. A
balance of payment crisis that occurred at around the same time brought about
further socio-‐economic instability. The economic crisis, combined with the more
general public turmoil quickly gave rise to a rhetoric, spurred on by the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pronounced neoliberalism as the
‘cure’ for India’s socio-‐economic problems. The IMF granted India a relatively small
emergency loan that was linked to a number of conditions, which aimed at
liberalising the country’s economy (Ahmed 2011; Peet 2011). The resulting New
Economic Policy triggered large-‐scale international investments in urban India.
The second reform that accelerated the globalization of India’s cities has been the
urban renewal programme initiated through the NURM. In cooperation with the
World Bank, USAID (United States Agency for International Development), and the
ADB (Asian Development Bank) the Indian Ministry of Urban Development launched
69
the NURM in 2005. Over a period of six to seven years, the mission was to aid the
redevelopment of a select number of different sized Indian cities (see JNNURM
2011: 14) through financial assistance. In order for these cities to become eligible for
funding through the NURM they have had to implement a number of reforms. These
included the liberalisation of their real estate market and the mobilisation of the
middle classes as custodians of urban reform. The NURM also overturned the Urban
Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act (ULCRA) that had previously prevented land from
falling into the hands of an elite and especially foreign minority (Mahadevia 2006;
Sabharwal 2007; Dupont 2008a; 2011).
For Delhi, the liberalisation through the New Economic Policy and reforms imposed
by the NURM have meant that the real estate market now allows 100 percent
foreign direct investment (FDI) (Shaw and Satish 2006; Batra 2008). The most recent
Master Plan (MPD-‐2021) states that 66,690 acres of land will be made available for
purchase by private developers (Sabharwal 2007). As a consequence Delhi’s real
estate sector has become increasingly attractive for businesses in IT (Information
Technology), ITES (IT and Enabled Services), the automobile industry, tourism, the
metal and machinery industry, and the pharmaceutical industry (Shaw and Satish
2006). Multinationals such as Goldman Sachs have started to invest in this market
(Sabharwal 2007).
As a consequence of these developments an increasing amount of foreign capital,
ideas and workers now flow into the city. Office buildings and modern infrastructure
paid for by multinational corporations have started to change Delhi’s built
environment. Delhi has become a globalizing city that is increasingly working
towards making its global aspirations come true. It aims at becoming an
internationally recognised global city.
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3 Delhi’s Global City Project
That policy makers and city planners have global ambitions has been incontestable
since the publication of the latest MPD (MPD-‐2021). Right at the outset, the idea of
making Delhi a global city is clearly specified:
“Delhi, […] symbol of ancient values and aspirations and capital of the [world’s]
largest democracy, is assuming increasing eminence among the great cities of the
world. Growing at an unprecedented pace, the city needs to be able to integrate its
elegant past as well as the modern developments into an organic whole […]. The city
will be a prime mover and nerve centre of ideas and actions, the seat of national
governance and a centre of business, culture, education and sports […]. Vision-‐2021
is to make Delhi a global metropolis and a world-‐class city, where all the people
would [sic] be engaged in productive work with a better quality of life, living in a
sustainable environment” (Ministry of Urban Development 2007: 1).
That this vision has started to become implemented is reflected in the ways in which
Delhi’s cityscape has been changing in the past two decades and especially since the
publication of MPD-‐2021 in 2007. One of the key events used to catapult Delhi onto
the map of the world’s global cities was the Commonwealth Games in 2010. This
event did not only give Delhi the chance to ‘shine’ in the international media, but it
also set a deadline to push the improvement and the completion of several
infrastructural projects (Batra 2010).
One of the ‘success stories’ of Delhi’s global city project, spurred on by the
Commonwealth Games, is Delhi’s still-‐developing Metro network. After over thirty
years of planning, and with the help of foreign investors such as the Japanese Bank
of International Cooperation, the construction of the Metro started in 1998
(Siemiatycki 2006). Phase I was inaugurated in 2002 and most lines planned under
Phase II were opened in 2010, just in time for the start of the Games. Similarly,
Terminal III of Indira Ghandi International (IGI) Airport was opened just before the
start of the Games. The airport currently has the longest landing strip in Asia and one
of the largest passenger capacities in the world. This has enabled IGI Airport to
successfully compete with other airports in India, such as that of Mumbai, which
71
used to dominate India’s international air passenger industry (Mitra 2008; Sharma,
Nair and Einhorn 2010; Dupont 2011).
Other parts of Delhi’s cityscape have also been changing drastically. Areas such as
Connaught Place and Nehru Place have seen the rise of Western style multi-‐storeyed
buildings, which accommodate well-‐known multinational corporations. Formerly
congested road crossings are being replaced with flyovers, which have significantly
improved the flow of the vast number of motorised vehicles that the city
accommodates34. Furthermore, new forms of advertisement have started to occupy
various spaces and sparked a new ‘media urbanism’ (Sundaram 2009). Like most
global cities, Delhi has also commenced a process of high-‐income gentrification, and
there has been a rise in gated and secured communities, such as those that can be
found in Golf Links Colony in the centre (Waldrop 2004), and Noida and Gurgaon in
the outskirts of the city (Detilleux 2007; Dupont 2008a; AlJazeera 2011; Dupont
2011). A process, which reflects the gentrification of these high-‐income communities,
is the steady rise of Western-‐style shopping malls. Whereas two decades ago
shopping malls were absent, there are now 96 malls35 throughout the city. This gives
Delhi the comparative lead in India by a large margin36 (Negi 2011: 189).
Delhi’s quest to entice global recognition through the organisation of major
international events is an on-‐going project and did not end with the 2010
Commonwealth Games. The first Formula One Grand Prix of India was hosted in
October 2011 on the newly constructed Buddh International Circuit, which was built
at cost of a $400 million in Noida, in the Southern outskirts of the city (Lakshmi
2011). The message, which is being sent to a worldwide audience through grand
events like the Grand Prix or the Commonwealth games is very clear: Delhi wants to
become ‘truly global’.
34 It has been suggested that the number of cars on Delhi’s roads is higher than the sum of cars on the roads of Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai (Ravi 2010: 90). 35 Figure based on early 2011. 36 Delhi currently leads before Mumbai which has 55 shopping centres (Negi 2011: 189).
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4 The Westernisation of Delhi
What I have described as model global cities in Chapter I, i.e. cities like London, New
York or Singapore that are internationally recognised as thriving showcase cites, are
often depicted with particular reference to their ‘modern’ aesthetic features (this
idea was introduced in Chapter I and will be taken up in more detail in Chapter V).
The cityscapes and skylines of such metropoles are defined by impressive
waterfronts, imposing cultural centres, state of the art sports complexes, and
modern office buildings, to give just some examples (see Yeoh 2005). Such aesthetic
depictions of model global cities have started to affect our imagination of what
consists ‘ideal’ global city space.
As a consequence of this, the imagined global selves of those cities that have
embarked upon a global city project are inspired by the aesthetics of model global
cities. This becomes very evident as one looks at Delhi whose city planners take “an
ideali[s]ed vision of the world-‐class city gleaned from refracted images and
circulating models of other world-‐class cities (a little Singapore here, a little London
there) and ask if existing territorial arrangements conform to this vision” (Ghertner
2011b: 289). Delhi’s planners and policy makers thus measure the success of their
city’s global project through comparison of new infrastructure and showcase events
with ‘world-‐class’ standards set by Westernised cities37.
This becomes clear as one looks at the media coverage of such showcase events.
Baviskar (2011) for example notes that media reports leading up to the 2010
Commonwealth Games were rarely (if at all) used to promote sports or athletic
aspirations. They predominantly focused on the development of the city’s
infrastructure, necessary to successfully host the Games, the purpose of which was
to provide an international showcase for Delhi’s ‘global’ status38. Other mega-‐
projects in Delhi have been portrayed in the media in a similar manner. IGI Airport
37 Guptka (2001) criticises this process and talks about the ‘Westoxification’ of the city. 38 It is debatable whether media reports on the Commonwealth Games infrastructure had the desired outcome of internationally portraying the city as ‘world-‐class’. See for example Metha and Acharga (2010) for a rather more pessimistic evaluation of the Games. Accounts like theirs do however not change the fact that portraying the city as ‘world-‐class’ was one of the principal aims behind the organisation of the event.
73
has for example been praised for being “well on its way to becoming truly world
class” (Mitra 2008: n.p.) and has been compared to the showcase airports of
Singapore and Dubai (Sharma, Nair and Einhorn 2010). The city’s Metro is also
frequently celebrated as a sign of ‘modernity’ that allows Delhi to measure itself
against other ‘important’ cities around the globe (see for example Lakshmi 2010).
Comparisons to Western standards have thus made a significant impact upon Delhi’s
built environment and consequently also on the city’s aesthetics. Signs of Western
consumer culture have drastically increased throughout the city (Baviskar 2010).
Public places such as Connaught Place, or various Metro stations (see Siemiatycki
2006), have become marked by the globally recognisable logos of brands such as
McDonalds and Pizza Hut. In fact, even the culinary sector is now measured by global
norms. Dilip Bobb, Managing Editor of India Today, has recently compiled a list of
‘trendy’ restaurants due to which “the heart of Delhi is beating even faster” (Bobb
2010: 32).
This Westernisation has meant that the signs of ‘Indian-‐ness’ have become rather
rare (Dupont 2005: 88). The intensifying use of the English language illustrates this
point. Delhi’s road signs are all in English. Hindi translations are only given in a
smaller-‐sized font. Signs in Urdu and Gurmukhī languages, which are both spoken by
a large number of Delhiites, are altogether absent (Chaturvedi 2010). Furthermore,
an increasing number of buildings and residential areas are named according to
‘successful’ Western places and/or cities (Dupont 2011).
5 Delhi’s Middle Class and the New Rhetoric of Aesthetics
It has been claimed that the city’s new aesthetics have been mostly welcomed, and
driven, by middle class Delhiites who have started to take inspiration from other
global cities, which they get in contact with through foreign visits and the global
media (Batabyal 2010: 109). In fact, India’s urban middle class is increasingly seen to
be taking on a new role and some scholars even talk about the emergence of a ‘new’
Indian middle class that is defined by novel features (see Fernandes 2000b).
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However, the concept of a ‘new’ middle class in India appears to be rather loose;
there exists a multitude of definitions for this subcategory of the country’s society
and estimates according to different definitions that try to quantify this part of the
population, lie anywhere between 50 million and 300 million people out of India’s
overall (estimated 1.2 billion) population. The discrepancies in such estimates
illustrate the inconsistencies amongst different definitions (Mawdsley 2004).
Nevertheless, it can be argued that there are some broader common features that
many definitions of the ‘new’ Indian middle class share. It has for example been
claimed that India’s middle class now plays a new role in articulating new standards
through their urban lifestyle, which is defined by consumerism and commodity
fetishism (Fernandes 2000a; Guptka 2001: 17; Mawdsley 2004; Sivastava 2009).
Middle class citizens are described as the country’s ‘moral leaders’ who steer India
into ‘modernity’ by way of urban bourgeoisiefication (Ghertner 2011a). It can thus
be said that even though it remains open to debate whether there really is a ‘new’
Indian middle class, the re-‐invention of the “middle-‐class lifestyle has been
increasingly interwoven into the creation of an urban aesthetics [sic] based on
middle-‐class desire of management of urban space based on strict class-‐based
separations” (Fernandes 2004: 2420).
In Delhi, this new way of aestheticising the city has led to a change of rhetoric used
in both public and political discourses. There appears to be the rise of a new rhetoric
of aesthetics as emphasis has recently been put on buzzwords and expressions such
as ‘open space’, ‘clean air’, and a ‘green’ and ‘clean’ Delhi. These stand in high
contrast to more traditional (and stereotypical) descriptions of the city, in which
words such as ‘congested’, ‘overcrowded’, ‘polluted’ and ‘noisy’ tended to be used
(Dupont 2005). This change of rhetoric also became clear when, in the late noughties,
the Times of India started a campaign that supported Delhi’s development from a
‘walled city’ to a ‘world city’ (Bhan 2009b). This is an idea, which according to Delhi’s
Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, embeds the premise of a ‘slum-‐free’ city (Ghertner
2011a).
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However, out of the 500,000 people who migrate to the city every year, 400,000 end
up in slums, or jhuggi jhopri settlements as they are locally called. In fact, Delhi’s
slum population is expected to pass the 15 million mark by 2015 (Davis 2006: 18)
and it is estimated that currently more than half of Delhi’s inhabitants live in slums
(Bhan 2009b; Ahmed 2011:48-‐49). It can therefore be argued that the vision of a
new ‘global’ Delhi highly contrasts with the reality that can be found in many parts of
the city. I will now show how the conflict that emerges between the vision of Delhi
as a global city and the reality of Delhi’s housing deficiencies and its informal work
practices, creates new dualities through what has been called an ‘aesthetic
governance’ (Ghertner 2008; 2010; 2011b; 2011c).
6 The Rise of an ‘Aesthetic Governance’
Since the late 1980s and especially since the introduction of the New Economic
Policy there has been a drastic rise in the political empowerment of the urban
middle class in India. One of the ways in which middle class Delhiites have started to
steer urban decision making is through the bhagidari initiative. Bhagidari is a
government-‐citizen partnership programme that was initiated in 1998 and which ties
residential welfare associations (RWAs), i.e. representatives of residents usually
living in Delhi’s planned colonies (comprising about one quarter of Delhi’s
population) directly to government workers and decision makers (see Mehra 2009;
Ghertner 2011a). Members of Delhi’s middle class have also started (often under the
banner of RWAs) to impact upon the development of the city through public interest
litigations (PILs). PILs have existed in India since 1985 and are legal petitions that can
be compiled by ‘ordinary’ citizens on behalf of themselves or others. PILs are dealt
with by the Supreme Court, which decides whether action needs to be taken to
counter developments, that are not in the interest of the ‘general public’ (see Mehra
2009).
The use of PILs has significantly increased since the millennial turn. Currently most
PILs that aim at ‘cleaning up’ the city refer to breaches of Delhi’s nuisance law (see
Sharan 2002; 2006; Ghertner 2008; 2011c). The appliance of nuisance law in India
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originated in the times of British colonial rule and, since its first introduction, has
remained a means to exert power and control. It was originally used by the British to
enforce the (imagination of) differences between the coloniser and the colonised
(Anderson 1992). Nowadays there appears to be a middle class bias in the
application of nuisance law, especially when it is used in PILs. Public nuisance is
usually linked to unclean and polluting spaces or behaviour (and sometimes
occupations) and is thus presented to be in opposition to the public interest. This
gives RWA petitions a fundamentally aesthetic nature. A mode of aesthetic
governance has emerged in Delhi (Ghertner 2008; 2011c).
Around the time when various Indian cities embarked upon their respective global
projects, the country’s urban middle class became empowered through new means
of influencing political decision making, as well as through new legal mechanisms.
Additional to that, there was a change in middle class lifestyle that was increasingly
inspired by a Western-‐style consumer culture. Furthermore, members of India’s
middle class became increasingly exposed to an imagery of model global cities. As a
result, the vast majority of middle class Delhiites favour the aestheticization of
Delhi’s urban landscape, a process that aims to transform the city into an imagined
global city (see Butcher 2010: 508)39.
Delhi’s global city project is to a large extent a middle class driven aesthetic project.
Members of the middle classes now want to ‘clean the city’ (Ahmed 2011) and
through this process they want to turn what many still call ‘Third World’ Delhi into a
global city. Organised as RWAs (and thus directly linked to decision makers through
bhagidari) and NGOs, they now make increasing use of PILs to implement this
aesthetic endeavour. Indeed, the official RWA-‐Bhagidari website identifies ‘Clean
Delhi – Green Delhi’ as one of bhagidari’s main causes, stating that the Municipal
Council of Delhi (MCD) “cannot neglect the aesthetic nature of [the] city and the
need for necessary beautification” (RWABhagidari.com 2010: n.p.). There has been a
particular rise of PILs since the millennial turn and a new ‘green’ agenda now
dominates public and political discourses (Dupont 2008b).
39 For the influence of ‘Western-‐ness’ on India’s middle class see also Nandy (2007).
77
Developments that foster Delhi’s global city project, and which are often spurred by
middle class Delhiites, are indeed regularly based on ‘green’ notions. It therefore
seems that the environment has become a convenient term to push different
political agendas under the current aesthetic mode of governing (Verma 2002).
Baviskar (2003) calls this strategy which seeks to ‘clean up’ the city ’bourgeois
environmentalism’. This terminology, that describes the masquerading of an
aesthetic restructuring as ecology, has become an increasingly popular tool of
critique for certain scholars (see Sharan 2002; Batra 2005)40.
7 Consequences of Delhi’s Global City Project and its Aesthetic Mode of
Governance for the Poorer Sections of Society
As a consequence of this, reflections and images of poverty in Delhi are now being
eliminated from public spaces. Examples are numerous and only some will be
mentioned here, as this topic will be taken up in more detail in the following chapter
in which the recent plight of the city’s waste pickers will be analysed. Especially since
the year 2000, clearances of slums -‐ maybe one of the most visual forms of poverty -‐
have significantly increased. In 2000 the Supreme Court decided that the city needed
to be cleaned of its jhuggies because slums
“were ‘…large areas of public land, usurped for private use free of cost.’ The slum
dweller was named an ‘encroacher’ and the resettlement41 that had hitherto been
mandatory became, suddenly, a matter of injustice, ‘…rewarding an encroacher on
public land with an alternative free site is like giving a reward to a pickpocket for
stealing.’” (Bhan 2009b: 135)42.
Poverty has thus not only become aesthetically controlled through rhetorical means.
Slum dwellers have also become criminalised as they arguably ‘encroach’ upon (and
thus ‘steal’) public land (Menon-‐Sen 2006; Ahmed 2011). The outcome of the above
40 Negi (2011) prefers the term ‘moral environmentalism’. See his article for a critical assessment of Baviskar’s idea. 41 Since the first Master Plan, evicted slum dwellers have, under certain conditions, been given the right for new shelter provided (and planned) by the government. 42 See also Dupont (2008b).
78
mentioned court case43 has thus furthered a negative stereotype of the poor. This
resulted in a high number of evictions since the year 2000 (see Table 4 below).
Table 4: Post-‐Millennial Eviction Estimates
Period Estimate Number of Evictions
Measurement Unit Source
Early 2000s 98,000 Industrial units* Baviskar (2003) 2000-‐2004 800,000 Persons** Baviskar (2004) 2000-‐2010 1,000,000 Persons Ghertner (2010; 2011b) 2000-‐2006 79,000 Families Srivastava (2009)
* A PIL resulted in a Supreme Court decision in early 2006 that ordered the sealing of between 50,000
and 500,000 small, medium and large retail businesses, which are illegally operating. They violate the
Permitted Land Use Act, which separates Delhi into distinct geographical zones that can only be used
for residential, commercial, or industrial purposes (Mehra 2009). Numbers of how many people were
evicted are not available (Gidwani 2006: 13). For the events that led up to these evictions see also
Navlakha (2000) and Kathuria (2001) who offer more detailed accounts.
** Of these slum dwellers, who were located at the Yamuna River, only sixteen percent were eligible
for relocation (Baviskar 2004). Of all the slum dwellers evicted from their sites between 1997 and
2001, twelve percent were eligible for new slots (Dupont 2008b).
The ‘cleaning up’ of Delhi for the purpose of world-‐class status creation did however
not stop with evictions of slum dwellers from various city sites. In the run-‐up to the
Commonwealth Games, beggars were ‘cleared’ off the streets near sporting facilities.
They were convicted and sent to prison through fast-‐sentencing by specially set-‐up
mobile courts (Baviskar 2011). Similarly, cycle rickshaws and vegetable sellers (both
providing vital low-‐cost services) were evicted from their traditional locations, as
they were seen to no longer fit into the ‘modern’ city image (see Siemiatycki 2006;
Baviskar 2010; 2011).
43 Almitra Patel vs. Union of India (2000). See also Menon-‐Sen and Bhan (2008: 5-‐7) who offer an overview of the most relevant legal cases that gradually led to the criminalisation of the poor by the Supreme Court.
79
There have also been indirect adverse effects on the quality of the lives of the poorer
parts of Delhi’s society. For example, the NURM has sought to ban the use of hand
water pumps. Such pumps can often be found in slums and a ban would force slum
dwellers out of the city (Batra 2008). Grand projects such as the Metro have
increased land and property prices in neighbourhoods with Metro stations. Once
more, this drives the visualisations of poverty towards the peripheral areas of the
city (Siemiatycki 2006; Baviskar 2010). Additional to that, since the 1990s and the
implementation of a neoliberal economic agenda in India, about 35% of Delhi’s
public land has been sold to private companies. Much of this land had initially been
reserved for low cost housing, to be sold to families with lower incomes (Ghertner
2011b). Megaprojects such as the Metro, the Commonwealth Games and the Grand
Prix were subject to the clearance of informal dwellers from public land, or forced
acquisitions of land from farmers in peripheral areas of the city (see Siemiatycki
2006; Baviskar 2010; Munro 2010; Lakshmi 2011).
Furthermore the reputation of the poor who live in slums is being done an injustice
through notions of bourgeois environmentalism. Arguments put forward to ‘protect’
the environment are often not taken to an ultimate conclusion (as will be discussed
in more detail in the following chapter) and are merely used for political purposes.
Research for example shows that the pollution of the Yamuna River is mainly caused
by wastewaters from industrial complexes and middle class colonies. Yet, slum
dwellers were evicted from the borders of the river because they were accused of
being a major source of polluting wastewaters (see Baviskar 2004; Menon-‐Sen and
Bhan 2008; Thomas and Gosh 2011). Due to the aesthetic nature of nuisance law, on
which a majority of middle class PILs are based, modernity and thus a ‘world-‐
class‘ appearance have become the major determinant to whether infrastructure is
in the public interest, or not. This means that the legality of buildings in relation to
the MPD is usually determined on an aesthetic judgement44 (Ghertner 2011b).
44 About 70% of Delhi’s settlements (in high and low income communities) violate the MPD in some way (Ghertner 2011a) and planned colonies only make up 24% of Delhi’s overall housing (Bhan 2009b). It has been argued that the urban elite in Delhi has ‘grabbed’ more land than the city’s working poor (Sivam 2003; Ghertner 2011b). Rich Delhiites and entrepreneurs also make use of Delhi’s informal space (Negi 2011). It has thus been claimed that a strict compliance to MPD-‐2021
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Middle class Delhiites also largely backed the decision to destroy green areas in the
city to construct infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games (Baviskar 2011). This
reaffirms the class-‐bias in Delhi’s current aesthetic mode of governance. Ecological
claims made by middle class citizens are thus fads used regularly for purposes of
governance and modernisation of the city45. The same is true for the image creation
that propagates slum dwellers as thieves. Against the generally recognised
stereotype, it has been shown that electricity theft by middle class citizens and
formal enterprises clearly outweighs electricity theft by slum dwellers (Ahmed 2011).
Altogether, it can be said that the aesthetic mode of governance attendant upon
Delhi’s global city project has been impacting upon the lives of Delhi’s poor in an
undeniably negative manner. Signs of poverty are increasingly pushed towards the
periphery of the city and it can thus be argued that Delhi’s global city project has
started to create new inequalities. The way in which the global city project of Delhi
has been presented in the MPD-‐2021, i.e. the generating of a ‘world-‐class’ city, in
which all (!) people get engaged in productive work and which offers them a better
quality of life (Ministry of Urban Development 2007: 1), therefore seems to
propagate a myth, rather than a reality. This explains why some of the critics of the
MPD-‐2021 have called Delhi’s global city project the creation of an ‘apartheid city’
(e.g. Batra 2005; Roy and Batra 2005; Batra 2008; 2010). The questions that we
consequently need to ask is how these dualities catalysed through Delhi’s global city
project can be understood.
8 Understanding New Dualities in ‘Global’ Delhi
Grand endeavours that further Delhi’s global city project not only have the outcome
of physically changing the cityscape and the city’s aesthetics. The message sent to an
international audience through events like the Commonwealth Games and the
Grand Prix also embeds an idea that is increasingly changing the mind-‐set of most
would not only result in a slum-‐free city, but most likely also a city free from shopping malls (Ghertner 2011b).
45 Žižek (2007) has recently described ecology as the ‘new opium for the masses’.
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urbanites and therefore impacts upon how Delhiites from different strands of
society think about themselves and about their city. It can be argued that this
conceptual change lies at the heart of new dualities that are emerging in the city.
In this regard, Siemiatycki (2006) makes an interesting and very important
observation. Using the example of the Metro, he explains how big events and
projects fulfil a dual purpose. The Metro, on the one hand, is used as a metaphor
that depicts Delhi in its ‘modern’ (and clean) glory. On the other hand, the project
aims at catalysing the modernisation of the city’s society through the dictation of
new rules of behaviour46. Thus, projects like the Metro not only change the city’s
infrastructure (its ‘hardware’), but also the ways in which people act and how they
think about Delhi (i.e. there is a ‘software’ change) (ibid.).
Indeed, changing the mind-‐set of Delhiites has been an active and openly presented
political endeavour that was felt necessary to accelerate the city’s global project.
Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit urged Delhi’s ‘common citizens’ to play an active
role in making the city world-‐class (oneindia News 2006) and, during the
Commonwealth Games, Home Minister Chidambaram encouraged the city’s
residents to “behave better in order to make a favourable impression on visitors”
(Baviskar 2011: 142) for the purpose of promoting ‘global’ Delhi in the best possible
manner (ibid.). The aim behind this ‘change in software’ is to overcome old
stereotypes and clichés about the city and to change the public’s behaviour in order
to implement the new aestheticised vision of a modern, clean and green Delhi.
Despite the fact that the city’s middle class stands as the main societal driving force
behind the global city project, changes of the imagination of an ‘aesthetically
appropriate’ ‘global’ Delhi have also started to impact upon other parts of Delhi’s
society. Research by Ghertner (2010; 2011b) for example shows that slum dwellers
no longer perceive slums as a part of a modern and (future) ‘global’ Delhi. Interviews
conducted in Delhi’s slums confirm that, on the one hand, members of the slum
46 The walls of Metro stations in Delhi are hanged covered signs and posters that remind passengers about different rules that they have to comply to (such as the prohibition of spitting, smoking and crossing the tracks…) and indicate the fines that occur by breaching those rules. Private security personnel makes sure that these rules are observed.
82
community are deeply saddened by the destruction of shanty shacks in their
neighbourhoods but that they also understand how the government and local RWAs
need to improve the city’s image by getting rid of the ‘eyesore’, which jhuggi clusters
represent (ibid.). One slum dweller (quoted in Ghertner 2011b: 292) stated that
“[W]e are dirty and make the city look bad […] Nobody wants to step out of his
home and see us washing in the open or see our kids shitting”. It can hence be seen
that even in the minds of slum dwellers, ideas propagated through bourgeois
environmentalism, or forced upon them through legal decisions based on aesthetic
notions, now find fertile ground.
The change in Delhi’s ‘software’ has thus not only been limited to Delhi’s elite and its
middle class, but also the poorer parts of society. In this way, it has contributed to
the rise of new dualities; Delhi’s urban space is being increasingly transformed into a
realm in which ideologies of modernity find their expression (Srivatsava 2009;
Dupont 2011). Existing slums, most of which were deliberately allowed to grow
between the 1960s and the 1980s when the city was in need of a cheap labour force
(Ghertner 2011a), no longer fit into this modern imagination of Delhi as a global city.
Jhuggies are perceived to be of an unappealing aesthetic nature and are therefore
replaced by ‘green’ spaces and a ‘clean’ and ‘modern’ built-‐environment.
Displays of poverty such as the slum thus no longer fit into the imagination of the
global city. Quite the contrary, Delhi’s jugghis are increasingly understood as the
unintended ‘ugly twin’ of an imagined ‘global’ Delhi (Prakash 2002; Baviskar 2004;
Batra 2005). Nandy (2001) uses the (rural) village as the critique of the city in India.
For him, the village acts as the city’s Other. It can therefore be understood as the
imaginary polar opposite of the city. Considering that the slum is often described as
the ‘village within the city’ (e.g. Matthews et. al 2005), the hypothesis that the slum
needs to be thought of as the global city’s Other is not far-‐fetched. Indeed, an
element of ‘Other-‐ness’ is becoming increasingly persistent in the imagination of the
slum in the academic literature on ‘global’ Delhi (see Prakash 2002: 5; Verma 2002).
In public discourses, this ‘Other-‐ness’ finds its expression in the representation of the
83
slum as an illness47 or an ulcer that needs to be removed (see Dupont 2008b; 2011),
a process, which is usually achieved through RWA petitions.
Due to the aesthetic nature of PILs (especially in the past decade), it has been argued
that legally, slum dwellers have been reduced to slums through a process referred to
as the ‘aesthetisation of poverty’ (e.g. Bhan 2009a; 2009b). Just like the slum has
become the Other to the imagination of the global city, there lies an element of
‘Otherness’ in the imagination of the poor who live in jugghis. With regards to the
socio-‐political empowerment of the Indian urban middle class and the
criminalisation of India’s ‘urban poor’, Chatterjee (2004) has suggested that there is
a new divide in the governance of India. He argues that true citizenship (with all its
socio-‐political participatory rights) is now the privilege of India’s elite, and middle
class and that this reduces India’s rural and urban poor to a mere (marginalised)
‘population’48.
The interests and rights of evicted slum dweller families are no longer in the ‘public
interest’. PILs compiled by, or on behalf of, slum dwellers are often unsuccessful (see
Menon-‐Sen and Bhan 2008) and just like the imagination of the city has become
polarised, it seems that so has the imagination of the people living in Delhi. It is
divided between normal (honest) ‘citizens’ and the (‘criminal’) poor who have
become dehumanised (see Dupont 2008b; 2011) through the aesthetic reduction of
themselves to the place in which they live. They have become reduced to what
Chatterjee (2004) calls ‘population’.
Delhi’s global city project is thus creating an increasingly exclusive city, both in actual
terms, as well as in regards to the imagination of urban citizenship. This has resulted
in various contradictory tendencies. It has for example been claimed that the
development of slums needs to be understood as a direct consequence of the
glamourisation of the city (Verma 2002). Many members of Delhi’s informal
workforce, such as cycle rickshaw drivers or waste pickers, live in the city’s slums
47 This vision of slums is not new and has been embedded in the Western imagination of the city for some time now (see Ghertner 2011b). 48 Žižek (2007) similarly differentiates between the ‘included’ and ‘excluded’ parts of (urban) society. See also Mamdani (1996) who distinguishes between ‘citizen’ and ‘subject’ in the context of post-‐colonial Africa.
84
(see Mitra 2006) and their cheap informal labour force is an essential part of
realising grant projects that help Delhi to live up to its global city dreams (see
Siemiaticky 2006; Munro 2010). It can thus be argued that even though an aesthetic
governance has created an antipathy towards its visible cheap labourers and service
providers, ‘global’ Delhi is in need of this labour force. Like other aspirational global
cities (Wong, Yeow and Zhu 2005) Delhi must therefore constantly compromise
between its need for a cheap labour force, and the desire to get rid of the spaces in
which this labour force tends to live. Thus tensions increasingly emerge out of the
contradictory relationship between Delhi’s imagined global self and its informal and
aesthetically non-‐appealing Other.
In order to understand these tendencies, we need to question to what extent Delhi’s
slum dwellers contribute to the fulfilment of the city’s global project. I will do this in
the following chapter by applying the political ecology approach outlined in Chapter
II to Delhi’s waste pickers and its vast informal recycling sector. Not only do the
people who recycle Delhi’s waste reflect the immense wealth divide that can be
found in the city, but, their work also positively impacts upon the aesthetics and
cleanliness of the city. Yet, as we shall now see, their presence in the centre of the
metropolis is less and less tolerated and they are denied officially recognised
participation in the city’s global project (see Relph 2010).
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Photograph 1: Emerging Dualities in Delhi
© Seth Schindler 2006
Photograph 1 taken in 2006 illustrates the dualities generated through Delhi’s global city
project. In the front of the picture a cycle-‐rickshaw driver is looking for potential customers.
The back shows space in the stage of re-‐development. Underneath a banner stating
“INSPIRATION OF LIFE DWELLS HERE” one can see the shacks of the informal construction
workers who are building the new residential area in which middle-‐class citizens will live. My
thanks go to Seth Schindler who kindly allowed me to reproduce his photograph in my thesis.
86
CHAPTER IV: WASTE PICKERS AND INFORMAL RECYCLING IN DELHI, AN ASPIRING GLOBAL CITY
“My name is Santu. I collect garbage from various places. I think telling […] [people]
about Delhi’s garbage collectors and kabaris [waste dealers] will be a good idea
because most educated people don’t even notice us – which is strange considering
that there are over 150,000 people recycling the city’s waste every day” (Chowdhury
2010: 135).
Jai Prakash Chowdhury, or ‘Santu’ as he is locally known, is a member of Delhi’s large
waste picker community. Being one of the founders of Safai Sena (Army of Cleaners),
a rag pickers’ union entirely run by waste pickers at the grassroots level, he has
repeatedly found himself in an exceptional position and has on several occasions had
the opportunity to voice the demands of Delhi’s informal waste workers. In 2009 for
example, he was invited to the United Nations’ ‘Climate Conference’ in Copenhagen
where he gave a speech on the waste pickers’ role in combating climate change (see
The Advocacy Procect 2008; Mirkes 2010)49. A year later, some of his thoughts were
published as a book chapter in Chaturvedi’s (2010) Finding Delhi – Loss and Renewal
in the Megacity. In this volume, scholars, writers, informal sector workers and
activists offer their perspectives on recent changes in India’s ‘globalizing’ capital city.
The quote at the start of this chapter is taken from Santu’s contribution to this
edited volume. It has been reproduced here because it contains a noteworthy
statement: Santu asserts that Delhi’s waste pickers remain largely unnoticed by
those whom he calls the ‘educated people’. Yet, in the hustle and bustle of Delhi’s
everyday life, nobody can help but notice those women and men who rummage
through waste bins, or are on the look-‐out for waste materials that passers-‐by throw
on the pavement. Be it child waste pickers [see Photograph 2] fighting over a piece
of cardboard in one of Delhi’s middle class colonies, older men going through
garbage bins located at the city’s major tourist sites, or middle-‐aged women bringing
back collected electronic waste (henceforth referred to as e-‐waste 50 ) to their
49 Santu has recently also decided to stand as a Lok Satta Party candidate in the upcoming Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls (Padney 2012). 50 Sometimes also referred to as WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment).
87
jhuggies in the city’s periphery, the sight of waste pickers is neither unusual nor
limited to specific neighbourhoods (Internship Diary 2011). It is therefore reasonable
to ask how Santu’s claim that Delhi’s rag pickers are unnoticed can be upheld?
To answer this, it is worth having a look at what academia has had to say about
Delhi’s waste pickers. Despite the undeniable presence of rag pickers in the city’s
everyday street picture, a look at the number of academic publications focusing on
their work proves rather disappointing. Most research publications that describe
Delhi’s waste pickers empirically or theoretically have been produced by activists
[e.g. Bharati Chaturvedi (1998; 2001; 2003)] and NGOs (e.g. Chintan 2003; Toxics
Link 2005; Chintan 2009a; 2009b; 2010; 2011). Only a handful of scholars (Köberlein
2003; Gill 2004; Ray et al. 2004; Agrawal et al. 2005; Gill 2006; Hayami, Dikshit and
Mishra 2006; Gill 2007; 2010) with a background outside activism have engaged in
small and medium scale empirical research projects. These are however frequently
limited by their sample size and geographical scope (see Köberlein 2003: 213). It can
therefore be argued that Delhi’s rag pickers receive relatively little attention from
academia. This certainly supports Santu’s claim. Nevertheless, it does not prove that
middle class Delhiites fail to acknowledge the existence of rag pickers in the city.
This chapter will rather claim that it is the rag pickers’ work and their contribution to
the global city project that remains unacknowledged by the majority of Delhiites, as
well as by the city’s policy makers. It has therefore rightly been described as
‘invisible work’ (see Gidwani 2006: 11). It will be shown how this work, despite its
invisible nature, makes a positive contribution towards the daily functioning of the
city and that it even endorses some of the key principles that lie at the heart of
Delhi’s global city project. However, as is the case with many other sections of
Delhi’s ‘urban poor’, the city’s waste pickers no longer fit into the city’s perception of
itself as a ‘global’ and ‘modern’ metropolis. Delhi’s global city project has for this
reason started to impact on the livelihoods of informal waste workers in an adverse
manner. They have become increasingly criminalised and spatially marginalised.
Their recent plight can be linked to the tensions that Delhi’s global ambitions have
started to generate. They are tensions between the aesthetically conceived ‘old’ and
88
the ‘new’, i.e. between the ‘traditional’ (and some would argue the ‘primitive’, ‘dirty’
and ‘polluting’) and the ‘modern’ (i.e. the technologically advanced, the ‘clean’ and
‘green’). The city is in a situation in which it needs to compromise between its need
for the services of informal workers such as waste pickers and its felt need to get rid
of sights of poverty, commonly referred to as ‘polluting’ and non-‐global.
1 Rag Picking in Delhi
1.1 Rag Pickers as Part of the Informal Recycling Sector
In an earlier chapter of this thesis (Chapter II), it was established that rag picking as
an economic activity can only be understood if it is analysed within the broader
framework of the informal recycling sector. This means that the occupation needs to
be regarded as the first labour step within the labour division of the (informal)
recycling of waste (see Figure 2 [Chapter II]). In line with this argument, some studies
on informal recycling practices in Delhi have suggested that the work of rag pickers
(and waste buyers) enables the flow of waste materials, which are later recycled by
other agents from within the city’s informal recycling sector. Studies of this kind
often conclude that recyclers are entirely dependent on the collection of waste by
rag pickers (Köberlein 2003: 91; Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006: 61; Chintan
2009b: 8). What these studies seldom acknowledge is that rag pickers are equally
dependent on the recyclers’ demand for cheap waste that can be transformed into
secondary raw material (Schiltz 2011d). It can therefore be argued that, rather than
there simply being a dependency of recyclers on waste pickers, there is in fact an
interdependence between the different actors within the informal recycling sector.
a) The Structures of Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector
As is the case in other cities, the occupational groups within the division of labour of
waste recycling are manifold (Schiltz 2011d) (see also Chapter II). It has been
suggested that between 170,000 and 180,000 people are permanently engaged in
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Delhi’s informal recycling sector (Köberlein 2003: 96). This is about one percent of
the city’s overall population. In addition to this are seasonal workers, who shift
between employment in Delhi’s informal recycling sector and agricultural work
(Internship Diary 2011). Delhi’s informal recycling sector is often portrayed using a
simplified graphical arrangement. First published by Chintan (2003: 4) and since then
adopted in more scholarly writings (e.g. Agrawal et al. 2005: 80; Gidwani and
Chaturvedi 2011: 53) this graphical arrangement portrays the informal recycling
sector in the shape of a pyramid, in which rag pickers and itinerant waste buyers
carry traders and recyclers (see Figure 3). Despite the fact that this pyramidal
structure can generate a false impression of dependency of the recyclers on waste
pickers, it appears proportionately representative of estimated figures for each
occupational group within the sector as can be seen from Table 5.
Figure 3: Structure of Delhi’s Informal Waste Recycling Sector51
*Rag Pickers tend to sell waste to panni dealers, whereas itinerant waste buyers sell to kabari dealers (see Gill 2004; 2007).
Adapted from Chintan (2003: 4) and Gidwani and Chaturvedi (2011: 53).
51 The informal recycling sector in Delhi is male dominated. Female workers are mainly engaged at the bottom of the waste recycling pyramid to which entry is relatively easy. It is for example estimated that women account for 40 percent of segregators and similar kinds of waste workers (Köberlein 2003: 114).
Reprocessors
Large-‐Scale Dealers
Small-‐Scale Dealers*
I}nerant Waste Buyers
Waste Pickers
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Table 5: Some Key Actors in Delhi’s Informal Waste Recycling Sector
Occupational Group Estimated Number of Actors Recycling Units 100 Wholesalers 800 -‐ 1,000 Retailers 1,200 -‐ 1,500 Medium Scale Dealers 4,000 -‐ 5,000 Small Scale Dealers 8,000 -‐ 10,000 Auxiliary Labourers 10,000 -‐ 12,000 Waste Sorters 30,000 -‐ 35,000 Itinerant Waste Buyers 15,000 -‐ 20,000 Waste Pickers 90,000 -‐ 100,000
Adopted from Köberlein (2003: 95).
b) Problems with the Pyramidal Representation of Delhi’s Informal Recycling
Sector
Even though estimates for each occupational group appear to confirm the pyramidal
shape of Delhi’s informal recycling sector, representing the sector in this manner is
not without its problems. Firstly, there have been some significant changes since the
publication of Köberlein’s (2003) research, on which Table 5 is based. Space in Delhi
has become increasingly scarce and as a result storage room has become
unaffordable for many medium-‐ and large-‐scale waste dealers. This has resulted in
the decline of these occupational groups as many dealers have been forced to
downsize and are now only able to buy waste from a small and selected number of
rag pickers (Chaturvedi 2011 -‐ Personal Communication; Chaturvedi and Gidwani
2011: 133; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011: 53-‐54). Hence, the figures for these two
occupational groups must be revised downward.
Another, more significant problem with the pyramidal representation of Delhi’s
informal recycling sector is that it can be misleading in its depiction of the actors at
the top of the hierarchy. Despite the fact that the municipal solid waste (MSW)
collected by waste pickers and itinerant waste buyers will move upwards in the
pyramid, not all recyclers and traders are dependent on waste that stems from
waste pickers’ collection of Delhi’s MSW. Also, a lot of informal recycling in Delhi
91
takes place in small shanty operations (Agrawal et al. 2005: 74) and visitors to
neighbourhoods specialised in the recycling of different waste materials will come
across a vast amount of small recycling units often specialising in seemingly obscure
items such as tooth-‐paste tubes (Internship Diary 2011) [see Photograph 2].
Edwards and Kellet (2000: 192) estimated that there are more than 53,000 such
‘back-‐street’ recycling units in the city52. It is thus doubtful that Köberlein’s (2003: 95
-‐ see above) estimate of 100 recycling units correctly represents the actual number
of the city’s informal recycling businesses today53. It has to be assumed that
Köberlein only refers to units involved in the recycling of large volumes of waste
and/or that he ignores recyclers who are not entirely dependent on MSW. Many
recyclers in Delhi’s informal recycling sector are however dedicated to the recycling
of industrial waste. Vinod Kumar for example runs a recycling business in Mandoli, a
village in the North-‐Eastern outskirts of Delhi. His business is specialised in the
recycling of non-‐ferrous metal dust, a residue of industrial metal processing
(Internship Diary 2011).
Other recyclers acquire waste which has not been generated locally and in some
cases has even come from international sources. Despite the Basel Convention54
(UNEP 2011), which strictly regulates and restricts trans-‐boundary trade and
transport of waste materials (especially those defined as ‘hazardous’), there appears
to be a massive influx of foreign waste into India. A journalistic investigation by
Jamwal (2004) suggests that due to grey areas in India’s national legislation, as well
as the inefficiency (and the lack) of border controls, India currently imports waste
from more than 100 different countries. The scale of illegally imported waste matter
is vast, ranging from materials such as pig hair to ash generated by the steel industry.
It also includes more ‘problematic’ materials such as explosive scrap, of which India
imported more than 6,700 tonnes between 2002 and 2003 (ibid.). Much of the
imported waste ends up in Delhi’s informal sector, especially foreign plastic [see
52 They refer to an unspecified study by Vatavaran, a local NGO. 53 I.e. businesses in which waste is transformed into secondary raw material. 54 India ratified the Convention in 1992. It is officially known as the ‘Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-‐boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal’. A simplified summary of the key points and ideas of the convention is given in UNEP (2002).
92
Photograph 3] (see Gill 2010; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011) and e-‐waste (Jamwal
2004; Sinha-‐Khetriwal, Kraeuchi and Schwaminger 2005; Dhamija 2006;
Manomaivibool 2008; Kothari, Ahluwalia and Nema 2011)55.
Different types of waste are recycled in different parts of the city, which can be
mapped in relation to its distinctive recycling hubs (Chaturvedi 2001). The North-‐
West of the city, especially Mundka and its neighbouring villages, is generally
considered to be the heart of India’s plastic recycling industry56. (Chaturvedi 2001;
Jamwal 2004; Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011;
Internship Diary 2011). Mundka alone is said to accommodate between 80,000 and
104,000 informal waste workers (Gill 2010: 129). The area around Mandoli, in the
North-‐West of the city, is renowned for its metal recycling activities (Internship Diary
2011) [see Photograph 5]. Amongst many other metal recyclers, there are about 50
lead recycling businesses, which process up to 100 tonnes of lead per day (Jamwal
2004). Located in the North/North-‐East of the city are places like Seelampur,
Mustafabad and Shastri Park, in which an increasing amount of e-‐waste is recycled
and reconditioned (Greenpeace 2005; Miller 2009: 259-‐260; Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition, Chintan and Imak 2010; Internship Diary 2011) [see Photograph 6]. E-‐
waste recycling has become a booming and very lucrative business as old electronic
parts (especially computer components) contain precious metals such as gold,
copper and silver. A high proportion of this e-‐waste [23,000 tonnes per year
according to Doley (2005)] is imported from Western countries57 (Sinha-‐Khetriwal,
Kraeuchi and Schwamminger 2005; Streicher-‐Porte el al. 2005; Widmer et al. 2005;
Dhamija 2006; Padney 2006).
55 The issue of e-‐waste in Delhi was furthermore discussed by an expert panel session organised in light of the ‘Berlin South Asian Talks’, launched under the banner of the ‘Asia-‐Pacific Weeks’ in Berlin. The panel session, held in September 2011 was entitled ‘Public Waste and Private Health – Informal E-‐Scrap Recycling in India’. The author of this thesis sat on the panel. 56 The extent of this industry must not be underestimated. In contrast to high-‐income countries in the West, in which often only a small percentage of plastic waste is recycled, it is estimated that about three quarters of India’s plastic waste is recycled (Haque, Mujtaba and Bell 2000). This does not include the plastic imported from other countries. For example, between 1997 and 2003 India imported 6,847 tonnes of PVC (polyvinyl chlorides) from other countries (Jamwal 2004). 57 The proportion of e-‐waste generated in Delhi itself is also rapidly growing. For this see Kothari, Ahluwalia and Nema (2011).
93
Exporting waste to Delhi’s informal recycling sector is a cost-‐effective waste
management solution. In high-‐income countries, recycling in the formal sector is a
capital-‐intensive undertaking. Entrepreneurs in Delhi’s informal recycling sector, by
ignoring labour, environmental and fiscal regulations (Manomaivibool 2008: 141;
Delzeit and Weitzel 2011), offer a labour intensive, yet comparatively cheap
alternative. The recycling of one tonne of HDPE (high density polyethylene) that
costs US $190 in the United States’ formal sector can, for example, be achieved for a
mere US $10 in Delhi’s informal recycling units (Gill 2010: 16). This explains why,
despite the Basel Convention, a large amount of waste continues to be channelled
over India’s national borders.
c) Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector as Part of a Global Network
Thus it can be seen that studies on Delhi’s rag pickers fail to give a full and accurate
portrayal of the city’s informal recycling sector. This is not to say that such studies
misrepresent the flow of the MSW collected by waste pickers on their daily rounds.
Neither do they give a distorted image of the social hierarchy within the sector.
However, their representations do tend to convey the false impression that all
recycling businesses are dependent on the work of waste pickers. Furthermore, the
pyramidal representation of the informal recycling sector fails to recognise the
extent of informal recycling practices that occur in Delhi. It creates the impression
that the sector is solely involved with the recycling of MSW, thus concealing the fact
that the city’s informal recycling sector is embedded in a global network of illicit
waste trade.
The growth of such illicit and/or ‘criminal’ networks has however been linked to the
development of global cities. Sassen (2005: 31) for example argues that “[t]he
growth of networked cross-‐border dynamics among global cities includes a broad
range of domains: political, cultural, social, and criminal”. Nevertheless, little
consideration is given to the role of networks of illicit trade in material goods when
establishing global city rankings, or indeed, in the wider theoretical discussion on the
global city. Regardless of the reasons for this, failure to acknowledge the integration
94
of Delhi into global networks of illicit waste trade results in various actors who
operate within the city’s informal recycling sector being disregarded. Thus, the
stakeholders within this sector are not just excluded from the more general
academic debate, but they are also omitted from a theoretical discussion of the
global city. As elaborated in Chapter II, rag pickers constitute one of the occupational
groups hitherto omitted by global city research.
1.2 Delhi’s Rag Pickers
a) Demographic Features
Estimates of the number of people making a living from the informal collection of
waste in the city of Delhi vary quite significantly. Different authors estimate that
there are between 90,000 and 200,000 waste pickers in the Indian capital
(Chaturvedi 1998; Köberlein 2003: 95-‐96; Agrawal et al. 2005: 81; Srishti cited in
Dhamija 2006: 135-‐136; Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011: 131; Gidwani and Chaturvedi
2011: 51)58. The most recent research suggests that the number of waste pickers
who salvage waste from Delhi’s streets, bins, public places, dump yards, etc. lies
anywhere between 150,000 and 200,000 (Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011: 131;
Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011: 51). Delhi’s rag pickers tend to be migrants (Hayami,
Dikshit and Mishra 2006). One of the reasons why they choose waste picking as an
occupation after their arrival in the city is that collecting garbage does not require
any starting capital (Gill 2007: 1465). Unlike in other cities, especially those in South-‐
East Asian countries, where waste pickers are often predominantly female (see Chi
2003; Huang 2003), women only constitute about one third of Delhi’s rag picker
community (Köberlein 2003: 114; Srishti 2002 cited in Dhamija 2006: 135-‐136).
Contrary to a common stereotype (see for example Edwards and Kelett 2000;
58 A study by Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra (2006: 62) based on data collected from small samples in jugghi colonies around Delhi’s main dump yards in 2002-‐2003 suggests that there are just over 8000 and around 17600 itinerant waste buyers in the city. This estimate stands as an extremely stark contrast to even older estimates based on research in the 1990s (e.g. Chaturvedi 1998).
95
Palnitha and Srinivasan 2004: 39; Tripathi 2008), waste picking in Delhi is not a child-‐
dominated activity. Studies from the 1990s indicate that even amongst Delhi’s
‘street children’ only around 8.3 percent resort to waste picking to make ends meet
(Venkateswaran 1994: 43; Manimekalai and Kunjammal 1999). More recent research
suggests that the proportion of child waste pickers in Delhi lies between 6 (Hayami,
Dikshit and Mishra 2006: 47) and 24 percent (Srishti 2002 cited in Dhamija 2006:
135-‐136).
b) Religious Background
Delhi’s rag pickers are predominantly Hindus and Muslims. Figures on the respective
proportions vary from an almost equal divide (Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006) to a
much higher Muslim proportion (Köberlein 2003: 118). The question about the caste
categories to which Hindu waste pickers belong is rather difficult to answer. The
literature generally suggests that people’s caste status plays an important role when
it comes to activities that involve handling different kinds of wet and dry waste
materials (Korom 1998; Guptka 2001: 37; Gill 2007; 2010). Knowing that in other
countries [such as Egypt (Haynes and El-‐Hakim 1979; Meyer 1987; Fahami and
Sutton 2006)] people’s religious backgrounds determine whether they are socially
permitted (and expected) to handle waste, this seems a plausible argument.
However, Kishore, a (Hindu) researcher at Chintan Environmental Research and
Action Group (henceforth Chintan), who has been involved in extensive research of
Delhi’s informal recycling sector, denies that specific caste status plays a significant
role in an individual’s decision to take up waste picking. Rather he believes that
people’s poor economic situation has become a more pressing factor than caste.
(Kishore 2011 – Personal Communication). Future research might therefore need to
re-‐evaluate the ‘caste-‐question’. However, caste is a sensitive subject matter, for
which reason it has been ignored by many researchers (e.g. Hayami, Dikshit and
Mishra 2006).
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c) Health and Socio-‐Economic Features
The difficulties which Delhi’s rag pickers face on a daily basis are very similar to those
faced by the majority of waste pickers in other cities around the world. Chaturvedi
(2003: 44) explains that Delhi’s rag pickers have a poor social status. They are
frequently victims of harassment and sometimes even physical violence from
members of the general public and the police. Their housing situation tends to be
insecure and they often lack access to medical facilities. They are also less likely to
live a healthy life (ibid.). A study by Ray et al. (2004) for example established that rag
pickers working at the Okhla landfill site (located on the South-‐Eastern outskirts of
Delhi) are less healthy than a control group of people from other occupational
groups living in the same jhuggi settlement. They are prone to a large number of
different health problems such as respiratory diseases, unhealthy gums, and
diarrhoea (ibid.).
The argument about the poor housing conditions of the city’s waste pickers is
confirmed by the fact that 90 percent of them live in temporary shelter (Hayami,
Dikshit and Mishra 2006) [see Photograph 7]. Single waste pickers often have to
share jhuggies, as they cannot afford to pay the rent by themselves. Alternatively,
they have to turn to their dealer for the provision of shelter (Gill 2004: 15; 2007:
1457). Waste pickers also tend to lack basic education, which might have given them
access to a broader variety of income generating occupations. Different studies over
the past two decades have indicated that literacy rates amongst Delhi’s rag pickers
are very low. Estimates on illiteracy rates range between 77 and 91 per cent
(Köberlein 2003: 148; Agrawal et al. 2005: 80; Srishti 2002 cited in Dhamija 2006:
135-‐136; Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006: 45). Illiteracy is particularly high amongst
women. Köberlein (2003: 148) suggests that 95 percent of all women working in
Delhi’s informal recycling sector are illiterate and that most of them have never had
access to formal education.
It has been claimed that waste pickers’ incomes can in some cities be higher than
official poverty lines. For this reason, researchers have been warned not to class rag
pickers as ‘poor’ (Medina 2007). However, recent research suggests that Delhi’s rag
97
pickers are ‘poor’ in both absolute and in relative terms. Various studies indicate
that waste pickers’ incomes lie between US $25.2 and US $43.3 per month. Children
generally earn even less. Only those waste pickers (predominantly men) who have a
tricycle that allows them to shift larger quantities of waste earn more (Srishti cited in
Dhamija 2006: 135-‐136; Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006: 51; Gill 2010: 59). A study
that looked at the overall household incomes of ‘rag picker families’ indicates that 88
percent of waste pickers in Delhi are ‘poor’ according to official means of
measurement59 (Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006). Gill (2010) suggests that waste
pickers generate the smallest incomes amongst all the actors involved in the
informal plastic recycling process and that they also tend to earn less than others
living in the same neighbourhoods (see Table 6 below).
Table 6: Average Incomes and Deprivation Index Figures for Workers in the Informal Plastic
Recycling Industry
Average Monthly Incomes (in $ US) Deprivation Index**
Plastic Godown Owners 124.4 29.4
Itinerant Waste Buyers 74.2 24.4
Plastic Mazdoors* 37.2 20.6
Waste Pickers 35.9 17.5
All Waste Workers 57.3 22.9
Control Group 61.9 22.5
*Plastic ‘Workers’ such as segregators **The lower the index, the higher the deprivation.
Adopted from Gill (2010: 59 & 70)
The picture of Delhi’s waste pickers that has just been drawn is limited by a lack of
recent data and the relatively small sizes of the studied samples. It nevertheless
indicates that waste picker families and communities in Delhi constitute a socially 59 The official poverty line lies at $9.4 US per capita per month for urban Delhi according to Gill (2010: 60)
98
and economically marginalised sector of society. Using a political ecology
perspective as suggested in Chapter II, I will now examine the role these people play
in the daily functioning of the city and how they fit into Delhi’s global city project.
1.3 Invisible Work – A Political Ecology Evaluation of Rag Picking in Delhi
a) The Generation of Income and Added Social Value
As waste is channelled through the informal recycling sector, its value increases with
each labour step (see Figure 2 [Chapter II]). Delhi’s waste pickers are dependent on
this increase as it determines their incomes (Khullar and Trey-‐White 2009: 67). It is
difficult to assess how much the value of different waste materials increases as a
result of the work of waste pickers and other actors in the informal recycling sector.
Activists suggest that the value of some waste materials can increase to as much as
750% of its original value as it is processed by the different agents in the informal
waste recycling sector (Chaturvedi 1998). More scholarly literature suggests that the
added value lies between 19 and 121 percent (Agrawal et al. 2005: 84).
Venkanteswaran (1994) on the basis of data collected in 1993 (see Table 7 below)
shows how prices of waste increase as it is processed in the informal recycling sector.
Table 7: Added Value to Waste Materials in Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector
Picker to Trader Trader to Wholesaler Wholesaler to Recycler
Paper 1.8 – 2.7 2.7 – 3.6 5.4 – 7.2
Hard Plastic 25.3 -‐ 28.9 28.9 – 32.5 36.1
Iron 5.4 – 7.2 9.0 12.6 – 14.4
Expressed in 10-‐2 US $/kg Adopted from Venkanteswaran (1994: 56).
From this it can be deduced that rag pickers earn their incomes by selling waste,
which they pick up ‘for free’. In this process they produce an income for themselves
and provide the foundation for other income generating activities in the informal
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recycling sector (Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006). Thus, even though the informal
recycling sector in Delhi is not entirely dependent on waste picking (as described
above), it can be argued that waste pickers initiate the flow of waste that allows
other waste workers involved in the recycling of Delhi’s MSW to generate their
incomes. In this way waste pickers contribute to the social value of informally
recycled waste, which has been estimated to be as high as US $73.3 million per year
(ibid.: 63).
b) Rag Pickers Role in Municipal Solid Waste Management
Due to the nature of their work, waste pickers in Delhi play a significant role in the
functioning of the city’s municipal solid waste management (MSWM). Throughout
the day, they collect recyclables from the streets, public places, bins and other sites
of waste disposal (Sharholy et al. 2008: 465). Even though they do this for reasons of
livelihood sustenance, their work significantly reduces the amount of MSW that
Delhi’s municipal services need to collect and dispose of. It has been estimated that
waste picking reduces the total amount of MSW which Delhi’s inhabitants generate
by about 17.4 percent (Agrawal et al. 2005: 81). An example that illustrates the
extent of this reduction in MSW was given in the early 1990s. Venkanteswaran’s
(1994: 65-‐66) calculations suggest that the amount of waste picked by rag pickers
and collected by itinerant waste buyers was at that time equal to the volume of
waste generated by 1.6 million ‘typical’ Delhiites60. Consequently, rag pickers take
over a large financial burden from the municipalities. Chaturvedi (1998) calculated
that, if rag pickers collect between 12 and 15 percent of the city’s MSW, they save
the municipal services between US $4.62 and US $5.77 million per annum. This is in
line with a more scholarly, and more recent, estimate by Sharholy and colleagues
(2008: 465) who suggest that the rag pickers’ work saves the city’s taxpayers a yearly
total of about US $5 million.
60 Bases on a 17.4% recovery rate (Agrawal et al. 2005) and a population of 16.8 million inhabitants (Census of India 2011: 8) a current estimate would suggest that waste pickers collect the waste of 2.9 million ‘typical’ Delhiites.
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c) Environmental Benefits
Rag pickers also contribute to the conservation of the city’s environment. They often
collect waste material that has not been properly disposed of. Furthermore, there
are other environmental benefits; recycling of waste reduces the environmental
damage that occurs as a result of the extraction of raw material from primary
sources (Hayami, Dikshit and Mishra 2006: 63). On the same note, energy
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are also much lower for the recycling of
waste compared to the extraction of raw material(s) from primary sources (see
Chapter II). Yet it is important to state that there are also environmental problems
associated with waste recycling in Delhi’s informal sector. One needs to consider
that the waste that is channelled to informal recyclers is not always recycled in an
environmentally sound fashion (Internship Diary 2011). In comparison to the formal
recycling industry in high-‐income countries, informal recycling practices in Delhi
often release high levels of toxins, dioxins and acids directly into the environment
(Sinha-‐Khetriwal, Kraeuchi and Schwamminger 2005). Informal plastic recycling, for
example, releases dioxins into the air. These can create severe health problems for
the recyclers and the people living in the surrounding areas of the recycling units
(Agrawal et al. 2005: 74; Dhamija 2006: 138 & 181; Internship Diary 2011).
Nevertheless, despite the sometimes polluting nature of informal recycling units, it
should be noted that the alternative, i.e. ‘dumping’ waste on one of Delhi’s landfills,
is not necessarily an environmentally sounder way of managing Delhi’s MSW. Indeed,
uncontrolled landfills pollute the ground water and release gases, especially
methane, which has a high greenhouse potential (see Venkateswaran 1994: 25;
Delzeit and Weitzel 2011). It has also been claimed that, due to the limitations of
landfill space, municipal workers regularly start fires at Ghazipur (one of Delhi’s main
landfill sites) to create more space for waste (Khullar and Trey-‐White 2009). This
needs to be considered as an environmentally less sound way of waste disposal than
the recycling of waste in Delhi’s informal recycling units.
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d) The Reduction of Carbon Emissions
Thus, the question of just how beneficial informal recycling is to the environment
remains open to debate. Further research is needed to satisfactorily answer this
question. It has however been proven that Delhi’s waste pickers save a substantial
amount of carbon emissions by channelling waste materials away from landfill sites.
A recent study by Chintan (2009a) estimates that, each year, rag pickers save around
962,133 tCO2e (tonnes of CO2 equivalent)61. This benefit of rag picking comes at
absolutely no cost to the municipality (ibid.).
e) Cheap Secondary Raw Material
Chapter II has shown that the waste that rag pickers channel back into the informal
recycling sector is transformed into secondary raw material, which is significantly
cheaper than raw material gained from virgin sources (see also Schiltz 2011d). Thus,
rag pickers help provide Delhi with cheap resources that can be used for the
infrastructural development of ‘global’ Delhi. This will be discussed in more detail in
the following chapter.
1.4 Waste Picking and Delhi’s Global City Aspirations
This analysis of waste picking as the first step of MSW recycling reveals that there
are many aspects to the occupation that remain invisible to a vast majority of
Delhiites. However, many aspects of their work are beneficial to the recent efforts to
change the image of Delhi into that of a global city. For example, rag pickers play an
important role in keeping the city clean and, like formal MSW collectors (see Melosi
2005: chapter 4; Singh and Ramanthan 2010), they thus enhance the aesthetics of
the urban space, which feature strongly in the recent reinvention of the city as
described in Chapter III. By collecting garbage from public places, Delhi’s rag pickers
61 ‘Tonnes of CO2 equivalent’ is a measurement of the contribution of all emitted greenhouse gases to the greenhouse effect. It is expressed as the amount (tonnes) of CO2 that would have the equivalent greenhouse effect.
102
also contribute to the protection of the city’s environment. The latter has become an
important feature of the middle class’ attempt to transform the city into a ‘world-‐
class’ metropolis (Jain 2009: 344). Middle class ecological concerns are reflected in
slogans such as ‘Clean Delhi – Green Delhi’, but also in recent attempts to make Delhi
a ‘low carbon’ city (ibid.: chapter 18). By channelling waste into the informal
recycling sector, waste pickers also help reducing the city’s carbon emissions.
It can thus be argued that rag pickers should be counted as contributors to Delhi’s
global city project. Yet their contribution remains largely invisible to middle class
Delhiites as well as to policy makers and politicians. The most important policy
documents dealing with MSWM, such as the Municipal Solid Waste (Managing and
Handling) Rules, 2000 and the E-‐Waste (Managing and Handling) Rules, 201162,
ignore their work altogether. On the rare occasions when rag pickers (or other
informal waste workers) are mentioned in legislative documents such as the Plastic
Waste (Managing and Handling) Rules, 2011, reference to their actual contribution
towards MSWM remains extremely vague. What we therefore need to ask now is
why the informal waste workers’ contribution to Delhi’s global city remains
unacknowledged and what consequences their official exclusion from MSWM has for
them. This will be the question that I will answer in the final part of this chapter.
2 The Impact of Delhi’s Global Aspirations on Waste Pickers and Other Members of
Delhi’s Informal Recycling Sector
2.1 MSWM in the Global City
Research suggests that most municipalities in urban India struggle with the growing
task posed by MSWM (e.g. Goel 2008; Kumar et al. 2009; Pattnaik and Reddy 2010;
Sridhar and Reddy 2010). Delhi was once declared the ‘world’s most-‐polluted city’
(see Dhamija 2006) and is thus no exception to this trend. The city currently
generates between 6000 and 7000 tonnes of MSW per day (Dhamija 2006: 91;
Taylan Dahiya and Sreekrishnan 2008: 1276). It has been suggested that this official
62 These rules do however briefly mention the informal sector more generally.
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estimate downplays the actual extent of solid waste generated (Goel 2008). What is
undisputed is that the city’s growing population combined with an increasing
adoption of Western-‐style consumer culture by middle class Delhiites, have led to a
constant rise in the amount of waste generated in the city (Chaturvedi and Gidwani
2011). It has been estimated that by 2021 the mass of MSW that Delhiites will
produce daily will be between 17,000 and 25,000 tonnes (Dhamija 2006). MSWM is
thus becoming a growing challenge for Delhi’s municipalities.
The image of Delhi as a ‘polluted’ or a ‘dirty’ city evidently conflicts with Delhi’s
recent attempt to reinvent itself as a ‘modern’, global metropolis. Indeed, as has
been elaborated above (Chapter III), the re-‐imagination of Delhi as a global city has
been a project that has impacted upon the aesthetic understanding of Delhi’s city-‐
space. The latter has been redefined through a middle-‐class ‘ecological’ agenda that
aims at transforming Delhi into a clean and green city. Infrastructure projects, such
as the newly built Metro, aim to amplify Delhi’s ‘modern’ status through a state of
the art aesthetic appearance.
It can be argued that this emphasis on ‘cleanliness’ and ‘modernity’ has no space for
the methods and the tools used by various stakeholders of the city’s informal
recycling sector, as they are often rather basic (see Miller 2009). Rag pickers and
waste sorters often rely on nothing but their bare hands and even recyclers, such as
Shambhu Singh Yadav, usually do not use technologically sophisticated instruments:
“Located in the centre of the small yard next to Shambhu’s shanty shack is a melting
pot in which he melts crisp bags. This pot can best be described as a ‘wok’ which is
elevated about three feet from the ground and supported by a concrete U-‐shaped
foundation wall. In this pot the plastic materials are lit. During this process some of
the plastic is burnt and the remaining part is melted. Hence, the plastic wrappings
act simultaneously as recyclable and as fuel. The melted plastic is mixed with a
powder that we were told was ‘soil’. After cooling down, the solid material is in the
shape of a patty. A neighbouring unit casts this in little rectangular shaped pieces
that resemble bits of worn-‐out and half-‐burned car tyres. We were told that this
material is sold to another business where it is turned into pellets, which can be
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used in the production of new goods such as table-‐feet” (Internship Diary 2011) [see
Photograph 8].
This example illustrates how informal recyclers are not necessarily reliant on high-‐
capital, ‘modern’ technology. Indeed, the ways in which informal waste workers
revalorise waste matter have been described as ‘primitive’ in academic accounts (e.g.
Edwards and Kelett 2000; Manomaivibool 2008). A logical conclusion arising from
this labelling of the techniques used by informal waste workers as primitive is that
their work practices can no longer be considered compatible with the image of the
‘modern’ and ‘global’ city that Delhi aspires to become. Policy makers, and even
Indian scholars, have adopted this way of thinking. In an article published in an essay
collection (Singh and Ramanthan 2010) of admittedly very poor scholarly standards,
Abhay (2010) maintains that ‘the old techniques’ of MSWM and recovery in Delhi are
no longer appropriate63 and that new ways of MSWM need to be found.
Considering such claims and bearing in mind the liberalisation of the Indian economy
since the early 1990s, it is unsurprising that policy makers have recently started to
liberalise and ‘modernise’ MSWM (Dhamija 2006).
“The main driver [for this] is the public image of the city, propelled by public interest
litigation[s] during the late 1990s. […] [F]urther steps have been taken at great
speed in time for the Commonwealth Games […]. These have accelerated the
development of infrastructure in the city and [the] moderni[s]ation of solid waste
management services[,] as the city authorities are making efforts to present Delhi as
a clean world-‐class city with advanced technology” (Hadayani et al. 2010: 58) (see
also Singh et al. 2011).
The restructuring of MSWM is thus a part of Delhi’s on-‐going global city project. The
foundations for the city’s re-‐thinking of MSWM were laid in the 1990s when several
PILs (public interest litigations) emphasised the inadequacy of existing strategies. As
a result, the Municipal Solid Waste (Managing and Handling) Rules were introduced
63 Note that Abhay’s views on waste picking seem to be contradictory. Even though he acknowledges the importance of informal sector workers in Delhi’s MSWM, he fails to see the actual contributions that rag pickers make. Similarly, his suggestions for improvement of Delhi’s MSWM contain initiatives to include waste pickers in the formal waste recovery system but equally call for an increase in high-‐technology equipment which would jeopardise the waste pickers’ incomes (see below in this chapter).
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in the year 2000. The Rules encourage public-‐private-‐partnerships (PPPs), i.e. the
privatisation of the recovery, disposal and recycling of MSW (see Chaturvedi and
Gidwani 2011; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011). Since their implementation, the
privatisation and infrastructural modernisation of MSWM have started to impact on
waste picking communities and other actors that gain their income in Delhi’s
informal recycling sector as the following cases illustrate.
a) The Privatisation MSW Recovery from Dhalaos
Being responsible for MSWM provision for 95 percent of the capital’s territory (see
Sakar2003), the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) decided soon after the release
of the Rules that it was no longer able to handle the task of MSWM by itself. In 2005
three private companies64 were given the ‘right to waste’ in about half of the MCD’s
administrative area. These companies are in charge of the waste recovery from
dhalaos. Dhalaos are neighbourhood collection points for household waste.
Traditionally they were occupied by waste pickers, who shared the space, using it for
the collection and segregation of valuable materials. Municipal services then
collected the remaining waste for final disposal. Since the privatisation of the waste
recovery from dhalaos, only one formal worker is permitted to occupy each dhalao.
The task of these so-‐called ‘bin guides’ is to ‘guard’ and segregate the waste in their
dhalao. ‘Bin guides’ are mostly men because fixed daytime working hours clash with
many women’s expected household duties (Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011; Gidwani
and Chaturvedi 2011).
The privatisation of the waste recovery from dhalaos has led to informal waste
pickers being denied access to MSW. This decreased access to valuable materials
negatively impacts upon their livelihoods (see Table 8 below). It has furthermore led
to the criminalisation of informal waste collection from these, now privately
controlled, spaces. In addition, private companies are only required to recycle 20
percent of the waste that accumulates in the dhalaos. It is therefore unlikely that the
environment has benefited from this measure seeing that, depending on the 64 Delhi Waste Management, AG Enviro Infra Projects, and Metro Waste Handling Pvt. Ltd.
106
neighbourhood, rag pickers traditionally managed to stream back up to 59 percent
of the waste from dhalaos into the informal recycling chain (ibid.). The ecological
efficiency of the new system is thus debateable.
Table 8: Consequences of Privatisation of Waste Recovery from Dhalao Spaces on Delhi’s Waste Pickers
Before After Waste pickers had access to waste to sustain their livelihoods.
The waste pickers access to dry waste has deteriorated significantly. This has had a negative impact on their livelihood sustenance.
Waste pickers were able to share the waste in dhalaos.
Only one (usually male) ‘bin guide’ is now employed to guard and clean the dhalao. Picking waste from dhalaos has been criminalised.
Waste pickers could share the dhalao space for segregation.
Waste pickers no longer have access to this space. This may lead to new conflicts.
Adopted from Chaturvedi and Gidwani (2011: 141).
b) The Privatisation of Waste Recovery in New Delhi Railway Station
Recent developments in waste recovery from New Delhi Railway Station also reflect
how the privatisation of solid waste recovery has negatively impacted upon the
livelihood of some of the city’s waste pickers. Until mid-‐2011, the local NGO Chintan
had an agreement with the railway station management. It allowed Chintan to
employ around 80 waste pickers who were put in charge of waste recovery from the
station’s bins and its incoming long-‐distance trains. Waste pickers were given
uniforms and protective equipment and they were allocated sheltered space on the
station property in which they segregated the collected materials [see Photograph 7].
The segregated waste was sold in bulk to waste dealers and the income generated
through these sales was used to pay the pickers’ wages. The initiative was generally
well perceived. Informal workers were formalised and thus given official recognition
along with secure and regular incomes. The cleanliness of the station was
significantly improved and incoming trains were cleared of waste systematically and
efficiently. A large part of the collected waste was recycled (Schiltz 2011b). However,
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a bid by Chintan in 2011 that aimed at renewing this arrangement with the station
management was declined. Instead, the right to waste recovery was given to a
private company. As a consequence, the formalised waste pickers were made
redundant and pushed back into the informal sector where incomes are insecure
and their services are not officially recognised 65 (ibid.; Smit -‐ Personal
Communication 2012).
c) The Incineration of MSW
The organisation of Delhi’s MSWM has also been affected by a different kind of
restructuring that fits into the scheme of Delhi’s global city project. The MCD has
developed an increased preference for ‘modern’ i.e. high capital and high technology
waste management solutions (Chintan 2011). In particular, the idea of waste-‐to-‐
energy incinerators, partly financed through Clean Development Mechanisms
(CDM)66, i.e. foreign funds, is regarded as an attractive option for infrastructural
‘modernisation’ (Mirkes 2010). In 2009, the MCD issued licences for two such waste-‐
to-‐energy plants. While the idea for one of these plants was rapidly dropped, Jindal
Urban Infrastructure Limited, a private company, was given the permission to
construct the other plant near the Timapur Okhla landfill. The municipalities are
currently also planning another plant near the Ghazipur landfill site. Once in
operation, both plants should burn 3,330 tonnes of waste per day (Chintan 2011).
As Delhi’s existing landfills have reached their capacities (ibid.), the import of
Western technology that can burn waste whilst generating electricity might at first
sight appear very attractive. However, despite the changing nature of its
composition, the MSW generated in India’s cities remains of low calorific value and
relatively high moisture content. This means that it is not ideally suited for
incineration (Patel 2003). It is for this reason that, in the past, similar high-‐capital
65 In a very recent development, the rights to the railway station’s waste have been given back to Chintan (Kishore 2012 – Personal Communication). However, a general tendency towards private solid waste management solutions still remains. 66 CDM projects enable developing countries to earn emission reduction credits through various emission-‐reducing projects. These credits are saleable to ‘developed’ countries, which can in this way offset some of their own emissions in order to meet reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol.
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incinerator projects in Delhi (and in other Indian cities) had to be shut down after
very short periods (sometimes only days) of inadequate operation (Patel 2003;
Sharholy et al. 2008; Taylan, Dahiya and Sreekrishnan 2008).
Some have argued that the relatively low calorific content of MSW in Indian cities is
partly due to the fact that waste pickers pick out non-‐organic67 dry and high calorific
waste matter, such as plastic and cardboard (Sharholy et al. 2008: 462). Activists, but
also scholars, have therefore suggested that if the calorific value of the waste is to be
raised, waste pickers will have to be denied access to high calorific (which often
equates with higher market-‐value) materials (Patel 2003; Toxics Link 2005: 8;
Chintan 2011). For this reason, a recent investigation by Chintan (2011) has analysed
the potential consequences of the proposed plants for the areas’ rag picker
communities. The report concludes that the waste pickers’ access to valuable
materials will be compromised significantly if the incinerators are to work efficiently.
Waste pickers will have to work for longer hours in order to compensate for the loss
in their incomes. It is also expected that rag pickers will have less disposable incomes
to spend on services provided by peers in their communities. These service providers
are therefore expected to give up their occupations and become rag pickers
themselves, which again raises the competition for high-‐value waste in the
respective areas (ibid.).
d) Bourgeois Environmentalism and Informal Recycling
Other stakeholders within Delhi’s informal recycling sector have been equally
affected by the politics of Delhi’s global city project. An earlier chapter gave a rough
estimate of the number of industrial units that were closed down in the last decade
(see Table 4 page 78). These units were involved in various industrial activities
including the informal recycling of waste. It is, however, difficult to find reliable data
on the precise extent of the closures. It is therefore worth looking at the
67 The ‘right to organic waste’ is also increasingly being privatised in Delhi. Privately owned compost plants have been opened in Okhla and Bhaswala (Handayani et al. 2010).
109
academically neglected legal case of Mahavir Singh vs. Union of India and Others as
this offers some insight into this matter. The case documentation (provided by
Mahavir Singh’s ex legal representative Mr Sumeet Sharma in 2011) reveals that the
authorities inspected between 621 and 881 recycling units in non-‐conforming areas
between July 2009 and May 2010. Out of these, a minimum of 278 units were sealed.
However, due to a lack of information in the case documentation, it must be
assumed that this number is likely to be higher68.
A critical examination of the case documentation furthermore reveals that the
closure of these units is the result of a legal battle, which was mainly based on
bourgeois environmentalist rhetoric. The claimant was Mahavir Singh, a local
politician who used to live in Neelwal in the Western outskirts of Delhi. Singh started
to campaign actively for the closure of ‘polluting’ recycling units in this area (see
Map 3 below) in 2002. He argued that the units jeopardised the environment as well
as the quality of life of Neelwal’s residents as they emit high amounts of dioxins and
heavy metals. After a rather dissatisfying start to his campaign, Singh drafted a PIL
that he presented to the Supreme Court in January 2009. The case was forwarded to
the High Court, which immediately took action by inspecting and closing down a
large number of informal recycling businesses (see Table 9 below).
In his PIL, Singh describes himself as a ‘responsible Indian citizen’ who tries to defend
the interests and fundamental rights of his fellow villagers (case documentation
provided by Sharma in 2011). An interview with his lawyer, Mr Sumeet Sharma,
however, revealed that Singh had only drafted the PIL because he was standing in for
the local elections. Mr Sharma suggested that the PIL should be regarded as part of
Singh’s election campaign rather than an ideologically driven plea for environmental
justice; after having lost the election, Singh moved out of Neelwal and dropped the
case (interview with Sumeet Sharma 2011), having deprived a large number of
people of their source of income in the informal recycling sector.
68 There is no information given for 260 units inspected between March 17 and 26. Furthermore, the authorities found 283 vacant units and it is unclear if these units were shut down after inspection.
110
Table 9: Industrial Units Inspected and Closed Down During the Legal Proceedings of Mahavir Singh vs. Union of India and Others
Date Inspected Sealed Vacant 06/07/2009 -‐ 27/07/2009 79 46 20 19/08/2009 174 110 36
17/03/2010 -‐ 26/03/2010*
161
50
210
29
N/A
N/A
121
N/A
N/A 26/03/2010 79 48 31 27/03/2010 -‐ 04/05/2010 120 37 75 01/05/2010 8 8 0 Total: 881 278 283
Based on case documentation (provided by Sharma in 2011) *Between 17/03/10 and 26/03/10 161 units were inspected. However, the case documentation also mentions the inspection of another 50 respectively 210 units during this period without giving further information about the outcome of these inspections.
Map 3: Areas in which Recycling Units were Closed Down by the Authorities
Source: maps.google.com The places specifically named in the documentation linked to the PIL are: (1) Nagloi, (2) Ranhola, (3) Ghevra, (4) Neelwal, (5) Mundka, (6) Tikri Kalan, and (7) Quammruddin Nagar.
3
4
5 7
2 1
6
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Despite these negative implications for individual recyclers, the media, as well as
Delhi’s middle class citizens, have by and large been in favour of such initiatives that
aim at closing down ‘non-‐conforming’ industrial businesses (Roy 2000). It can be
seen that rather than being valued for the ecological and economic constitution of
their work, members of Delhi’s informal recycling sector are portrayed as ‘polluters’
who must be removed from the city.
2.2 The ‘Underclassisation’ of Waste Pickers in the Global City
The above cases illustrate how bourgeois environmentalism and the recent changes
within the city’s MSWM, both outcomes of the city’s global aspirations, are
negatively affecting the livelihoods of Delhi’s waste pickers and informal waste
workers. It seems that they have no place within the imagination of Delhi as global
city. The Municipal Solid Waste (Management) and Handling Rules 2000 have been
considered as the cornerstone for many of the recent policy changes and have led to
the liberalisation of MSWM practices, as well as the modernisation of infrastructure
to enable waste to be managed in a state of the art manner. Whereas the rules
stress the importance of recycling in the ‘modern’ metropolis, they overlook the role
that Delhi’s informal waste workers have traditionally played in recycling the city’s
MSW. The positive contributions that informal waste workers have made and are
still making to the everyday functioning of the city remain invisible. The informal
recycling sector in Delhi “is [thus] not treated as the flip-‐side of the urban middle
class rhetoric of recycling as a ‘green’ activity” (Chaturvedi 2003: 47). Informal
recycling practices are rather no longer in line with the aesthetic ideals of Delhi’s
global self. Just like the slum (see previous chapter), back street recycling units have
been branded as ‘polluting’ and ‘primitive’.
Gidwani and Chaturvedi (2011: 69-‐70) therefore suggest that the Municipal Solid
Waste (Management) and Handling Rules “endorse an urban imaginary cleansed […]
of the urban poor”. The visibility of poverty and pollution that informal waste
workers are perceived to represent on the streets and public spaces of the re-‐
invented ‘modern’ metropolis are no longer deemed appropriate. Middle-‐class
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Delhiites perceive waste picking as an occupation that belongs to the past era of
non-‐global Delhi. This perception is strikingly similar to that of European urbanites
towards waste picking in 19th century European cities. Chapter II explained how rag
pickers were seen as that part of society that no longer fitted into the changing
societal structures. They were described as pre-‐capitalist Lumpenproletarians (Marx
2003 [1852]: 445) and were stigmatised (Mayhew 1861) and criminalised (Frégier
1840).
Demeaning and criminalising connotations of waste picking similar to those of 19th
century European rag pickers can be found in the Indian English-‐speaking media,
which drives Delhi’s global aspirations. A Times of India news-‐report, for example,
describes the city’s waste pickers in the following manner:
“Located at the bottom of the urban social pyramid, ragpickers are the smelly boys
in the tattered clothes whom everyone quickly passes by. Even street dogs, sub-‐
consciously aware of their lowly status and confusing them for thieves, chase them
in shabby bylanes” (Tripathi 2008: n.p.).
Links between rag picking and petty crime are quickly established. The underlying
assumption that waste pickers only refrain from criminal acts because they can make
a living by collecting garbage has even started to seep into scholarly thinking (e.g.
Singh 2010: 131). In 1995 the MCD went so far as to make waste picking a criminal
act. Even though this ban was only temporary and was never effectively
implemented, it resulted in rag pickers becoming subject to increased police
harassment69. The reason for the ban was the supposed danger that waste pickers
pose for themselves and the general public; the MCD assumed that rag pickers were
likely to spread diseases and to dirty the streets by scattering garbage70 (Chaturvedi
1998: 26). Today, even though rag picking per se is no longer illegal, the recent
privatisation of MSW resulted in making the collection of waste from privatised
dhalaos an act of theft. Living predominantly in Delhi’s jugghis, rag pickers have also
69 On the matter of the criminalisation of Delhi’s waste pickers and on police harassment towards them see also Venkanteswaran (1994: 51) and Chaturvedi (2003: 46). 70 Note that it has been argued that the waste pickers’ work can help prevent the spread and development of disease (see Chapter II). However, the view that rag pickers carry diseases is still dominant in contemporary Delhiites’ thinking (see The Advocacy Procect 2008).
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been subject to slum clearances and relocations for reasons of ‘encroaching’ on
public land (Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011). Thus, like other slum dwellers, rag
pickers have also been subject to the more general criminalisation of Delhi’s ‘urban
poor’ that was outlined in an earlier chapter (see Chapter III).
It can therefore be said that “[r]ather than viewing […] waste pickers as political
subjects with claims to the city’s amenities and spaces, or, even simply as economic
service providers, judges and planners have […] branded them as a ‘public nuisance’”
(ibid.: 54). Vij (2008) therefore claims that rag pickers increasingly constitute a part
of that sector of India’s society that he describes as ‘non-‐citizens’ and even ‘non-‐
people’. This argument is in line with the more common ‘underclassisation’ of Delhi’s
‘poor’. Delhi’s slum dwellers in particular have been downgraded to a mere
‘population’ (Chatterjee 2004) and have lost their citizenship status together with its
associated political rights (see Chapter III).
It thus becomes clear that rag pickers and other informal waste workers must be
considered as the losers of Delhi’s global city project. Traditionally, the only way in
which wealth trickled down to them was in the form of household waste(s)
generated by wealthier Delhiites (see Edwards and Kellet 2000). However, in a time
in which India’s middle class is increasingly influenced by notions of Western style
consumer culture (Chapter III) and in which more waste is generated than ever
before (Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011), the access to this form of ‘wealth’ is
increasingly denied to them (ibid.; Chintan 2011; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011).
Delhi’s informal recycling sector nevertheless continues to make an often
unacknowledged contribution towards the city’s economy, society and environment.
Despite the recent modernisation and privatisation of MSWM services, waste
management remains a task that the municipalities (and private companies) cannot
master on their own. The contribution of rag pickers towards the ‘low-‐carbon’ and
‘green’ city, both integral aspects of Delhi’s global city project, is also undeniable. By
providing the city with cheap secondary raw material, the informal recycling sector
contributes to the infrastructural growth and (re-‐) development of the city. For this
reason, it appears as if Delhi [like other cities in growing economies (Wong, Yeow
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and Zhu 2005)] has to make a compromise. On the one hand the global city project
requires a cheap (and in the case of informal waste workers, a free) informal labour
force as well as cost efficient raw material for infrastructural growth. On the other
hand, the global city project seeks to ‘cleanse’ the city of the sights of poverty, which
are conceived as polluting and non-‐global. These spaces constitute (as elaborated in
the previous chapter) the Other to Delhi’s imagined global self. Ironically, they are
also the spaces in which many of the city’s informal workers, especially the city’s
waste pickers, tend to live.
The city’s informal recycling sector is thus required, but not wanted, and perfectly
illustrates the dualities generated by the global city project. Actors like waste pickers
have become torn by these dualities. Being so much affected by Delhi’s global
project, we must include these actors and their stories into our analysis of the global
city. The next chapter will indeed show that this allows us to generate a more
rounded and balanced representation of the global city, which includes a less
glamorous flipside of global city development. Including the story of the waste picker
and thus looking at the global city from below and through the eyes of ‘ordinary’
people also puts into question the purpose of some of the recently conducted
research, and raises issues about urban citizenship in the aspirational world-‐class
metropolis.
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Photograph 2: Child Waste Pickers Near India Gate
Taken by the author in 2011.
Photograph 3: Tooth-‐Paste Tube Recycler in Nagloi
Taken by the author in 2011.
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Photograph 4: Plastic Segregators in Nagloi
Taken by the author in 2011.
Photograph 5: Aluminium Recycler Operating Smelter
Taken by the author in 2011.
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Photograph 6: E-‐Waste Recycler in Shastri Park (Dismantling DVD Drives)
Taken by the author in 2011.
Photograph 7: Rag Picker Community near the Ghazipur Landfill Site
Taken by the author in 2011.
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Photograph 8: Formalised Waste Pickers at New Delhi Railway Station
Taken by the author in 2011.
Photograph 9: ‘Melting Wok’ Like that of Shambhu
Taken by the author in 2011.
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CHAPTER V: THEORETICAL INSIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT
“So what is changing for us [waste pickers] in the city [of Delhi]? Nothing that is
good. Things are only changing for the rich. Nobody who is poor can stay in the city
[…]. Instead of removing poverty the current changes will only remove the poor
from the city because they will not be able to survive here” (Chowdhury 2010: 141-‐
142).
In the previous chapter, we saw how Delhi increasingly has had to compromise
between a need for the cheap, and in many cases free, labour performed by workers
of the informal recycling sector, and its ambition to become a global metropolis free
from sights of poverty and pollution. Therefore, despite their active contribution
towards Delhi’s global city project, waste pickers are criminalised and pushed
towards the periphery of the city. Processes such as the privatisation of formerly
municipal service provision, the clearances of slums, and the denial of access to
space containing high-‐value waste material, have furthered their socio-‐political,
economic and spatial marginalisation. In the above quotation, Santu the waste
picker introduced at the beginning of the previous chapter, therefore for good
reason, calls Delhi’s global city project into question. His words are unpretentious
and straightforward, yet his message is very clear: The poorer sections of Delhi’s
society, and especially the city’s rag pickers, are becoming increasingly marginalised
as richer Delhiites are transforming the city into a modern and glamorous metropolis
(ibid.). Santu thus provides us with a powerful criticism of Delhi’s global city project,
which, as will be argued in this chapter, we have to take very seriously.
Published accounts like that of Santu are relatively uncommon. Indeed, it is rather
unusual for Delhi’s rag pickers to be given the opportunity to raise their voices
against socio-‐political injustices. The voices of the poorer sections of Delhi’s society
often remain unheard. In this chapter I will argue that it is important for us to break
this trend. The chapter will explain why it is crucial to incorporate the story of people
such as Delhi’s waste pickers into the analysis of aspiring global cities. It will be
suggested that a reading of the global city ‘from below’ offers a more rounded
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picture of the global city project that includes a less sparkling flipside of world city
development. The latter is in many cases neglected in mainstream scholarly accounts,
which seem to propagate a mythical image of the global city space that benefits the
winners of neoliberal globalization. This raises important questions about urban
citizenship in the global city. Additionally, an analysis of the global city from below
allows us to incorporate notions such as ‘waste’, ‘pollution’ and even the emergence
of international criminal networks into our analysis of the global city. In this way, our
knowledge of the global city can be furthered and existing theories of global city
creation can be challenged.
1 The Perpetual Reinforcement of the ‘Global City-‐Myth’
As already touched upon in Chapter I, global city research predominantly focuses on
a handful of cities that have established themselves as model global cities. These are
the cities at the very top of the diverse global city rankings, which some scholars
portray as spaces of opportunity and self-‐fulfilment (Dürrschmidt 2003) that produce
the conditions for cosmopolitanism (Jacobs 1999). In the minds of many scholars and
the general public alike, global cities have become associated with wealth,
glamorous aesthetics and modern infrastructure (Yeoh 2005; Fung and Monschein
2010). They are the cities of high-‐rise office buildings (Jacobs 1999; Yeoh 2005) in
which highly skilled professionals, working for ‘important’ multinational corporations,
come to meet and to do business (Findlay et al. 1996; Sassen 2001). Global cities are
presented as politico-‐economic hubs, from which the globalizing world is steered
(e.g. Friedmann 1986; Sassen 2001). The image of the global city generated in a large
number of academic publications is dazzling and it is therefore not a surprise that
achieving world-‐class status has become so desirable for cities around the globe (see
Robinson 2006).
This image of the global city as a city of modern infrastructure and stunning sights is
further amplified by the representation of world cities in the international media,
especially in photographic reports. The pictures published in a Bloomberg (2012)
report for example, exclusively portray glamorous and modern sites of the world’s
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most recognised global cities. Another similar report published by the Foreign Policy
Magazine (Fung and Monschein 2010) is more balanced in its photographic
representation. However, whilst some photographs depict less positive images from
a large variety of cities around the world, pictures showing ‘non-‐modern’ sights are
still used in a manner that highlights the need to invest in modern infrastructure in
order to make a city global. One picture (Photograph 10 below) for example shows a
man and a child having a meal in front of the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi.
Portraying a historic and arguably ‘pre-‐modern’ view of the city, the picture’s caption
states that “India’s capital […] is getting richer and [is portrayed] more often in the
global spotlight, but the dilapidated infrastructure in much of the city is still a hurdle
for many of the foreign companies doing business there” (ibid.: n.p.).
Photograph 10: Foreign Policy Magazine’s Photographic Portrayal of Global Delhi
© Fung and Monschein (2010)
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Multinational corporations (MNCs) and other promoters of neoliberal globalization
have taken advantage of this manner in which the ‘ideal’ global city is depicted.
Whilst fostering it in their publications, they use it in their own and their clients’
interests. For them, global cities are the cities for the wealthy (Knight Frank and City
Private Bank 2011; 2012) and the urban elite (A.T. Kearney 2010) -‐ the very people to
whom they cater: “portfolio managers, global strategists and risk managers” (IPD
2012: 2). The perceptions of businesspeople in regards to how appealing different
cities are, have even become one of the criteria that inform global city rankings
(Euromoney 2011; KPMG and Greater Paris Investment Agency 2011). The reports,
which present such rankings often suggest that, to enable the professional
workforce to do business, it becomes vital for aspiring global cities to develop the
‘necessary’ infrastructure71 such as modern office space and public transportation
facilities (A.T. Kearney 2010; EIU 2012; Knight Frank and City Private Bank 2012).
Cities also need to become ‘cool’ in order to fulfil the specific cultural and
recreational needs of their talented intellectuals and highly skilled businesspeople
(A.T. Kearney 2010; Goldman 2012; Knight Frank and City Private Bank 2012).
The accounts of multinational consultancy firms have started to make use of
academically informed writing, and as we shall shortly see, they increasingly draw
upon the expertise of well-‐established scholars such as Sassen and Taylor, whose
work has been particularly influential upon mainstream academic theory. Backed by
these highly renowned and influential academics, consultancy firms often claim that
“a city that aspires to global reach must invest in many areas, particularly those most
critical to success in good and bad times” (A.T. Kearney 2010: 14). The exact nature
of these areas is defined in the same publications. The analysis of Delhi’s global city
project in this thesis has shown that cities in the developing world have taken such
advice to heart and have started to re-‐think policy and re-‐develop infrastructure,
whilst constantly measuring themselves against the glamorous image created
around model global cities.
71 This thought can also be found in academic accounts. See for example Yeung (1996: 27).
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Delhi has aimed at promoting its world-‐class status through infrastructural
‘modernisation’ (e.g. the Metro and IGI Airport) and the organisation of
internationally broadcast events (e.g. the Commonwealth Games 2010 and the
Formula One Grand Prix). Such ‘grand projects’ were used to promote the city’s
status on an international stage. In the light of the London 2012 Olympic Games,
Sinclair (2011) has recently suggested that ‘grand projects’ need to be read as a
substitute for a serious concern with locality. Keeping in mind the dualities created
by Delhi’s global city project, this criticism is certainly valid if applied to the global
city project of India’s capital city. As Chapters III and IV have illustrated, Delhi’s city
planners and policy makers have chosen to ignore stakeholders such as the city’s
waste pickers as they have tried to improve the city’s global status. This has
happened despite the fact that the labour performed by agents of the informal
recycling sector positively contributes towards generating a cleaner metropolis with
a better environment, both principal qualities of Delhi’s re-‐imagined ideal global self.
Instead, decision makers have chosen to adopt ideas and concepts that aim at
transforming the image and the aesthetics of the city according to Western
standards and ideals. The latter have no space for notions such as ‘informal work’,
‘poverty’, ‘pollution’ and ‘garbage’. Delhi’s global city project has been based upon a
Western imagination of the global city and built on an ethos of ‘modernity’, ‘wealth’,
‘ecology’ and ‘cleanliness’. Western notions of neoliberalism have furthermore
encouraged the privatisation of public services, as the restructuring of Delhi’s
municipal solid waste management (MSW) illustrates (Chapter IV).
As a consequence, decision makers in Delhi have been feeding into a myth that
surrounds the global city narrative. It is the tale of the global city that is free of
poverty; a utopian city exclusive of the sights of waste pickers who have been
branded as ‘poor’, ‘criminal’, ‘unhealthy’ and ‘polluting’ (see Chapter III). As they buy
into this glamorous stereotype of the global city, cities like Delhi perpetually
reinforce the myth propagated in the above-‐mentioned publications, the media, and
even in the academic literature. Of course this is not to say that the global city is a
myth. On the contrary; originally thought of as an abstract theoretical model, the
global city has become a tangible reality. Some cities have started to take advantage
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of their global status in order to attract capital investment, business, a highly skilled
professional workforce, and tourists from around the world (Jacobs 1996: 53-‐58;
Sassen 2001). London and Hong Kong, that describes itself as ‘Asia’s World City’, use
their global image to attract tourists (Brand Hong Kong n.d.; London and Partners
n.d.). Singapore is promoted to investors as “Asia’s most competitive city” (EIU 2012:
10) and the ‘global city of buzz’ (Goh 2010). The global status of these cities has
become embedded in the political, the public and academic realms and we can
therefore no longer move away from the global city rhetoric as suggested by some
critics (e.g. Amin and Graham 1997; Robinson 2002; 2005; 2006). For this reason, as
elaborated in Chapter I, instead of altogether moving away from the global city
terminology, I have focused upon a more inclusive view of the global city project.
This must include the constitution of ‘ordinary’ city dwellers: Delhi’s waste pickers.
2 ‘Ordinary People’ in the Global City
It is important to recognise that the story of this part of Delhi’s society does not
denote the struggle of a minority. It is generally estimated that in most cities of the
developing world around two percent of the population make a living through the
informal collection of waste (Medina 2005: 8). Despite the fact that ‘only’ between
one and two percent of Delhiites are directly engaged in informal waste work (see
Chaturvedi 1998; Köberlein 2003: 95-‐96; Agrawal et al. 2005: 81; Srishti cited in
Dhamija 2006: 135-‐136; Chaturvedi and Gidwani 2011: 131; Gidwani and Chaturvedi
2011: 51), many other people are occupied offering goods and services to waste
workers and are thus dependent on the money generated through the informal
recycling of waste (see Versnel 1982: 214-‐215; Chintan 2011). Delhi’s informal
recycling sector is therefore the basis for livelihood-‐sustenance of a larger number of
people than one might first expect (see also Chapter IV). Additional to this, we need
to remember that the vast majority of Delhi’s waste pickers live in slums and
‘temporary shelter’ (see for example Gill 2004: 15; Agrawal et al. 2005: 81; Hayami,
Dikshit and Mishra 2006; Gill 2007: 1457). For this reason, paying attention to the
voices of the city’s rag pickers also signifies listening to the members of Delhi’s
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rapidly growing ensemble of slum dwellers. This is a population group that currently
comprises about fifty percent of the city’s overall populace (Bhan 2009b: 48-‐49;
Ahmed 2011).
Being a slum dweller in Delhi, or indeed in urban India more generally, is thus not at
all exceptional. Despite increasingly being regarded as the city’s Other in public as
well as in scholarly descriptions (see Chapters III and IV), the vastness of their
number cannot but suggest that we regard slum dwellers, including waste pickers, as
ordinary urbanites. In fact, the number of the world’s slum population is still
increasing and it is expected that within the next 40 years a third (i.e. 3 billion
people) of the world’s population will be living in slums (Neuwirth 2005: xiii).
Robinson’s (2002; 2005; 2006) powerful and rare critique of the global city model
(see Chapter 1) suggests that we move away from the global city terminology, and
that more emphasis needs to be put onto the ordinary. Despite it having become
impossible to move away from the global city terminology (see Chapter 1 and above
in this chapter), it is important that on those rare occasions when ordinary people
like Santu (Chowdhury 2010) are given a platform to state their concerns, that we
take them very seriously. This is of course not a new idea. The significance of writing
histories ‘from below’ by listening to the voices of the marginalised, especially in the
context of Delhi and India, has been highlighted by the Subaltern Studies Collective
(SSC) for many years now (e.g. Guha 1997; Bayat 2000; Chaturvedi 2000; Roy 2011).
By including the voices of the poorer sections of India’s society, the SSC has managed
to decentre nationalist and modernist historiographies. This is an approach that is
becoming increasingly influential. Similarly, institutions such as Sarai, which is the
urban research programme of Delhi’s Centre for the Study of Developing Societies,
have started to study the pressures which urban transformation puts upon the poor
in India’s cities [see for example Sarai (n.d.)]. It is important that we include this
approach in our study of global cities.
By shedding light on the story of ordinary people, this thesis has highlighted some of
the more negative implications, which the recent changes associated with the city’s
global aspirations have brought about. This asks for a discussion of how the
integration of the figure of the waste picker into the theorisation of the global city
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can further our knowledge, and, how it challenges us to think about what purpose
we want global city theory to fulfil.
3 Challenging Existing Theory
The story told in this thesis has revealed that the academic celebration of the global
city, which supports the claims made by multinational consultancy firms, has started
to impact upon the actions taken by city planners and policy-‐makers around the
world. Urban decision makers in developing countries have been especially affected.
Their cities are often depicted as megacities, a term that is usually associated with
slums and poverty (Roy 2011). Evidently, city planners do not want their cities to be
associated with this negative typology and therefore they strive to transform their
cities into internationally recognised world-‐class metropoles, which academia
celebrates as global centres of command, and cities of opportunity, wealth and
‘modernity’.
The tale of Delhi’s rag pickers has shown that, whilst some urbanites (i.e. the city’s
middle class) benefit from this, an increasing number of people lose out in the
search for global status improvement. Rather than implementing policies that
combat the problem of urban poverty, decision makers in cities like Delhi pursue
strategies through which sights and sites of poverty are merely displaced. As a result,
the urban ‘poor’ are increasingly marginalised, and through the modernisation of the
cities’ infrastructures, the organisation of grand events, and an increased
privatisation of public services, their livelihoods are further jeopardised.
Yet, many accounts in mainstream global city theory ignore these implications of
global status creation. This is rather astonishing seeing that Friedmann’s (1986)
original hypotheses (see Chapter I) described world cities as socially divided spaces
reflecting the contradictions and dualities emerging from capitalism. The
mainstream literature’s neglect of the darker side of global city development in the
developing world’s cities is even more surprising if one considers that key
contributors such as Sassen and Taylor have hinted at this facet of global city
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development. Sassen (2001; 2005; 2011) for example, has repeatedly underlined
that the informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of global cities.
The study of the informal sector was in fact a key component of her earlier research
(e.g. Sassen-‐Koob 1987; 1989; Portes and Sassen-‐Koob 1993). More recently she has
also suggested that manufacturing processes in slums have become vital for the
functioning of some cities. “In cities with extreme inequalities, where the advanced
economy captures a disproportionate share of income and profits, more and more of
urban manufacturing shift to slum areas” (Sassen 2011: 59). In this process, some
slums have become ‘global slums’ (ibid.). Like Taylor (2007), she (2011: 59) poses the
question of what the parallel rise of (global) slums and global cities can tell us about
the impact of the globalization of the world economy in urban spaces.
Unfortunately neither Sassen nor Taylor, have taken this up. It is no surprise then
that a broader interest in the correlation between the growth of slums and global
city development remains largely unexplored within mainstream accounts of the
global city. In fact, Sassen and Taylor, who have both contributed so significantly to
the advancement of our knowledge on global cities, are increasingly turning a blind
eye to what we might call the darker side of global city development. Instead, they
have started to feed into the mythical ideal-‐type image creation of the global city by
becoming increasingly involved in the research of the above-‐mentioned
multinational consultancy firms72. They help cater for those who benefit most from
the current neoliberal developments in global cities, i.e. those who have no interest
in a negative portrayal of the global city project. The slum and its inhabitants thus
remain associated with the term ‘megacity’ and remain a “metonym for
underdevelopment” (Roy 2011: 224). The story of slum dwellers remains untold in
mainstream theorisation of the global city. By drawing on the experience of cities
from the North and prescribing policies which can be implemented in aspiring cities
of the global South, mainstream global city theory thus adopts the developmental
bias which can often be found in Western urban theory (for more on this see
MacFarlane 2010: 728).
72 See for example the publications of AT Kearney (2010; 2012) and Knight Frank and City Private Bank (2012).
128
The question that we need to ask is how this problematic can be overcome. Robert
Cox (1981: 128) famously argued that theory always has a specific purpose for
particular groups within a society. It is important that we consider what we want the
purpose of global city theory to be and how we can move towards a critical reading
of the global city project. Initially, global city theory was aimed at an academic
audience. It was proposed as a model that allowed us to analyse the division of
labour in a globalizing post-‐Fordist world. However, since Friedmann’s (1986)
original proposal, our understanding of the global city has ceased to just function as
an analytical tool. Instead, theoretical accounts of the global city have started to
dictate the conditions, which must be fulfilled for a city to achieve an internationally
recognised world-‐class status. The thus created blueprint for the ‘ideal’ global city
has become prescriptive in terms of economic development, but also in connection
to the development of the aesthetics of urban space, culture, architecture,
infrastructure, and -‐ one dare even say -‐ the ideal class composition at the urban
core. It is not a surprise then that the notion of the global city has been criticised for
its developmentalist nature (e.g. Rodriguez-‐Bachiller 2000; Dawson and Edwards
2004; Robinson 2006) as I have outlined in Chapter I.
Including the accounts of waste pickers such as Santu (Chowdhury 2010), who has
little academic background but yet manages to profoundly challenge the way in
which the global city is perceived, shows us that the theory (and its theory) in its
current state is deeply flawed. The current conceptualisation of the global city
ignores the needs and the problems of the poorer people living in global and aspiring
global cities. The mythical theorisation of the global city has rather started to favour
those who benefit most from neoliberal globalization. As theorists within the social
sciences, it is therefore our responsibility to break with this fashion of glorifying the
global city. One way of achieving this is by analysing the global city from below, as
has been done in this thesis. Light was shed on the plight of Delhi’s rag pickers and
informal waste workers, and in this way, a facet of the global city that has hitherto
been found of little or no academic interest has been highlighted. It has been shown
that all that glitters is not gold and that there is more to the global city than what
many people want it to be. Usually represented as the city of the global elite, culture,
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grand events73, and world-‐class architecture, this thesis has shown that the global
city is also the city of socio-‐economic and spatial dualities that are usually associated
with ‘megacities’. A view from below that incorporates informal workers such as the
rag picker allows us to look at the dualities created during the implementation of the
global city project and to incorporate notions such as poverty, pollution, and waste,
which are often neglected in the portrayal of the global city. It thus helps us to work
towards generating a more rounded understanding of the global city project.
4 A View from Below
It can be argued that a focus on waste pickers in aspiring global cities such as Delhi
goes beyond merely grasping the dualities that the path towards becoming a global
metropolis involves. Apart from showing how through the global city project, slum
dwellers are dispossessed of their means of income generation and pushed to the
outskirts of the city, a view from below also illuminates a number of other issues
that make us conceive the global city in a less glamorous light. The environmental
impact of the global city project is one example of such a thematic that has scarcely
been discussed in the literature (Keil 1995; Panayotou 2001; Luke 2006 [2003])74. A
closely related problematic that the discussion in this thesis has touched upon (see
Chapter IV) is that of the carbon footprint of global cities. Our knowledge on this
issue is incomplete and there is a dire need for more research and discussion on this
topic. Waste and its treatment is another aspect that has remained unexplored
within the mainstream literature on the global city. Even though the rising problem
of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in global cities has been hinted at
(e.g. Clark 1996), the very nature of waste (on this see Drackner 2005; do Carmo and
de Oliveira 2010) does not concur with the contemporary glamorous portrayal of the
global city. The case of Delhi’s waste pickers has shown that MSWM in Delhi is a
growing concern for the local authorities. The increasing rise of Western style
consumer culture that can be directly linked to the global city project, as well as the
73 On this see also Short (2012). 74 See also Newman (2006) for a more general discussion of the impact of urban growth on the environment.
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explosion of the urban population, have started to generate unforeseen amounts of
solid waste that need to be ‘managed’. Despite recent changes in MSWM, the
informal sector still performs a substantial amount of this task free of charge. In fact,
Delhi’s informal recycling sector even imports vast amounts of solid waste from
other parts of India and from abroad (see Chapter IV), which highlights the
production capacities of this sector.
The influx of foreign waste into Delhi’s informal recycling sector is an important issue
that future research needs to address. In Chapter IV it was shown how the vast influx
of (for example, electronic and plastic) waste from around the world tends to be in
breach of the Basel Convention and thus mostly illegal. This means that Delhi’s
informal recycling sector is directly connected to a global network of illicit waste
trade. The growth of such networks that have a ‘criminal’ nature has been linked to
the development of global cities (Sassen 2001: 353; 2005: 31), yet, little has been
undertaken to achieve a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. Another reason
why it is important to look at the international influx of waste is that a large number
of backyard recycling units transform this (but also the locally collected) waste into
secondary raw material, thus providing a comparatively cheap commodity. It is
difficult to establish what happens to this secondary raw material due to a lack of
data, and to the informal nature of the sector, which make it hard to trace material
flows. It is however highly likely that the produce from Delhi’s informal recycling
sector ends up in formal production in Delhi, India and even abroad. An interview
with a metal-‐dust recycler from Mandoli in February 2011 revealed, for example,
that some of the recycled metal is directly sold to a company that produces motor
vehicle parts (Internship Diary 2011). There is no doubt that such parts could end up
in cars manufactured for international distribution.
We must also ask how important the availability of cheap secondary raw material is
to enhance the city’s built infrastructure. The latter is vital for the development of
aspiring global cities. Despite the fact that we can once again only speculate on this
matter, it is more than likely that Delhi’s global city project greatly benefits from the
availability of cheap raw material generated in the city’s informal recycling sector.
This raises the question whose physical and manual labour fosters Delhi’s global city
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project. By recognising the labour of waste pickers as being a form of both,
commodity production and service provision, this thesis has provided evidence that
waste pickers contribute to the daily functioning of the city as well as the city’s
global project.
This sustains the argument that we must ask to what extent the aspiring global city is
dependent on their informal labour. In fact, the same question can be asked in
regards to other informal service providers such as street hawkers, rickshaw pullers
and barbers, just to name a few. People in all these professions provide services that
are, and have for a long time been, essential for the daily functioning of the city. Yet,
this, as well as an account of their individual plights, is often left out in the analysis
of the global city. It can be doubted that the professional workforce in global cities
could manage without the services provided by the informal sector. Informal labour
in the global city has mostly been studied with focus on cities of the Northern
hemisphere (e.g. Sassen-‐Koob 1987; 1989; Portes and Sassen-‐Koob 1993; Stoller
1996). The informal sector in cities of the global South is rarely analysed by global
city theorists who have hitherto altogether ignored the thematic of rag picking. Yet,
this thesis has shown that informal workers such as Delhi’s waste pickers positively
contribute to the global city project. This argument is sustained by other research
(e.g. Wong, Yeow and Zhu 2005). However, people like waste pickers and informal
recyclers are increasingly pushed out of the city. This raises important questions
about urban citizenship to which our discussion will now turn.
5 The ‘Right to the Global City’
By analysing Delhi in the light of a city with global aspirations that has actively
embarked upon a global city project, and by focusing on the city’s waste pickers, this
thesis was able to uncover a range of new socio-‐economic inequalities and spatial
segregations. The processes of marginalisation that Delhi’s global city project has
brought about, juxtapose the Ministry of Urban Development’s promise of “a better
quality of life” for “all the people” through making Delhi a global city (Ministry of
Urban Development 2007: 1) in its latest Master plan (MPD-‐2021). A question that
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therefore springs to mind is whether we can deem Delhi’s global city project a
‘success’.
One way of answering this question is through tracking Delhi’s position in various
global city rankings, which many scholars use to determine the economic and
strategic ‘importance’ of global cities. This approach does however not provide us
with a clear-‐cut answer. In fact, a look at different global city rankings proves
somewhat confusing. During the last decade, Delhi’s position in the rankings of the
Globalisation and World City (GaWC) network has improved to some extent75.
Positioned number 52, Delhi was classified as a ‘Beta-‐city’ in the year 2000 (GaWC
2000). Today the city is regarded as an ’Alpha Minus-‐city’ that occupies position
number 33 in the ranking (GaWC 2010). In the classifications of A.T. Kearney, Delhi
has however slipped from rank 41 in 2008 to rank number 48 in 2012 (A.T. Kearney
2012: 3). Despite this drop, the latest A.T. Kearney (2012) report describes Delhi as
an ‘emerging city’ that has the potential to climb up the institution’s ranking matrix
in the not too distant future (ibid.). The attractiveness of Delhi and the potential for
the city to do better in future rankings is also highlighted in several other reports
(Knight Frank and City Private Bank 2011; KPMG and Greater Paris Investment
Agency 2011; Knight Frank and City Private Bank 2012). However, there still remain
accounts that either disregard the global status of Delhi altogether (Euromoney
2011; MMF 2011; IPD 2012), or only recognise Delhi as a metropolis that merely
partially fulfils some of the criteria that determine the global status of a city (EIU
2012).
A comparison of different rankings is therefore inconclusive, which confirms the
limited usefulness of such rankings. Determining to what extent Delhi’s global city
project has fulfilled the anticipated outcome of endowing the city with a world-‐class
status is therefore a difficult undertaking. It is safe to say however, that the city is far
75 The GaWC ranks global cities within different categories. The categorisation is hierarchical and cities are ranked according to the following categorisation (highest to lowest): Alpha (Alpha ++; Alpha +; Alpha; Alpha-‐) Beta (Beta+; Beta; Beta-‐) Gamma (Gamma+; Gamma; Gamma-‐) High Sufficiency Sufficiency
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away from being recognised as one of the world’s leading global metropoles.
Considering that the prioritisation of spending resources not to make the city more
equitable but rather to improve its global image (see also Lemanski 2007: 449), it
becomes questionable whether Delhi’s costly global city project, has indeed made
Delhi a ‘better’ place for everyone to live in as suggested in the MPD-‐2021.
This challenges the traditional understanding of what makes a successful global city.
Measuring the success of Delhi’s global city project can according to the logic of the
MPD-‐2021 be linked to the question whether the reinvented city has indeed
improved the quality of life of the people living in Delhi (see page 70 in this thesis).
The tale of the city’s rag pickers, which this thesis has conveyed in terms of the
theoretical conceptualisation of Delhi’s global city project, suggests that instead of
improving lives, Delhi’s global city project has started to jeopardise the livelihoods of
a large number of ‘poor’, yet ordinary, people. A strictly semantic discussion, which
focuses on the socio-‐political status of the city’s waste pickers, puts this matter into
a somewhat different light. Making part of the city’s Other, and having become
politically disenfranchised, Delhi’s rag pickers have been branded as ‘criminals’ and
‘polluters’ (see Chapters III and IV). They are treated as ‘non-‐people’ (Vij 2008). This
makes it questionable whether the Ministry of Urban Development’s understanding
of a better city for everyone implies making it a better city for rag pickers and other
sections of the ‘urban poor’.
It is therefore important that we start asking serious questions about whose the
global city is (Yeung 1996: 30) and also, whose city we want global cities to be. In
order to do this we need to broaden our discussion about the ‘right to the city’ (e.g.
Harvey 2008; Lefebvre 2009 [1968]) to a discussion on the ‘right to the global city’
(Purcell 2003). This, or rather, an analysis of the right to the benefits of the global
city project includes thinking about the issue of urban citizenship. This thesis has
shown that Delhi’s waste pickers seem to have been deprived of this status and
similar developments can be observed in other aspiring global cities around the
world (e.g. Wong, Yeow and Zhu 2005). Thinking about other cities, such as Rio de
Janiero (Brazil) which have embarked upon global city projects, future research
urgently needs to address this topic as, if we continue to exclude the marginalised
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parts of aspirational global cities’ societies from global city theory, then we further
the myth of the global city being a city free of poverty even further. This then means
that we contribute to the further marginalisation of these people.
By including actors such as Delhi’s waste pickers into the analysis of the global city
project, we can however develop a more rounded understanding and portrayal of
the global city that acknowledges the contribution of informal workers and slum
dwellers to the global city project. A view from below allows us to shed light onto
the darker sides of global city development by introducing concepts and issues that
have hitherto been ignored by mainstream global city theory. The latter has mostly
been concerned with conceptualising the global city as a dazzling space of
opportunity for a wealthy elite. Highly skilled professionals are however dependent
on people like Santu who carry their glamorous lifestyles through hard, and often
dangerous informal work. “[I]t is the waste of the wealthy that we are dirtying our
hands with” claims Santu (Chowdhury 2010: 135-‐136 -‐ emphasis added). Yet, little, if
any of the wealth through which global cities are identified trickles down to the city’s
‘poor’. The global city project rather seems to impact upon them in an adverse
manner. Theoretical accounts of the global city, whose nature has become
suggestive in terms of what ‘ideal’ global cities should be like, have thus started to
have a negative impact upon the lives of the 'urban poor’. Yet, only very rarely does
the same theory look more closely into the resulting issues and struggles of these
people.
Research on Delhi’s global city aspirations and their impact on the city’s waste
pickers and informal recyclers therefore needs to be broadened and studies, such as
the present, need to be taken further if we want to enhance our knowledge on the
negative consequences of Delhi’s global city project. In order to do this, a focus on
the stories of individual waste pickers will be essential. For this reason it can be said
that if the present study were to be taken further, it would attempt to generate a
more thorough reading of Delhi’s global city project ‘from below’. This would be
done in a similar fashion to that suggested by the SSC (see for example Guha 1997;
Bayat 2000; Chaturvedi 2000; Roy 2011). In other words, knowledge would be
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generated by listening to the voices of Delhi’s waste pickers who represent a
marginalised section of the city’s population.
Drawing on the findings of this thesis, a future study would make extensive use of
qualitative case studies of waste pickers living and working in different spatial
confinements of Delhi. As was explained in chapters II and IV, rag pickers operate in
many parts of the city and collect a very broad range of waste materials. This is but
one reason why it is vital that the spatial specificity of different case studies would
have to be given careful consideration. In fact, case studies would need to include a
broad range of waste pickers operating in different sites as, like this thesis has shown,
different spaces in which waste is collected have been affected in very specific ways
by Delhi’s global city project. For example, waste pickers on landfill sites such as
Timapur Oklhla and Ghazipur, where waste-‐to-‐energy incinerators are in the process
of being built (see Chintan 2011), are likely to experience Delhi’s global city project
differently to those collecting waste in neighbourhoods in which dhalaos have been
privatised, or even those waste pickers who collect waste in the streets of newly
aestheticised city spaces such as Noida and Gurgaon. Other important variables that
need to be taken into consideration when selecting case studies are gender and age.
Waste picking in Delhi is, contrary to other cities, a form of income generation that is
pursued by women and men of all ages (see chapter IV). However, due to societally
perceived household duties (as already hinted at in the analysis of the privatisation
of dhalaos), women rag pickers’ experiences of Delhi’s global city project might differ
from those of male pickers.
The waste pickers’ socio-‐economic experiences of Delhi’s global city project is
however only one aspect upon which more emphasis would need to be put in a
future study. Departing from the brief analysis of policy documents such as the 2011
E-‐Waste (Managing and Handling) Rules in this thesis, a future research project
would also have to include a more thorough analysis of policy documents produced
in the wake of the MPD-‐2021. Especially those documents describing the
transformation of Delhi into a ‘low carbon city’ (see Jain 2009) would need to be
considered. Leading on from the discussion of the Plastic Waste (Managing and
Handling) Rules, 2011 in this thesis, a future study would also need to pay close
136
attention to the development of the legal status of certain waste materials.
Especially the constantly changing and much debated laws on plastic bags (see
Edwards and Kellet 2000) would have to be analysed as legal reforms are directly
related to the idea of an environmentally sound ‘green and clean’ Delhi. Since
recovering plastic bags remains an income generation activity for a large number of
waste pickers (Internship Diary 2011) any legal changes in this domain will ultimately
impact on these people’s livelihoods.
Summing up, it can be said that it is time that we acknowledge processes of
marginalisation and socio-‐political fragmentation as well as other parts of the darker
side of global city development. We need to stop promoting the myth surrounding
the global city for it leads to a misconception in both academia and in the public
realm. Rayner, a well established scholar and co-‐director of the Oxford Programme
for the Future of Cities claims that “[c]ities don’t make people poor. They attract
poor people because they are better places to be poor than the countryside. [… It is]
in cities that poor people get to be rich” (Rayner 2011: n.p.)76. Such bold statements
prove that we risk losing grasp with reality if we keep portraying the global city in an
overly glamorous way. The reality is that slum dwellers remain marginalised and that,
even though, they might enhance their incomes in the city, this does not mean that
they find a way out of poverty. This thesis rather suggests that many slum dwellers
are increasingly marginalised through the global city project and that they are
increasingly less well off in relative terms.
We therefore need to overcome the false celebration of the global city and look at
the lives and problems of ordinary people in aspiring global cities. As scholars, we
have a choice. We can ignore poverty and focus on an elite minority of rich
professionals. If we do this then we help reinforcing the mythical image of the global
city, and support the idea of a city that best suits our own needs and lifestyles.
Alternatively, we can look at those people whom the global city project marginalises
and think about what impact the glorification of the global city makes upon their
lives. We need to ask if we want to support the idea of a city built on, and sustained
76 For a similar account see also Kenny (2012).
137
by, the labour of a marginalised fraction of society whose stories all too often remain
unacknowledged. If the answer to this questions is no, then the view of the global
city from below can help us draw a more realistic image, which portrays the global
city from all its sides and which is based on theory that values the labour of people
like Santu without prejudice and in all its dimensions.
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CONCLUSION
Global economic changes over the past few decades have resulted in the emergence
of a worldwide network of urban command centres that has widely been recognised
by scholars of different disciplines as a roster of global cities and global city-‐regions.
In recent years, research focusing on such urban areas has steadily grown. However,
most mainstream theorists have largely ignored the question of how the recent
changes in the global division of labour have impacted upon cities in the developing
world (see Grant and Nijman 2006 [2002]). One reason for this academic neglect is
the fact that many theoretical accounts of the global city carry a dualistic bias. Cities
are often regarded as either ‘global’, or ‘non-‐global’ (McCann 2004). As a result of
this, those metropoles labelled ‘non-‐global’, and those attributed with scarcely
developed global features, have been deemed insignificant for this particular way of
mapping our globalizing and urbanising world. Therefore, according to Robinson’s
(2002; 2005; 2006) influential critique, such cities (predominantly located in the
global South) are likely to be disregarded in global city research and run the risk of
disappearing off those maps that describe the world by its global cities.
Inspired by Robinson’s critique, this thesis has sought a way of overcoming this
problem, as well as contributing to answering the question about the impact of the
new urban division of labour on metropolitan areas in the developing world.
However, instead of avoiding the global city terminology and focusing on the
‘ordinary city’ as suggested by Robinson and others (Amin and Graham 1997;
Robinson 2002; 2006), this thesis suggests that the idea of the global city has
become so embedded in the thinking of academics, politicians, businesspeople and
the general pubic that it can no longer be dropped.
Many scholars [especially contributors to the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC)-‐
network] have tried to measure the degree of globality of different cities around the
globe in order to create rankings based on comparative quantitative data. Thus, in
the eyes of the majority of researchers, the global status of a city is a measurable
and quantifiable outcome of specific processes and developments. It is no surprise
then that global city research predominantly focuses on a handful of cities that have
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established themselves as model global cities. They are cities that can be found at
the top of diverse rankings and which are regularly depicted as ‘truly’ global.
Contrary to the common practice of regarding the global status of a city as a
quantifiable outcome, this thesis has sought to understand the global city
phenomenon as a political project upon which many cities, in the ‘developed’ and
the developing world, have embarked. Cities like Delhi, which have taken inspiration
in the depiction of model global cities, anticipate an ascent in various global city
rankings through the re-‐thinking of policy and planning. Doing this, they hope to
become members of the distinct selection of distinguishable global cities and lose
their status of ‘poor’ megacities. This affirms the developmentalist nature of the
current state of mainstream global city theory (see also Rodriguez-‐Bachiller 2000;
Dawson and Edwards 2004; Robinson 2006).
My analysis of Delhi affirms that the global city phenomenon is best understood as a
project. Delhi has not only enshrined its global ambitions in its latest Master Plan
(Ministry of Urban Development 2007), but has also actively promoted its world-‐
class status through the organisation of globally broadcast events such as the
Commonwealth Games or the Formula One Grand Prix. As I have argued, since the
early noughties, city planning in Delhi has pivoted around an aesthetic mode of
governance, inspired by Western standards. This mode of governance has impacted
upon the lives of Delhi’s ‘poor’ in an undeniably negative manner. Delhi’s middle
class-‐driven global city project has started to change the city’s physical infrastructure
as well as the way in which Delhiites of all classes think about their city and how they
conceive themselves (Siemiatycki 2006).
In this process, and as a result of the new aesthetic governance, signs of poverty
such as the slum are increasingly being pushed to the outer-‐city margins and have
started to form global Delhi’s Other (see for example Prakash 2002: 5; Verma 2002;
Dupont 2008b; 2011). The interests and rights of Delhi’s ‘poor’ are no longer
deemed to be important. Just like conceptions of the city have become polarised, so
too have popular and official understandings of its people. A distinction is made
between (honest) middle class ‘citizens’ and the ‘poor’ who have become
140
criminalised and de-‐humanised (see Chatterjee 2004; Dupont 2008b; 2011). They
have become reduced to the place in which they live and can be said to belong to
that section of India’s society that Chatterjee (2004) calls ‘population’. Thereby they
have become politically and socio-‐economically disenfranchised.
By telling the story of Delhi’s waste pickers, I have thus been able to highlight the
dangerous aspects of the aesthetic governance upon which Delhi’s global city project
is based. A major part of the current aesthetic governance in Delhi is the clearances
of slums. Sights of slums are usually associated with the term ‘megacity’ and are
deemed inappropriate for a ‘modern’ and global city-‐space. For this reason, slum
dwellers are increasingly pushed outside the city centre. In this process they are
dispossessed of their habitat. Their livelihoods and indeed their very existence
become jeopardised. I have shown that the global city project does not try to
develop and improve the slum or provide concrete strategies of poverty alleviation.
Instead, the global city project calls for an aesthetic fix comprising the spatial
transferal of the slum and its inhabitants towards the outskirts of the city. It is for
this reason that I have discussed the waste pickers’ and slum dwellers’ right to the
global city.
Most fundamentally, this has included challenging contemporary notions of urban
citizenship and belonging in the global city. I have done this by discussing waste
pickers’ and slum dwellers’ rights to access space and work as well as their
opportunities for political participation. However, a question that academics and city
planners also need to ask is in how far the right to the global city should be equated
to the right to an improvement of the livelihoods of slum dwellers. In other words,
we need to ask whether the right to the global city should mean the right to a more
inclusive and just global city. At the present moment, slum dwellers such as Delhi’s
waste pickers are representative of a workforce upon which the global city project
draws. Yet, through the negative aspects of the governance by aesthetics, and the
adoption of neoliberal policies, the conditions that allow their physical survival are
becoming compromised through a project that promises a better city for everyone
(see Chapter V). In this way, waste pickers might be described as what Bauman
(2004) calls the ‘outcasts of modernity’.
141
I have therefore called for a shift away from traditional rankings-‐driven approaches
to evaluating the success of global city projects in cities like Delhi and other aspiring
global cites elsewhere. The theoretical intervention that I have called for is that of a
reading of aspirational global cities from below and evaluating the extent to which
they offer improved quality of life for all. By including slum dwellers’ experiences
into our theoretical understanding of the global city we can change the criteria that
define what a ‘successful’ global city is. Theory should no longer merely be informed
by the experiences of Western and Westernised model global cities. The theoretical
approach that I offer is more holistic as it also includes the experiences of the
marginalised within cities such as Delhi. In this way, the negative implications of such
cities’ global projects can inform global city theory. It allows a better understanding
of the dualities that emerge from the global city project. It furthermore helps us to
incorporate issues such as crime, pollution and waste management, which have until
now not found much academic attention and rarely feature in the glamorous
depiction of global cities.
Academic theory has started to influence policy makers, politicians and urban
planners in cities all around the world. Generating global city theory that is informed
by the experiences of cities, as well as the ordinary urbanites, from the global South
therefore also helps us to overcome the developmentalist bias which is currently
reflected in mainstream theoretical accounts. My theoretical intervention does not
just call for the generation of a holistic approach that includes a view from below. It
also seeks to reveal the implication of cities’ attempts to realise their global
ambitions. Many cities have embarked upon such global city projects. Mumbai
(Fernandes 2000b; Verma 2002), Bangalore (Shaw and Satish 2006) and Kolkata
(ibid.) are some examples of cities in India. Many more cities in other parts of the
world are also working on an improvement of their global status. Istanbul (Aksoy and
Robins 2012) in Turkey and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil are just two examples. Rio, a city
renowned for its favelas and criminal networks (see Neuwirth 2005), is organising
the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Through the successful
organisation of these internationally broadcast events, it hopes to change its global
image. What its global city project means for the people living in the city’s favelas is
142
a question that future research needs to address. If we want cities like Rio’s global
city projects to be more equitable, then it is important that the theory we generate
not only draws on the success stories of London, New York and Tokyo, but also on
the negative implications that attempts of global status improvement in cities such
as Delhi have brought about.
In this thesis I have made some steps in this direction by including the figure of the
rag picker into the analysis of Delhi’s global city project. Since the nineteenth century
waste pickers have been done an injustice in academic accounts. Scholars have often
depicted rag pickers as part of an urban ‘underclass’. Using terms such as
Lumpenproletariat (which has been translated using terms such as ‘social scum’) to
describe waste pickers, they have fed into the demonisation of this occupational
group. Rag pickers have thus frequently been subjected to a classist bias in academic
writing. To overcome this problem, I have sought to analyse the occupation of waste
picking through a political ecology approach that focuses upon all the occupation’s
dimensions. I have argued that waste pickers are ‘involuntary environmentalists’
(Schiltz 2011a) whose work is not limited to commodity production, but that it also
includes a number of other services beneficial for society, the economy, the
environment and the global city project. Despite this not being an entirely new
thought, theory has thus far failed to recognise the multidimensionality of waste
picking in its attempts to determine the nature of waste pickers’ roles in the urban
sphere. Of course, the political ecology approach that I have applied in this thesis
may lead to the criticism of an overly-‐glamorous depiction of waste picking. Rag
picking is hard and dangerous work and it should of course be regarded as a highly
problematic issue. In this regard, there is certainly nothing wrong with the aim of
freeing the world’s (global) cities from the sights of waste pickers (or indeed the
sight of slums). This idea must however be subject to the creation of a more just and
equitable global city in which wealth is more evenly distributed and in which nobody
needs to pick waste to survive. Despite the positive features that I associate with the
outcome of waste picking, the occupation itself is not at all glamorous and nobody
should be subject to such adverse labour conditions as most of the world’s waste
pickers are on a daily basis in order to make ends meet. However, the idea of
143
displacing waste pickers to the periphery of the city, which goes hand in hand with
the current imagination of the global city, cannot solve this problem. If indeed we
want the urban sphere to be regarded as a space of opportunity then we must not
deny waste pickers the right to the benefits of the global city.
Waste picking and informal recycling are global phenomena. Even though both
activities have found a significant amount of academic interest in different parts of
the world, they have until now not been discussed in the light of the global city. In
this thesis I have made an important first attempt to include the story of waste
pickers into the theorisation of the global city. In this way I have filled a gap in our
knowledge on the role of waste pickers in aspiring global cities, and have proposed a
theoretical approach that can help understand the consequences of the global city
project for the poorer sections of aspiring global cities’ societies. I have shown that
waste pickers are part of a labour force that Delhi requires if it wants to improve its
global status. On the other hand, this labour force does no longer fit into the image
of that type of city that Delhi aspires to become. I have thus been able to show that
Delhi’s global city project has created new kinds of tensions. Through a view on the
global city from below, I was able to highlight the tensions between what is
aesthetically conceived as global (i.e. ‘modern’, ‘technologically advanced’, ‘clean’,
‘green’ and ‘wealthy’) and what is aesthetically deemed to be non-‐global (i.e.
‘primitive’, ‘polluting’, ‘dirty’ and ‘poor’).
These findings mean that the neglect of informal workers such as Delhi’s waste
pickers in global city theory cannot be justified. It is important that we include the
story of waste pickers into our analysis of the global city as it allows us to show up
socio-‐political, economic, and spatial dualities that are linked to the global city
project. Telling the story of waste pickers living in aspiring global cities furthermore
helps us raise the question of whose labour the global city is built upon. The informal
recycling sector in Delhi, but also in other cities around the world, produces large
amounts of cheap secondary raw material that can, and most certainly is, being used
for the infrastructural growth in these cities. Future studies must further explore the
full extent of the dependency of the global city project on the exploitation of the
work of rag pickers, informal recyclers and other occupational groups within the
144
informal sector. This is an issue that this thesis has started dealing with in regards to
Delhi. However, the question can and must also be discussed in light of other
aspiring global cities in the developing world. What the example of Delhi has shown
is that waste pickers, informal recyclers, as well as other slum dwellers occupied in
the informal sector do not see the promised benefits trickling down from their city’s
global transformation.
As academics it is therefore our responsibility to empower these informal workers by
including their stories in our conceptualisation and theorisation of the global city. If
we do not do this, rag pickers living in aspiring global cities will remain marginalised
and forgotten and the absence of their contribution towards the global city project
means that the myth of the wealthy and glamorous global city remains upheld. It is
critical that we learn from their experiences so we can move towards creating theory
that encourages city planners and policy makers to create global cities, that are
defined not just in terms of wealth and glamorous aesthetics, but also through being
more inclusive and equitable places.
“‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good! You write it down. Write it all down. Because I live in the
garbage, and I’ll die in the garbage, and I’ll be buried in the garbage. And nobody will
ever know that I lived. So tell them about me. Tell them I was here.’”
(Anonymous waste picker quoted in Urrea 1996: 22)
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