Sunday Editorial
Why we should look at our garbage piles as gold mines
By Ratnakar Tripathy
One day, long after I relocated to Bihar from Pune, it occurred to me that Patna unlike Pune and other Indian metropolises has no rag pickers roaming all over the place with their large sacks. I wondered why. Could the reason be that the poor in Patna are not poor enough to take to an occupation that will probably put them firmly among the lowest of the lowest in the society? Clearly, no! We have our own lowest among the lowest who are desperately poor with even greater finality. Could it be because the poorest among us send their children to school instead of forcing them to wander around collecting waste paper and polythene from unhygienic, indeed lethal piles of garbage that lie all over the city in intermittent mounds? I hear a loud ‘no’ even before I begin to answer that.
What I do hear sitting over my comp the whole day are these singsong calls that are as indistinct as railway station or airport announcements, unless you stick your ears over the speakers. The result is I often end up rushing out to buy onions or potatoes only to find a cart down below with old newspapers and scrap iron – it turns out to be a raddiwala! Over time, I now recognize them not by words but by the musical quality of their distinct voices. Although some of them specialize in metal or paper, most will pick up anything from you that is dry and doesn’t stink and pay you some money for it too, and in turn often make a khata peeta living for themselves. The result is a lot of precious polythene, plastic, metal foils and wrappers must go to the rubbish dump since they carry rotten left overs from meals had yesterday or even just.
Way back in Mumbai I discovered a highly specialized profession I never knew existed. I met a young man in his thirties keen to finance a low budget [one – two crores] film – in the blasé Mumbai ishtyle, he readily admitted to me he dealt in used batteries collected from the mega trash piles of the metropolis. It turned out he didn’t care much for my story ideas and the moment of pulling out his cheque book never came, but he revealed to me the garbage map of Mumbai, the precise areas where old batteries are found in abundance. I couldn’t believe my ears! He extracted precious though toxic chemicals from the batteries in a large workshop, making a fortune. He even said he will die of cancer before reaching fifty and grinned his filmy grin. He seemed to know an awful lot of Chemistry for a tenth fail!
He told me about the network of families and kids he employs and then suddenly clammed up when my questioning got too uncomfortable. He thought I may penalize him for not liking my story ideas by reporting him for use of child labour in handling dangerous chemicals – batteries oozing deadly poisons over the tender skin of children and women. But in the meantime he had admitted to me that even within his super-super specialization he had two or three major competitors in Mumbai. At some point I asked him bluntly if he is ashamed of doing what he does.
‘Being from Bihar, how can you challenge me for using child labour?’
‘Okay’, I said ‘but you don’t feel ashamed about dealing in waste’, I asked.
‘When you see big mounds of stinking trash, you see stinking trash. But my eyes don’t see them as trash – I see them as the mines I dig up and find my gold’!
Suddenly, I realized despite his follies, yes, the man is indeed gifted with a special pair of eyes and a very different way of looking at things. A worthy candidate for a film producer! I was also reminded of the archeologist patiently digging up one object after the other, waiting to hit the middens – the trash can of the family or the community from a thousand year ago, when his finds turn wholesale!
To come back to Patna, these private entrepreneurs or miners of garbage are clearly not the solution. But these Shylocks of the garbage business have a lesson for us. What is it?
Quite simply that we are very stupid. First we create sources of disease and stink at our own doorstep, second, we fight with our neighbours till we find the acceptable spot for depositing garbage – the small heaps, the little mounds and then the greater monuments – a sickening sight where your senses go numb in disgust.
And finally, by losing out on the gold these mines contain.
Recently, I heard the tale of a rich aristocratic Muslim lady from Saran whose family was losing wealth at a rapid rate – every time she wanted to get rid of one of her Banarsi saris, the whole village used to wager and make an offer for the gold in it. I think this is how we need to look at our communal piles of trash – as Banarsi saris.
In case you think I am one of those environmentalists who has got an attack of high fever piety on what should be a lazy Sunday – check on this economics – The global trash industry is worth about $410 billion worldwide per year! India’s share in it is massive, but could get even more massive, forget the world, just given our own numbers!