My Experience in Pune
Claire Thompson
Class of 2016
This summer, through the Stanford Center for South Asia, I was able to travel to Pune, India to work with an organization called SWaCH. SWaCH (Solid Waste Control and Handling) is an offshoot of Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), a self-operated union of waste pickers. Kagad, kach, and patra are all forms of waste (paper, plastric, and glass), and kashtakari panchayat means “labor union.”
Here’s a little background on the organization and its roots: prior to the establishment of KKPKP, waste pickers in Pune were essentially treated like garbage. They made a meager living off rummaging through scrap, salvaging and selling what they could. This was not viewed as a job, even by the waste pickers themselves. It was simply what they did because they had no other choice. Then in the early 90s, some of the women banded together to discuss how they were treated, and how they believed their work was and should be more meaningful than others seemed to think. They formed a union, KKPKP, knowing that together they would have more strength and more sway, and that was when they began their ongoing battle of demanding better treatment, greater acknowledgement, and more structure to their work—which is, and should be viewed as, work.
Today over 6,000 waste pickers throughout Pune are members of KKPKP, and SWaCH. They pay membership dues to keep the organization alive, providing materials as well as a salary for the activists who work on their behalf. As such, KKPKP is an organization of waste pickers, run and controlled by the waste pickers themselves.
As an intern with KKPKP and SWACH, I got to work on a couple of different projects. I had a lot of freedom in choosing and mapping out the scope of my internship, which had both its advantages and its drawbacks. In the first half of the summer, my focus was mainly on SWaCH’s compost initiatives. I would go around with the SWaCH coordinators in different wards, visiting housing societies where SWaCH operated compost pits. My job was basically to assess the general condition of the compost—how many waste pickers worked there, how productive the compost was, the destination of the finished product, and whether or not waste was being segregated at source. Let me stop here to highlight this point a little more thoroughly—waste segregation was one of the running themes of my summer with SWaCH. By this I mean segregation of dry and wet waste, on a household level. For compost, it is all important—ifbits of plastic and glass and other rubbish are thrown in with organic waste, it is very difficult to maintain a healthy compost. This also creates additional work for the waste pickers, who have to fully segregate the waste by hand, often without gloves. Enforcing source segregation is a big issue for SWaCH. Trying to effect behavior changes is always something of an uphill battle, but SWaCH maintains their efforts to increase awareness about waste segregation, and I was able to see the effects of their outreach in several of the societies I visited. I even got to participate in a few “segregation drives” (basically going door-to-door, speaking with residents about the importance of segregation at source, and other campaigns SWaCH was working on) with some other international volunteers.
Towards the end of the summer, I got to do some more extensive compost research—actually interviewing and observing other compost service providers in the city of Pune (of which there are surprisingly many) and putting together a comparative study of different methods. This was very interesting for me—as a Food & Agriculture major, I am a bit of a compost nut—however, compostresearch took a back seat as I became more involved with planning and implementing SWaCH’s nirmalaya collection project, for Ganpati Visarjan. This is an annual festival in celebration of Lord Ganesh—a very big event in Maharashtra, particularly in Pune and Mumbai. Citizens stream into the city for the festival, and during key days they make offerings (nirmalaya) to Lord Ganesh, and his sister Gauri. Traditionally these are immersed in the city’s rivers, but as one can imagine, the rivers are already severely polluted, and dumping tons of flowers, fruits, cloth, and the plaster Ganesh idols into them is quite harmful. Pune has actually outlawed immersion in the rivers, but it still happens.
For the past seven years, SWaCH has been operating a nirmalaya collection and massive composting project, to try and reduce some of this stress on the rivers. This year SWaCH members set up stations at 17 ghats (on the rivers) in the Pune and Pimpri municipalities, to collect the flowers, fruits, and other offerings, and either reuse or send them to compost. My job was recruiting and coordinating volunteers, who have been essential to the project’s success. There was a lot of office work gearing up to the start of the festival—talking on the phone, compiling data sheets, inventorying materials, etc. During the actual festival, it was even more hectic. During both of our collection days, my supervisor and I were on the ground, visiting the different ghats, checking in with the coordinators and volunteers. I was also responsible for writing up the Nirmalaya 2014 report, in the aftermath of our project. We managed to collect over 170 tons of nirmalaya—up from 101 tons in 2013—which is 170 tons not clogging up the river!
My experiences this summer definitely inspired me in a lot of ways, both professional/academic and personal. My work with SWaCH really opened my eyes to the issue of waste management, in the Third World specifically—I had worked on zero waste projects before in the US, but as I learned, waste management in other countries is a whole different beast. The magnitude and complexities of the problem were fairly stunning to me, but I was truly grateful to have this eye-opening experience. Really, this summer was eye-opening in many more ways than one. Living in India, in a big, crowded city, was not without its challenges. Learning how to get around in rickshaws, trying to circumvent language barriers, breathing in pollution, dealing with the continual onslaught of strangers’ stares, questions, and photos—I could continue listing, but I’ll suffice it to say that the daily challenges of life in Pune certainly kept life interesting, and made me more aware of myself and my “global identity.”
Whether or not I return to India, whether or not I end up doing further work in waste management and compost, I believe that my experience in Pune this summer will inform my future travels, academic pursuits, and professional path. I am extremely grateful that I was able to work with SWaCH, that I got to meet and work alongside some of the most incredible, inspiring women on the planet, and that for two months, I got to call the city of Pune my home.