A Voice For the Voiceless

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The Advocacy Project (AP) recruits students to help marginalized communities tell their story and claim their rights.

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Posts tagged wastepicker

B”law”g 1: Legal Literacy at Chintan

Jacqui Kotyk | Posted July 16th, 2009 | Asia

Tags: Chintan, climate change, international development, internship, New Delhi, recycling, UNFCCC, urban poor, waste management, wastepicker

 

Untangling the Knots that Bind Wastepickers

The legal framework that informs interactions between citizens and the state and individuals within a state can be like a knotted ball of string; difficult to find where it ends and where it begins, difficult to figure out who actually pulls the strings.

Given my position as a law student, the staff at Chintan have requested that I dedicate space on my blog to explore the interaction between wastepickers, Chintan and the law. This post therefore represents the first in my new series of bLAWgs: Legal Literacy at Chintan. This series will begin with an overview of the legal issues that Chintan tackles. More in depth case studies will follow in the weeks to come.

In New Delhi, Chintan advocates for wastepickers. The dispossessed. People who do not enjoy the same type of citizenship, the same rights to life and livelihood that middle class Indians do. As a result, Chintan often finds itself acting as an intermediary between wastepickers and the state, or, wastepickers and the police.

Santoo was brutally beaten by police when he was accused of stealing while actually collecting waste for recycling. No charges were laid. Today, Santoo fights back as a leader within the wastepicker community.

Santoo was brutally beaten by police when he was accused of stealing while actually collecting waste for recycling. No charges were laid. Today, Santoo fights back as a leader within the wastepicker community.

For example, Santoo, one of Chintan’s most charismatic leaders, is dedicated to uniting wastepickers to prevent the arbitrary use of police force where wastepickers are simply doing their jobs. United, wastepickers represent a more formalized and publicly recognized work force. Divided, wastepickers become invisible and are vulnerable to police brutality and further infringements on their civil liberties. Chintan is in the process of setting up a distress line to assist wastepickers.

Beyond managing one-off interactions between wastepickers and the police, Chintan also aids in the domestic implementation of international law. For example, Chintan’s “No Child in Bins” program directly contemplates international legal norms abolishing child labour as well as India’s policy on eliminating child labour. The “No Child in Bins” program provides educational support through learning centres to the children of wastepickers and children surviving through wastepicking.

Classroom in Seema Puri: 3 to 5 year olds

The “No Child in Bins” campaign aids in implementing international and domestic laws banning child labour.

Chintan is also active on the international scene, advocating for India’s urban poor throughout the development of international agreements. For example, Chintan is part of the international climate justice movement, seeking to have the work that wastepickers do in curbing climate change recognized within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Recyling Centre in Bhopura

Bhopura Recycling Centre

Wasterecyclers are vital to climate change mitigation in India. For example, manufacturing goods from recycled materials uses less energy than using new inputs. In addition, wastepickers prevent many paper products from entering landfills, concomitantly preventing the release of methane from the decomposition of such materials. Finally, wastepickers reintroduce used paper into production thus relieving some of the pressure on trees to provide all of India’s paper needs. Yet, funding through the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol to aid in this vital service has evaded wastepickers thus far, focussing instead on end of pipe solutions. 

For a factsheet on wastepickers and climate change see: http://www.no-burn.org/article.php?id=729  

Also see “Ragpickers lose jobs as world tackles climate change”  http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/enviornment/ragpickers-lose-jobs-as-world-tackles-climate-change_100203268.html

Coming soon: Focus on Police Brutality – know your legal rights. 

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Setting the Stage

Jacqui Kotyk | Posted July 3rd, 2009 | Asia

Tags: Bollywood, Chintan, India, international development, internship, New Delhi, slums, urban poverty, Vandana Shiva, waste management, wastepicker

 

“Who speaks for the people on the land from Asia to Africa to the Americas?”

         - Vandana Shiva - Physicist, Environmental Activist and Ecofeminist based in New Delhi, India

I arrived in New Delhi and have spent the past 10 days adjusting to the climate, culture and communities in India’s capital. I have been overwhelmed with the kindness and generosity of an Indian family that took me in for my first few days of travel, have been moved by Indian art, eaten delicious food, developed a fascination with Bollywood and am also coping with record-breaking heat, language barriers, thick smog, congested, horn-honking traffic, astounding poverty and a whole array of digestive problems.

First Day in India: Jet Lagged Jacqui

First Day in New Delhi, June 21, 2009

Yet, even while the ground in New Delhi seems to be ever shifting, I finally feel like I have found some footing. Thus, I am now sitting down to write the story of my host organization, Chintan, and the community of wastepickers that Chintan services. I will continually update this story as it unfurls, and as I further embed myself in Chintan’s grassroots work focused on environmental justice in one of the world’s fastest growing economies and most populated cities.

While I am at Chintan I will be playing multiple roles. In a ten week period, I will be developing a composting kit for residents of New Delhi, conducting primary research on compensation for methane capture conducted by New Delhi’s wastepickers and building technical capacity among Chintan staff around information dissemination through video, photography and blogging. Finally, I will be blogging myself, to bring the stories of wastepickers and urban poverty in India to a North American audience.

Door to Door Segregation

Door to Door Segregation

This blog represents a major challenge for me. As a privileged outsider from the west I feel ill equipped to relay the story of a community so far removed from my own. Indeed, a community enduring environmental injustice brought on by my own.

However, I care deeply about holding myself accountable to the wastepickers of New Delhi and Chintan in representing their story accurately and in a culturally appropriate manner. Thus, I welcome and indeed appreciate any critique of the representations that I portray in this blog. Please read my words, watch the videos that I post and analyze my photographs. I cannot help but bias these representations with my own cultural baggage. I want that bias to be laid bare in the comments and critiques that permeate the commentary on my posts. I also welcome an ongoing dialogue about the appropriate role, if any, of westerners in “developing” countries, particularly with respect to western representations of “the Other” through multi-media.

Having delineated my own ethical dilemmas, I will now begin the story of Chintan and wastepickers as I see it…

Chintan’s mission is to address multiple problems simultaneously: waste management, urban poverty, and climate change among others. As such, this organization works with and for India’s waste experts, the urban poor, who are responsible for the majority of waste management and recycling that happens in the country. For wastepickers, recyclables are a commodity that if segregated from waste, provides a meager livelihood. Yet, as a result of their recycling efforts, wastepickers provide a vital environmental service to a nation undergoing unprecedented urbanization and rapid industrialization. Wastepickers ensure recycling and reuse of many materials that would otherwise end up in Delhi’s bursting landfills.

Segregation of Waste

Segregation in the Gazipur Community

Thus, Chintan works with wastepickers to increase capacity for their recycling. Furthermore, in recognition of this vital service, Chintan works to improve the working conditions, health and status of wastepickers and their families in New Delhi. Chintan has a number of campaigns and programs working to accomplish these tasks. For example, Chintan advocates for wastepickers at all levels of government, and conducts campaigns demanding that residents of New Delhi segregate their waste at its source to reduce wastepicker’s exposure to hazardous materials. Chintan also helps organize wastepickers into a variety of workers collectives. Finally, Chintan provides educational support for the children of wastepickers who often do not attend or complete state-run school programs.

Learning through song

Chintan Learning Centre in Nizamuddin

Over the next two months I will fill in the details of these programs and gain insight into how Chintan’s advocacy work and programs play out on the ground. I look forward to the challenging weeks ahead. 

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 http://www.ecoworld.com/features/2004/03/06/vandana-shiva-in-her-own-words/ Vandana Shiva - In Her Own Words by Paolo Scopacasa, March 6th, 2004

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Fellow: Jacqui Kotyk

Chintan in India

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  In 2007, Jacqui graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Environmental Science (First Class Honours) and a University Gold Medal as the highest achieving graduate in her faculty. While completing this degree, Jacqui worked in the University of Manitoba’s Environmental Conservation Lab assisting with research and advocacy around the social impacts of mad cow disease in Canadian rural communities, the ecological outcomes of prairies restoration, and local food distribution within Manitoba.
  
  In the fall of 2007, Jacqui began a Law degree at the University of British Columbia. Within her first year at UBC she was awarded the BLG Fellowship researching biodiversity contracting with global mining corporations, an emerging area of environmental law. She is Co-Chair of UBC’s Environmental Law Group and co-coordinator of the Public Interest Law Society. Read more...

  
  
  Jacqui’s Flickr Photos