Kabadivalas–the Invisible Workers

Keyoor Pathak & Prashant Khattri

Kabadivalas collect waste materials like plastic, broken glasses, old news-papers, card-boards, damaged furniture, broken utensils, e-waste and so many other things from the dustbin lying on the roadsides, or purchase all these from city dwellers; thus they earn some money by re-selling them in the market. They are in fact informal waste collectors, who play a crucial role in the waste management of the society. They are more aware than most of urban citizens about the things which can be recycled and can be transformed into resources. Unfortunately, however, their socio-economic condition reflects their tragedy as their children are not having proper education, and family members are deprived of basic health care facilities, housing and other basic amenities. Their job is seen as unclean and undignified, which push them into severe physical and mental illness, and decrease their social prestige, however they are pushed to do such a job for their livelihood and to feed their children.

Sadly, this very informal occupation reflects two things about the kabadivala–first, they are excluded in economic context, and secondly in social context. Since having insufficient wealth, they are not the part of the mainstream consumer society. Also, what they do is a “polluted” job, which leads to a lower status in a caste-ridden hierarchical society, as has been famously conceptualised by French sociologist Louis Dumont. According to him, caste hierarchy is based on the nature of the profession in terms of the notions of purity and pollution attached to an occupation. Hence, their occupation usually perceived as inferior and derogatory, although through their “polluted” occupational activities the society experiences clean and livable surroundings. People who are engaged in these activities are coming from specific caste or religious groups; most of them belong to the socially and economically marginalised communities. Even there is a dalit-muslim community in Bihar, called kabadi, and they survive through collecting wastes. They clean the cities by gathering filths; unfortunately reside in the babbling slums in the outskirts of the beautiful cities. Although, manual-scavengering has been at the centre of the political and academic discourses over the years, the issues of kabadivala have been given less attention.

Astonishingly, people are surrounded with the “urban-elites”, who seem to be concerned towards marginalised sections of the society and their plight. But at the same time if a kabadivala comes to them, they bargain while selling their old useless news-papers or bottles of wines et cetera, and keenly look into their taraju (weighing-machine). This is the tragedy of the civilisation wherein people quench the fire of the stomach through collecting filths, and yet ‘civilised’ people bargain with them.

If one sees the operational characteristics of kabadivala one finds middlemen involved, who provide them some money to collect wastes from residential colonies. A study claims that this amount may be around one thousand rupees per person (kabadivala) to be used as an incentive in exchange for the waste collected from their colonies. The same study claims that the working hours of the kabadivala usually starts in early morning and goes up to late evening, and their earning depends on the collected wastes that they take to the middlemen. Their average daily income is not fixed, it varies from time to time, but on an average it is around one hundred to five hundred rupees per day; so a sort of vulnerability is inherent in their occupation. Throughout the day they cover around twenty to thirty miles while collecting wastes in the summer, winter or even in the rainy season.

In India a bigger amount of the wastes are collected informally rather than through formal sectors. While looking merely at e-wastes (that include electronic appliances like computers, mobile phones, televisions and so on), India produces around three million tons of e-waste each year, which is the third largest amount in the world, and around ninety percent of the total e-waste is gathered and processed through the informal waste management done by kabadivalas alone; however there is no any valid official record of the numbers of kabadivalas in India.

Scholars while discussing the plight of rag pickers in India calls them as invisibles in the democratic polity of the country. The invisibility of this group is due to their belongingness to the Dalit community. Despite the emergence of dalit politics in many states, a sizeable number of dalit communities are still outside the purview of state sponsored schemes for their welfare. Further, they attribute this situation to the absence of organic intellectuals from among these communities that could raise their voice for getting benefits from the state. Citizens and state are connected to each other through legal institutions that are based on a specific kind of language of rights. This language becomes meaningful only in the context when the state is challenged. Dalit scholars have argued that people engaged in activities like rag picking, rikshaw pulling and manual scavenging lack dignity because they do not possess the language that can challenge the state, nor do they have people who can do this on their behalf. They only become visible when they become victim of an accident. People belonging to such communities can be labeled as ‘twice-dead.’ These people die moral and corporeal death as a result of their invisibility. Moral death here represents loss of self-worth and self-esteem while corporeal death represents their physical vulnerability due to the nature of the job they are engaged in.

The existence of kabadivala, recycler, rag picker, waste-picker or scavenger (many other local names are given to people performing such activities) is based upon two things- the presence of market for the recovered material and the presence of the people who are willing or compelled to do such poorly paid, hazardous, low status work in the informal sector. Due to its informal nature, the contribution of waste pickers is difficult to quantify. Despite the waste management activities conducted by the governmental and non-governmental agencies of the cities, thousands of people are involved in such informal livelihood activities. This shows the limitations of the state machinery that claim to have successfully conducted their waste management activities; if so then the informal mechanism of waste management employing large population would not have existed! According to one estimate roughly around two percent of population is engaged in informal waste management in cities of Asia and Latin America.

Current waste-management system in India is poorly performing. The working environment is completely unsafe and undignified. The people who are transforming waste into resource are unrecognised. Although ostracised, but kabadivala nonetheless contribute towards solid waste reduction in the cities that in turn reduce air and water pollution and saves energy. It also reduces the cost of cities’ solid waste management by contributing cheap labour that translates into savings to local governments. It is still an important source of income generation for the poorest of the poor in the cities and therefore needs urgent attention. The issue of kabadivala is multidimensional, so its solution must not be unilateral. The state should work in order to formalise them along with the modernisation of their occupation by providing modern tools and technology. The most tragic part of their life is their social image, which must be intervened by the state to render them a justifiable life and livelihood. ooo

Keyoor Pathak (Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology)
University of Allahabad)
Cell: +91-9471601415
Email: keyoor@allduniv.ac.in
Prashant Khattri (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology,
University of Allahabad)
Cell: +91-9455692280
Email: prashant_khattri@allduniv.ac.in

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 50, June 8 - 14, 2025