"In all modern cultures, cleaning up merely involves moving “dirt” from one place to another. Five decades ago, cleaning up may have been easier. It would have meant restoring the predominantly organic and compostable discards in the waste stream to its rightful place – namely, the soil – and facilitating its transformation into manure. Over the past two decades, India has transformed from a sleepy nation living in its villages to an economic powerhouse with an urban population bursting at its seams. We can, as Modi did in the UN General Assembly, invoke our ancient culture to claim that Indians have a special relationship with and reverence for nature. But that does not take away from the fact that Indians or Americans, Hindus or Muslims, we are all worshippers of the same homogenising religion of consumerism. We are what our garbage is. Our garbage which once bore no resemblance to American garbage is increasingly peppered with the same brand names, the same indestructible material, such as styrofoam and plastics, that can be found in US landfills."
"In 2010, during a statutory environmental public hearing held for expanding and modernising the dump, the then Mayor of Chennai justified continued dumping at this location. He said that just as our homes need toilets, the city too needs a toilet, and that local residents should be proud of serving the city by hosting the dump."
3 Comments
This reminds me of a disturbing story published recently in the LA Times: India's sewer cleaners keep working despite ban on job
I am amazed massive scales of diseases aren't breaking out in those places. Who is going to protect the wealthy then?
Immunity comes with exposure.
If you survive, of course.
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