Doorstep waste collection Taluawri na Chapda slum in Ahmedabad.
Earlier, around mid-November, I posted on the remnants of SEWA (a large organizing organization started in Gujarat) waste collection in Ahmedabad. I had visited through SEWA Union after hearing different variations of how waste was collected from doorsteps and what role SEWA played in it. The conclusion was SEWA used to organize and facilitate women to service doorsteps, but that was closed down around 2008 or 9 when the municipality decided to contract all collection out to 4 big companies.
While I was in Indore, SEWA MHT, a different branch, informed me that they were actually doing doorstep collection in 13 slums, though not in the colonies, because the big companies can't access the slums.
Figuring this is a good opportunity to see how the cart feels in a slum environment, I agreed to set up a field visit to learn more about what is actually going on.
Basically, its the same story we found out earlier. SEWA's work collecting waste becomes much and much less a reality the closer you get to the ground. The upper-level people still discuss it as if it is an ongoing project of theirs because they still organize these women, but there is no serious work being motivated. These women used to do doorstep collection at a significant scale, but that is in the past. Now they are barely collecting for even an hour per day if that. They essentially have no carts, and are not willing to pay a cent for repairing theirs much less buying a new one because they make barely nothing from it. Tomorrow I will likely take the prototype to them, test it for an hour or so, and see them
Rather than write more, I will put a stack of pictures. These pictures show the various carrying methods people were using to carry trash. The lady with a sack on her head is actually filling with doorstep waste and taking it out of the slum to the municipal bin.
