INTERVIEW

We collect bottle crowns, plastic bottles and polythene bags: Ramu

Generating 65 million tonnes of waste each year, India is home to more than 4 million ragpickers, mainly women and children. Ragpickers or Safai Saathis are the backbones of traditional waste management in most Indian cities. Ramu is one such ragpicker. He is 11 years old and lives in Kalibari slum in Bhubaneswar. The following is an edited excerpt of an interview of Ramu taken by Ashutosh Senapati, student of BSc (Hons) Mass Communication 2022 - 25 batch.

Q.1) Ramu, tell us about your family.

I live in a Kalibari (a slum). My father is a garbage collector and my mother is a housewife. She stays at home looking after my 5-year-old younger brother. I also have two older sisters who, like me, work as ragpickers. On certain days my mother also goes out for rag picking.  

Q.2) For garbage collection, which places do you usually go to?

There is a contractor who assigns us work. We work according to his instructions. We are paid accordingly. Sometimes we go to places far from our homes. There are different types of garbage; you need to know what to pick and what not to pick. You will not be paid for picking up the wrong garbage. The plastic bags are loaded on a tempo (auto rickshaw) and taken to the scrap market. Some older children go to the scrap market to sell their items.

Q.3) Ramu, did you go to school?

There is no school in my slum or nearby areas. Sometimes we get some books donated by others. We read them together. We discuss the lessons among ourselves. Sometimes the elders teach us too. The people from the slum have tried to ask government officials for schools, but nothing has happened so far.

Q.4) What about the others in the locality?

Most children in my slum are ragpickers. We collect bottle crowns, plastic bottles and polythene bags. The older children, like my sisters, collect electronic items like batteries and mobile phones. We also sell certain things by ourselves for some money. The contractor allows it. Large families live in small spaces in a slum.Some people even sleep outside … on roads, auto-rickshaws, etc. There are times when people don’t get food for days and keep working on empty stomachs. Water scarcity persists throughout the year. People quarrel over drinking water.

Q.5) What are your working hours?

I start at around 8.00 am. I am allowed to pick up garbage from about five dumps in an area, which is mainly residential. There is a market nearby. I play in a park before going home.

Q.6) Do you have friends?

I have two friends. They come from the same slum. Together, we spend about four hours collecting items and then we hand it over to the contractor.

(Ramu and his friends don’t get shoes or gloves from the contractor. His friend once got hurt by a broken piece of glass. He has a wound in his hand that is bandaged. But it swells up quite often.)