CAST AND CASTE: THE WASTE ECONOMY AND ITS SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RELATIONS

Abstract

In political ecology, nature is not only a resource tap, it is a sink of waste. All economies, all of us, create waste. Paraphrasing Gandhi “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members” the true measure of any economy is how it treats waste. Waste is the fastest growing part of the Indian economy – on track to grow for a century – why? Fressoz’ critique of ‘energy transition’ is relevant to waste in India. Indian waste is mapped to cumulative patterns of class-caste consumption (increasingly non-biodegradable) and also to the upper caste right to throw in public space and the lower caste lack of alternative but to dispose. Social science lacks theories which explain the undialectical co-existence of opposites. Despite the dissolving of aspects of caste relations, the confinement of choice for Dalits and Adivasis is socially constructed and persistently fortified in both the registered and the extensive unregistered (‘informal’) economy of waste. In this talk, Deliege’s paradox of the essential being most undervalued will be developed for dimensions of caste pollution, physical toxicity and danger, social stigma, discrimination, caste and gender discrimination, dehumanisation and environmental caste-ism. If there’s time, we will discuss development as resistance, and resistance to resistance.