Eco Poetics of the Margins: Interpreting Namdev Dhasal's- Golpitha for Environmental Justice and Sustainable Urban Planning

This paper reads Namdeo Dhasal’s Golpitha through the lens of eco‑poetics to draw connections between literary representation of urban marginality and practice in environmental justice and sustainable urban planning. Golpitha’s stark imagery of neglected precincts, polluted commons, and bodily precarity discloses how ecological degradation and social exclusion are mutually constitutive in the city’s margins. By combining close textual analysis with urban ethnography, participatory mapping, and policy review, the study shows how poetic testimony can surface locally grounded environmental knowledge, reveal everyday practices of resilience, and reframe planning imperatives toward equity. The paper proposes a set of design heuristics—center dignity, valorize vernacular ecologies, link greening to livelihoods, and use narrative methods in participatory planning—and offers practical pathways for integrating cultural narratives into municipal governance, community‑based environmental interventions, and transdisciplinary research. Ethical considerations around representation, consent, and political risk are foregrounded. Ultimately, the paper argues that Dhasal’s Golpitha is not only a record of dispossession but a generative resource for imagining more just and sustainable urban ecologies.