Rethinking waste and waste management practices: Perspectives from a new/small/peri-urban municipality in India

In India, waste as a category in governance discourse is getting stabilized as a techno-managerial problem. This new and dominant discourse frames the solution by converting waste into resources universally applicable across urban contexts. However, in practice, this results in converting waste as materials to be disposed of. Underlying this disposability discourse is, paradoxically, a neoliberal logic of efficiency that eclipses social and political concerns. Within this framing, the role of the public is passive, that is, the public becomes a target to embody waste segregation rather than an active participant in deliberating over waste technologies and practices. By examining waste management practices and juxtaposing them with waste management policy in a peri-urban municipality, this article opens the settled category of waste. Drawing on empirical insights from surveys, interviews and ethnographic observations in a new/small/peri-urban municipality, the study examines how dominant waste management practices such as segregation at households and door-to-door collection individualize the waste problem and result in the othering of waste. By thinking critically with local context and material practices, the article shows how relations emerging in local contexts, often devalued within universalist policy frameworks, can plug waste relations into processes that are not visible in metropolitan regions. Thus, the article opens possibilities for more sustainable forms of waste governance in peri-urban regions.