Abstract
As a public health concern, waste management in contemporary India requires to ask questions about the waste economies of garbage. An attempt has been made to highlight the delicate, contingent and shifting relations between health governors and those governed, between its buyers and its sellers, and between the discarded and the grasped. Within the domain of waste management, while on the one hand, environment seems to be of supreme concern, there are also reflections of the consideration for the people involved in the disposal process too. This therefore makes it desirable to examine the process of waste management and disposes the health of the persons engaged in the activities related to this process as well as outcomes and responses to this engagement. This study endeavours to examine the patterns of waste management and disposal, in the selected study: social, economic and demographic profile of the personnel engaged in waste management and disposal. The study also intends to understand their health issues, through the illness history: health-seeking behaviour (source, reason, the expenses incurred—source of finance for the expenditure incurred, e.g. borrowings, savings, income wages). This is likely to give insight into the outcomes of such engagement. The present study would also examine the health security and hazard protection of the workers (nature and type of security, hazard protection equipments, etc.) to understand the responses.
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Notes
- 1.
Seventh Schedule contains three lists: List I—Union list, List II—State list, List III—Concurrent list and List II contains the subjects which comes under the state’s discretion.
- 2.
Article 243 W deals with the powers, authority and responsibilities of Municipalities, etc. Entry 6 in Twelfth Schedule empowers municipalities for public health, sanitation conservancy and solid waste management.
- 3.
For an analysis of the general waste recovery industry in Delhi, see Gill (2006): 133–141.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
The rules define biomedical waste as ‘any waste which is generated during diagnosis, treatment or immunization of human beings or animals or in research activities pertaining thereto or in the production or testing of biologicals…’ (pp. 1–2).
- 6.
Here, the term ‘health of the public’ has been used as a broader meaning which also covers the health of the workers handling the waste.
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Sharma, J.C., Acharya, S.S. (2019). Waste Management and Health of the Waste Workers—A Study in Shimla City, Himachal Pradesh. In: Panneer, S., Acharya, S., Sivakami, N. (eds) Health, Safety and Well-Being of Workers in the Informal Sector in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8421-9_18
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