CONTENT
INTRODUCTION: 3
RAG-PICKING 4
RAG-PICKERS: 5
PROBLEMS FACED BY RAG PICKERS 7
STATE OF THE LEGISLATION 8
NEEDS OF RAG PICKERS 9
GOVERNMENT’S INITIATIVE 10
PRIVATISATION OF WASTE 11
A CASE STUDY: DELHI,MUMBAI,KOLKATA,CHENNAI 12
ORGANISING THE UNORGANISED 13
CONCLUSION 15
REFERENCES 16
INTRODUCTION:
Over fifteen lakh individuals across India work as scrap and waste collectors, earning their livelihood from the collection and sale of paper, plastic, metal and glass scrap to recycling industries.
Among the most disadvantaged, vulnerable and underprivileged class in the urban labour market, occupying the lowest rung of the poverty groups, is the class of rag pickers. This dynamic but unregulated sector in the expanding
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Normally they don’t stay away from work even for a day, unless they have a health problem.
RAG PICKERS START YOUNG:
Many children begin working as rag pickers at the young age of five or six years. Most of them never attend school and don’t have any formal education. Their families are generally in need of extra incomes from their children. Rag picking is the profession mostly dominated by children aging 6 to 15 who do not have any other skill and thus by way of refuse collection contribute to household income or own survival. These are mainly children of slum dwellers and poor people. Some of them are abandoned or runaway children. Most of them don’t go to school. They don’t have formal education.
There are two categories of child rag pickers:
I. The street pickers- they collect garbage in residential areas and street bins.
II. Dump pickers- they work on dumping grounds.
Both the categories of rag pickers have different living conditions and characteristics.
Street pickers are extremely mobile. They usually need is a shelter or reintegration with their families. The children work for a middleman who takes the major share of the sales and only pays only a small amount to the children.
The dump pickers often stay with their families. They work with their families in and around the dumping ground. Initially girls were more involved in rag picking than boys. But the trends have changed and more boys are now engaged in rag picking. Adolescent
Heather Roger claims our current garbage disposal methods are short term and etiquette. Rogers’s position is clear that we need to minimize the use of landfills and create better means to discard trash. In supporting Rogers’s environment views I think that we need to create a more economic and environmental friendly garbage disposal system. Heather Rogers and Lars Eighner both acknowledge the issue with society’s throwaway mentality. Eighner proves that we throw away perfectly working stuff, having survived off others discarded materials. Eighner argues against excessive waste we create but does not have any prospected solutions. Whereas Rogers acknowledges the obvious need to minimize our consumption of waste but argues the need
In a column written by Nicholas D. Kristof, he quotes a 19-year-old girl, “I’d love to get a job in a factory, at least that work is in the shade.” (120) This 19-year-old girl is striving for a job that many outsiders are striving to eradicate. In these impoverished countries families bring in so little money they are forced to ask their children to seek work so their families can survive.
When their work do not affect their “health and personal development or interfere with their schooling,” they do not fit the negative notion of child labor (ILO, 1996). Children sometimes assist their parents with housework and take a part in building family businesses without their working hours affecting primary education. This is indeed a beneficial experience for children, because they learn to be productive within their communities. On the other hand, ILO (1996) applies the term child labor when work “is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; and interferes with their schooling by; depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.” When child labor is engaged in enslavement, separation from families, and misplacement of children on the streets, ILO experts refer to it as the most extreme forms of child
Child labour is a very real problem in the world today, and although it is declining, progress is happening at a slow and unequal pace. Child labour by the International Labour Organization is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development (Diallo, Etienne, & Mehran, 2013, p. 2).” In the most extreme forms of child labour it could account for child enslavement, separation from their families, exposure to serious hazards and illnesses and being left to fend for themselves on the streets (Dinopoulos & Zhao, 2007). In order for certain types of work to be included as “child labour” depends on the child’s age, the type of work,
In a column written by Nicholas D. Kristof, he quotes a 19-year-old girl, “I’d love to get a job in a factory, at least that work is in the shade.” (120) This 19-year-old girl is striving for a job that many outsiders are striving to eradicate. In these impoverished countries, families bring in so little money they are forced to ask their children to seek work so their families can survive.
“Trash” is an amazing book written by author Andy Mulligan. Throughout this Novel it implies some powerful messages for the reader. Most people believe child labor was abolished years ago but the novel implies that children as young as three years old have to work in these poverty stricken places. One of the strongest points he implies is written on the front of the book “you never know what you might find”. The last but not least idea that this novel implies is that poor countries governments can but shouldn’t be allowed to get away with theft. All through “Trash the author Andy implies these very strong messages on the conditions in third world countries.
“The International Labor Organization estimates that at least 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working, mostly in the developing world.” Many Americans view child labor as wrong or dangerous, but they do not realize how essential child labor can be in developing countries. In the article “Regulated Child Labor Is Necessary in Developing Countries,” by John Tierney, a current author for the New York Times, focuses on child labor and why it is essential in some developing countries. Tierney creates a sympathetic tone for the readers to try and understand the struggles regarding child labor in developing countries.
In every community, boys and girls are left to find their own recreation and companionship in the streets. An
The school excellence in Dharavi is excellence. There are an estimated 5000 businesses is Dharavi. Some consist of recycling, leather products, jewelry, food, pots, clothing and various accessories. 85% of people in Dharavi have a job. The biggest recycling industry is recycling. The recycling industry is reported to employ approximately 250,000 people, so it is a very big thing there. People who work in the recycling only make about a dollar a day. People who work in the recycling industry are called rag pickers and there have been at least 4 generations working as such. It is estimated that the neighborhoods of this slum contribute about 1 billion dollars to Mumbai’s economy. This community is filled with business and industry. Some of the industries in Dharavi have made some people rich. Those who have become rich stay in Dharavi because they don’t want to leave, it’s their home and they stay humble. The people of this slum are very organized,
Summary and Response Essay “On Dumpster Diving” In the essay “On Dumpster Diving” Lars Eighner describes the wastefulness of Americans, how they view the poor, and how to stay safe while living the life of a scavenger. As he travels the streets with his companion Lizbeth he scavenges through dumpsters in search of the necessities of life. There are many people that are homeless in need of food.
On a daily basis we walk past several dumpsters – even though we may not see them. In the cities (mostly big and populated states) like the following: Los Angles, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and New York City, there are over thousands of dumpsters in the alley-ways. As humans we walk by smelling the odor coming from the trash, and continue walking. In Lars Eighner’s “On Dumpster Diving” he will inform us about what he thinks and believes on the subject of dumpster diving.
“ Worldwide, there are an estimated 246 million children engaged in child labour. Some 180 million children aged 5–17 (or 73 percent of all child labourers) are believed to be engaged in the worst forms of child labour, including working in hazardous conditions such as in mines and with dangerous machinery. Of these children, 5.7 million are forced into debt bondage or other forms of slavery, 1.8 million are forced into prostitution or pornography and 600,000 are engaged in other illicit activities.”
With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets is an ethnography which describes the lives of youths living on the streets of New York City. The author attempts to conduct her own research in order to dispute the false impressions that many previous researches have formed about the youths living on the street. The ethnographic method she uses aids her study of the “street kids” in acknowledging the facts behind their choice of lifestyle and their experiences while on the street. Marni Finklestein received her PhD in Anthropology from the New School of Social Research in New York City. She has also managed to organize many other studies based on drugs and substance abuse as well as sexual assaults in the streets of
On our way, we came up to a small town where the streets were full of people buying and selling food, clothing, shoes, and business services like hairstyling. We stopped to explore together to see what the market place had to offer. When we noticed a large group of children instead of playing and being like regular kids, they were busy carry large tub containers on top of theirs head selling what they had to people. I went over to ask a couple of them why they weren’t in school and where were their parents. They all answered me saying that their families couldn’t afford to send them to school and that they sell in the street to help and support their mothers. This broke my heart cause no child should have to take on those responsible at a tender age, the youngest child was eight and the oldest was fifteen years old. In American children those ages are required by the government to be in some schooling, whether that is home-schooling or public/private school. There are child labour laws against children under the age of sixteen working and having a job. But because this is a cultural norm so no-one sees it has a
In 1999 Ontario implemented the Safe Streets Act (SSA). Broadly, this legislation prohibited “aggressive panhandling”, solicitation of a captive audience and unsafe disposal of needles, condoms and broken glass (O’Grady, Gaetz and Buccieri, 2013). Even though the legislation does not explicitly state this, there is consensus in the academic literature about the SSA that this legislation was, for the most part, a response to “squeegee kids” (Chesnay, Bellot, and Sylvestre, 2013; Glasbeek, 2006; O’Grady et al. 2013; Parnaby 2003). Squeegee kids were a group of homeless youth in the city of Toronto that would wash car windshields at intersections, during red lights, in the hopes of getting money in exchange from drivers. Chesnay et al. (2013)