[Reader-list] Story of Nayandahalli is the Story of Urban Nomads

[Kabir Khan]

Story of Nayandahalli is the Story of Urban Nomads
<http://wastenarratives.com/2015/10/05/story-of-nayandahalli-is-the-story-of-urban-nomads/>


*Notes from Nayandahalli*


*Kabir Arora*


Historians have always been interested in cities and their resource
inflows. They rarely ventured out from their comfort zones and talked about
outflows. Romila Thapar’s book ‘Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas’ sheds
a lot of light on Mauryan capital. We all know that Pataliputra, the
cosmopolitan capital of Mauryan Empire, was sourcing cotton from some such
and such area; wood was being sourced from geographies varying from lower
Himalayas to Kalinga in South. What do we know about its waste management,
except the names of certain castes and social groups who were responsible
for it? Same goes for Mughal era cities. Neither waste nor waste workers
were fancy enough for historians to study and write about. Let us look at
the books on Bangalore. Janaki Nair’s masterpiece, “The Promise of the
Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century”, “Bangalore” by Peter Colaco are
all but silent about waste economy and management. Let us accept that waste
has never been so interesting to be written about. City historians have
been silent about its existence.


Not one of us in Hasiru Dala knew how to write, leave aside writing
description of the city. We undertook the challenge. We are an association
of waste workers, we want to tell the story of Bangalore, and through the
waste it generates and manages. We want to tell our stories in our own way.
We chose Nayandahalli as our laboratory.


How do you describe a city?  Is there are particular style to follow? Give
some statistics, share some anecdotes and move on to sermons about what is
wrong with the city, romanticise its elements and add some masala of
ethnographic divisions. Not so sure! There are books written about cities,
their past, present and future. There is no single recipe to formulate
understanding of a complex creature or an ecosystem called ‘city’. Notes
from Nayandahalli
<http://wastenarratives.com/category/notes-from-nayandahalli/> is our way
of looking at Bangalore, – the fifth metropolitan of India, through its
waste and the eyes of waste workers.


A lot has been described about Nayandahalli in our previous posts.  A lot
more is to be shared.


Nayandahalli is a settlement of urban nomads, whose existence and movement
is dependent on land and petroleum prices. These urban nomads are sorters,
godown owners and factory *wallas*. I will use the term ‘recyclers’ for
them in this post, as it is all encompassing. They buy waste from all over
the city through scrap dealers and wastepickers. Bring it to Nayandahalli.
Sort it in varying categories; transport it to factories in vicinity, where
waste is processed. After processing, the waste which became raw material
is forwarded to manufacturing units. They use it for producing finished
products. To conclude, it is in Nayandahalli that the waste becomes a
resource- raw material for booming manufacturing sector.


*Why do I call recyclers urban nomads?*


Recyclers are constantly on move. Their movement and existence is dependent
on petroleum and land prices. Most recyclers are tenants. Very few of them
own the land on which their factories or godowns are constructed or
installed. The moment land prices go up; their landlords give them the
notice to leave. In past many godown owners were based in Gangondanahalli
and Shyamanna Garden, from there they moved to Nayandahalli. The land
prices in Nayandahalli are shooting up fast, thanks to the metro rail
extension to the area. The recyclers have already received the notices.
They will soon be packing their bags, dismantling the structures they have
installed and leave for another place. Their constant displacement makes
them nomads. They are angry and want to get rid of this forced nomadness.


Akmal Baig, leader of informal association of godown owners, asks pertinent
question “Why can’t government allocate us land on subsidized prices like
they do for other industries and corporations to carry out our business? We
want to be stationed at one place. We are happy to pay for the land in
installments as we pay rent. It takes a lot of money to install a shed, and
dismantling it is also an expensive affair. We are tired of moving.”


Land prices displaces them, petroleum prices hit their stomachs fiercely.
Whenever petroleum prices drop, *dhanda* becomes *manda*. In the time of
low petroleum prices, as it is now, manufacturing finished products with
virgin raw material is cheaper than the recycled ones. Recycling units shut
down. It forces many to move to other informal economy vocations. There are
no guidelines suggesting industry to have certain proportion of recycled
material in their products. Any such measure undertaken can stabilize the
demand for recyclable material and reduce the harm caused by reduced
petroleum prices.


Increased land prices, reduced petroleum prices induce nomadness. Continued
here...
<http://wastenarratives.com/2015/10/05/story-of-nayandahalli-is-the-story-of-urban-nomads/>

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Regards

कबीर/کبیر

Phone:00-91-96-63-427-315
Email: kabir.postbox at gmail.com
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http://www.hasirudala.in

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