The Making of a 'Clean City': Governing Waste and Informality in Urban India

世界各地城市中堆积如山的垃圾代表了“倾倒”废物的巨大失败。不断增加的垃圾数量威胁着人们对城市的想象、建造和生活方式，尤其是在快速城市化的全球南部。在印度，预计到2030年，仅城市人口就将产生1.65亿吨固体城市废物，到2050年将产生4.36亿吨。2014年启动了全国范围的“清洁印度使命”，以解决印度城市的废物和清洁问题。在为期七年的使命中，拥有200万人口的二线城市印多尔被评为五年（2017-2021年）最清洁的城市，并被宣传为印度和全球废物管理的“模范”城市。这项研究询问在印度的城市地理的废物在一个新的清洁政策及其对空间和社会经济不平等的再现的影响，在印多尔，追求清洁的城市，加强了现有的社会空间隔离，并通过改变周围的关系和做法，对废物的访问和控制再现不平等。除了该模式表面上的成功外，该政策还造成了与工作有关的骚扰，并拆毁了非正式废物处理工人的房屋（Qabeer，2018; Truelove和O 'Reilly，2021年）。国家的“秩序，进步，福祉和改善的倾向”（Scott，1998年，引用自Kamete，2020年，第163页）使非正规废物处理工人的生计、居住地和身体经常受到攻击，因为他们代表着混乱、滋扰，污染和非正规性（Baviskar，2002; Ghertner，2015）。然而，非正规性是印度废物管理“正规”系统效率低下和不足所不可或缺的。在印度，大约有150万到400万人参与了非正式的废物工作过程-收集、分类、回收和从废物中回收价值（Mistry，2020年）。在清洁城市的名义下，非正式的废物工人被进一步推向空间经济边缘。因此，印度最清洁城市的建设提供了一个及时的机会，可以仔细检查自上而下的国家政策在城市规模上的颗粒效应，以及在新的废物治理制度下，非正式废物工人为生存而进行的新斗争。

Mountains of trash in cities worldwide represent the monumental failures of 'dumping' waste. The ever increasing quantities of waste threaten the way cities are imagined, built and lived, particularly in the rapidly urbanising global south. In India, urban population alone is expected to generate 165 million tonnes of solid municipal waste by 2030 and 436 million tonnes by 2050. A nation-wide 'Clean India Mission' was launched in 2014 to address the problem of waste and cleanliness in urban India. In the seven years of the mission, Indore, a tier-II city of two millionpeople, has been awarded as the cleanest city over five years (2017-2021) and is advertised as a 'model' city for waste management in India and globally. This research interrogates urban geographies of waste in India under a new cleanliness policy and its impact on the reproduction of spatial and socio-economic inequalities.In Indore, the quest for a clean city has intensified existing socio-spatial segregations and is reproducing inequalities by altering relations and practices surrounding access and control over waste. Beyond the apparent success of the model, the policy has engendered work-related harassment and demolition of homes of informal waste workers (Qabeer, 2018; Truelove and O'Reilly, 2021).The state's "proclivity for order, progress, wellbeing & betterment" (Scott, 1998, as cited in Kamete, 2020, p.163) renders the livelihoods, settlements and bodies of informal waste workers often under attack because they represent disorder, nuisance, pollution and informality (Baviskar, 2002; Ghertner, 2015). However, informality is indispensable to the inefficient and insufficient "formal" system of waste management in India. About 1.5 to 4 million people in India are involved in informal processes of waste work-collecting, sorting, recycling, and reclaimingvalue out of waste (Mistry, 2020). In the name of beautifying cities, informal waste workers are pushed further into spatio-economic margins.The making of India's cleanest city thereby presents a timely opportunity to scrutinise the granular effects of a top-down national policy at the city scale, and the renewed struggles for survival of informal waste workers under a new waste governance regime.