SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha (SWaCH) is a fully member-owned waste pickers’ cooperative https://prizeforcities.org/project/swach-pune-seva-sahakari-sanstha . In Pune, door-to-door services covered only 7% of households. SWaCH signed its first agreement with the Pune Municipal Corporation in 2008: its members would extend door-to-door solid waste collection to at least 50% of Pune, and the city would fund administrative staff time, equipment and health benefits. In the SWaCH model, pairs of members collect segregated waste from 150‐400 households each, transferring recyclables and wet waste to city-run collection vehicles. Members make money through user fees collected directly from household and commercial clients and by selling recyclables to scrap dealers.
A Brief History of Pune’s Waste pickers https://kashtakaripanchayat.org/a-comprehensive-history-of-waste-picking-in-pune/
Rosamma: Comments There is a petition circulating about the imminent end of the current model of waste collection in Pune, seeking signatures to support the group managing the city waste. I wanted to explain why I will not be signing, please. I worked briefly with Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), the collective of waste pickers and recyclers, and my experience was not inspiring. The women in top leadership positions were all without exception Brahmin, and there appeared to be not much empathy for the workers -- if the workers missed paying membership fees, they were deprived of what benefits they would otherwise receive, like free notebooks for their school going children, or even solidarity from the group in times of domestic violence.
When I worked there, one young woman accountant was hired -- she was given a cycle, and expected to ride a few km to the residence of the woman who was authorized to sign cheques to get her signature. This young accountant, I found, would cycle even during her monthly period, since no reimbursement of auto fares was offered.
Poornima, the retired academic who was the spirit behind the group, was genuinely generous and often offered donations to tide over difficult times, but appeared to be sidelined when it came to decision-making.
The group was quite successful in getting good press, and I suspect I was hired with the intention of getting some leverage with the press. I could not be writing as a journalist while working with them, and I realize I was then not much use. The workers lived in deplorable shanties, some of them in low-lying areas prone to floods; there was one well-designed small house that had been constructed by the group that would feature in news reports.
What these workers ideally need is regular jobs with decent salaries. This is important work, and it needs to be done regularly, so they ought to be hired as regular government staff. KKPKP would stop short of making that demand, arguing that it would never be granted. In truth, government jobs for these workers would make the highest-paid of KKPKP redundant.