डॉ. बी. आर. अम्बेडकर विश्वविद्यालय दिल्ली 
| Course Type | Course Code | No. Of Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Discipline Core | NSGA1DCU301 | 4 |
Course coordinator and team: Dr. Pritpal Singh Randhawa
Aim: This course aims to build an understanding of municipal solid waste (MSW), as a core constituent of the larger urbanization process, and in doing so goes beyond the techno- managerial perspective often employed to analyse it.
Course Outcomes:
On successful completion, students should be able to:
1. Develop analytical skills to examine policies and technologies on urban waste and related infrastructure.
2. Gain a knowledge on decentralized and sustainable solutions of waste management. 3. Understand the role of informal sector and its contribution in the economy of the city.
Brief description of modules/ Main modules:
Unit 1 - Flows of municipal waste: The first unit will introduce the core themes and concerns of this course. It will begin with the discussion on the meaning of waste and how value got attached to it. By giving an overview of the types of waste generated in urban areas, it will be discussed that why this course is only focusing on municipal solid waste. Further, the unit will examine the various environmental, economic, social and political challenges related to the management of MSW in the big and small cities in India.
Unit 2 – Policies, governance and technologies of waste: The unit will discuss MSW policies, governance and technologies in India starting from the year 2000 till the present within the rubric of neoliberalism through the examples from various Indian cities.
Unit 3 – Informal waste management and economy: This unit will discuss the manifold challenges of occupational health, social insecurity and harassment faced by the workers, including the increasing threat to their livelihoods, as posed by privatization of MSW management and new waste treatment technologies (particularly waste to energy).
Unit 4 – Best practices of managing municipal waste: By using case studies from both India and other countries, this unit will discuss the best practices of decentralised and sustainable management of MSW. This will also be linked with the issue of ‘waste and entrepreneurship’.
Unit 5 – Theorizing Waste: This final unit would sum up and revisit all the learning made so far through a critical theoretical lens, by bringing into discussion select, contemporary conceptual models on the politics of waste, such as ‘circular economy’, ‘urban political ecology’, ‘systems approach’ and others.
Assessment Details with weights:
|
Assessment 1 (30%) |
Assessment 2 (15%) |
Assessment 3 (25%) |
Assessment 4 (30%) |
|
Mid Term Exam |
Field trip based group work |
Term paper |
End Semester Exam |
Reading List:
- Kaviraj, S. (1997). Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in Calcutta, Public Culture, 10 (1): 83–113.
- Kumar, S., Stephen, R., Smith, G., Costas, V. S., Jyoti, K., Shashi, A., et al. (2017). Challenges and opportunities associated with waste management in India. Royal Society Open Science. 4:160764. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160764
- Wilson, D. C., Rodic, L., Scheinberg, A., Velis, C.A. and Alabaster, G. (2012). Comparative analysis of solid waste management in 20 cities, Waste Management & Research 0(3) 237–254
- Demaris, F. and Schindler, S. (2016) Contesting Urban Metabolism: Struggles Over Waste-to-Energy in Delhi, India, Antipode, 48 (2), pp.
- Randhawa, P., Marshall, F., Kushwaha, P. and Desai, P. (2020), Pathways for Sustainable Urban Waste Management and Reduced Environmental Health Risks in India: Winners, Losers, and Alternatives to Waste to Energy in Delhi, Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 2 (14).
- Mani, S. and Singh S. (2016). Sustainable Municipal Solid Waste Management in India: A Policy Agenda, Procedia Environmental Sciences, 35, pp.150 – 157.
- Doron, A. and Jeffrey R. (2018). Waste of Nation: Garbage and Growth in India, Harvard University Press, London
- Gill, K. (2010). Of Poverty and Plastic (Chapter: Waste as Informal Sector Work: Measuring Income Poverty, Inequality, and Deprivation), New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
- Shankar, V. K. and Sahni, R. (2018). Waste Pickers and the ‘Right to Waste’ in an Indian City, Economic and Political Weekly, 53 (48), pp 54-62.
- Narain, S. and Sambyal, S. S. (2017). Not in my Backyard: Solid Waste Management in Indian Cities, New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment.
- Chikarmane, P. (2012). Integrating Waste Pickers into Municipal Solid Waste Management in Pune, India, WIEGO Policy Brief (Urban Policies).
- Chaturvedi, A., Gaurav, J. K. and Gupta, P. (2017) The Many Circuits of a Circular Economy, STEPS Working Paper 94, Brighton: STEPS Centre
- Gidwani, V. and Reddy, R.N. (2011). The Afterlives of “Waste”: Notes from India for a Minor History of Capitalist Surplus
- Marshall, R. E. and Farahbakhsh, K. (2013). Systems approaches to integrated solid waste management in developing countries, Waste Management, 33, pp 988-1003.