Aparna Agarwal will deliver a lecture on ‘Ecologies of Waste and Caste: Dependence and Value-Making at the Bhalswa Landfill in Delhi’. It will be chaired by Awadhendra Sharan.
ZOOM ID: 83607316260 PASSCODE: csdsdelhi
Landfills in Delhi are often in the public eye, either because of raging fires, oozing leachate in the ground water or their mismanagement in terms of increasing heights, landslides of waste mounds, followed by subsequent mishaps and accidents. These landfills are often seen as sight of ‘disgust’, dangerous discards, and are today at the centre of policy and public deliberation. Representing sites and the epitome of unchecked production and consumerism, landfills today have become living and animated monuments of the Anthropocene. Despite this increasing visibility of landfills in Delhi, precious little is known about the lives of waste pickers and other residents involved in ancillary activities and making a living. In this presentation, I will examine how the most marginalised individuals from various lower-caste communities are relegated to the city's periphery and experience their immediate ‘toxic’ environment, and simultaneously, revalue the discarded sites and materials through their labour by recreating liveable spaces and forging distinct forms of balances and dependences around the landfill sites.
Aparna Agarwal is an Assistant Professor at the School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University in Sonipat. She completed her D.Phil. from the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Her research broadly focuses on geographies of waste and the changing caste-based social dynamics among sanitation and informal waste workers in Delhi. Aparna recently completed her postdoctoral research as a Swiss Government Excellence Fellow at the University of Lausanne (2024-2025).
Awadhendra Sharan is Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Thursday, 16 April 2026, 3.30 pm, Seminar Room and Zoom https://bit.ly/4bADj0v
