Every morning, the entire Sheikh family sets out to work. Fatima leaves her home in a slum colony in the Batamaloo area of central Srinagar at 9 a.m. and till around 5 in the evening she cycles roughly 20 kilometres within the city to collect discarded plastic bottles and gatta (cardboard). Her husband, Mohammad Qurban Sheikh, sometimes goes further, beyond city limits, to towns and villages within a 30-kilometre radius looking for discarded items – using, like Fatima, a three-wheel cycle-rickshaw with a tempo-like container at the back. Their daughter and two sons, ages ranging from 17 to 21, also collect waste in Srinagar.

Together, the five help clear a fraction of the 450-500 tons of garbage that Srinagar's households, hotels, construction sites, vegetable mandis and various other locations produce every single day – that’s the number given by the Srinagar Municipal Corporation.

The Sheikh family – and numerous other waste-pickers – are not formally linked to the waste management processes of the municipal corporation, which employs, says municipal commissioner Athar Amir Khan, around 4,000 sanitation workers either full-time or on contract to collect and dispose the city’s solid waste. “Rag-pickers though are our best friends,” says Nazir Ahmad, chief sanitation officer, Srinagar Municipal Corporation. “They take away plastic waste which cannot decompose even in 100 years.”

The rag-pickers are not only ‘self-employed’, they work without any protective gear in very hazardous conditions – made even more unsafe due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “I resumed work [after the lockdown eased in January 2021] keeping faith in god. I work with pure intentions to feed my family and know I will not get infected…” says 40-year-old Fatima.

PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

From 9 a.m. till around 5 in the evening, Fatima cycles roughly 20 kilometres within Srinagar to collect discarded plastic bottles and gatta (cardboard)

The same fear and faith drive 35-year-old Mohammad Kabeer, who lives in a slum colony in the Soura area of central Srinagar, and has been a waste-picker since 2002. “If I get infected [by Covid], I worry it will pass on to my family. But I cannot let them starve, so I go out to do my job. When this corona started, I took a loan of 50,000 rupees from my thekadar [scrap dealer]. Now I have to repay, so I came out for work knowing that there is a risk.” Kabeer’s is the only income that sustains his six-member family – his wife and their two daughters and two sons, ages ranging from 2 to 18.

He and other sanitation workers endure numerous other risks too. “We don’t know what is in the garbage, we sometimes get cuts from blades, sometimes a used injection needle pricks us,” says 45-year-old Iman Ali, who lives in the HMT area in north Srinagar. As flimsy protection against these injuries, he gets an anti-tetanus shot every few months at a government hospital or clinic.

After collecting 50-80 kilos every day, the workers segregate the discarded items on open plots near their huts. They then fill the plastic, cardboard, aluminum tins and other material into large plastic sacks. “If it’s in tons, scrap dealers send their truck here. But mostly we don’t stock, we sell what we have collected and for that we have to cycle another 4-5 kilometres to the dealers,” says Mohammad Qurban Sheikh. The dealers pay Rs. 8 per kilo of plastic and Rs. 5 for every kilo of cardboard.

The waste-pickers, Sheikh adds, usually work for 15-20 days a month and the remaining days are spent segregating what they have collected. His five-member family together earns a total of around Rs. 20,000 a month by selling waste items. “From this we have to pay the monthly [house] rent of 5,000 rupees,” says Fatima, “buy food, pay for the maintenance of the cycle [three-wheeler] and take care of other basic needs. In short, we eat what we earn, ours is not a job where one can save money.”

PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mohammad Qurban Sheikh segregating plastic bottles, which he will then take to the scrap dealer

Her family and the other waste-pickers usually have selling arrangements with specific scrap dealers – there are around 50-60 in various parts of Srinagar, estimates Riyaz Ahmad, a 39-year-old dealer in Bemina in the north of the city. “They [rag-pickers] bring almost one ton of plastic and around 1.5 tons of cardboard to my junkyard every day,” he says.

At times, there are intermediaries like Iman Hussain in this chain of recycling. “I do the job of a middleman between them [the rag-pickers] and the kabadiwalas [scrap dealers] for this entire colony,” says 38-year-old Iman, referring to his slum in the HMT area in north Srinagar. “I get 50 paisa to 2 rupees per kilo as commission from them [the rag-pickers] depending on the quality of plastic and cardboard collected. Usually, I make 8,000-10,000 rupees a month.”

The waste that is not recycled finds its way (most of it) to the Achan Soura dumping ground in the Saidapora area of central Srinagar. It was started in 1986 by the municipal corporation on roughly 65 acres, which was later extended to 175 acres due to the increase in the amount of solid waste generated in Srinagar.

At the dumping ground, around 120 rag-pickers, “unofficially registered” with the municipal corporation, have been given permission to collect plastic there, says chief sanitation officer Nazir Ahmad, "and they collect approximately 10 tons every day.”

While the growing city continues to relentlessly generate plastic and other waste,  the frequent disruptions in Kashmir and the lockdowns have forced many waste-pickers to seek loans from scrap dealers, or they have relied on local mosques for food during the lean months.

Beyond these hardships, it’s another problem that bothers them the most: “We don’t get respect from people because of our work,” says Iman Hussain. “Some accuse us of stealing, though we never steal,  we just collect the plastic and cardboard that people throw away. But how does it matter? God above knows that we do our work with honesty.”

PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

A slum cluster of in the HMT area of north Srinagar, home to families who rely on waste-picking for an income


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Arif, 16, who lives in the Barbarshah locality, clearing waste from a truck in the Makhdoom Saheb area, where many dump garbage. “I am late for work today,” he says. “Usually I come before municipal workers but today they have already taken the waste. Now I will see if I can find some garbage somewhere else, or I will go back with an empty cycle”


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mohamad Roni, 35, collecting waste items near a street in the Bemina area of north Srinagar


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Asha, 32, arranging sacks full of cardboard in the Maisuma area of central Srinagar, which she and her colleagues have collected that day. Asha usually works in the vicinity of Lal Chowk – its busy market means discarded cardboard boxes are quite easily available


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mujeeb ur Rehman, 40, unloading the plastic and cardboard that he has collected the previous day


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mohammad Kabeer carrying and loading cardboard boxes to be weighed at the scrap market in the Soura area of central Srinagar


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Waste-pickers loading sacks full of plastic bottles each weighs 40 to 70 kilos onto a truck in the HMT area of Srinagar, to take to a scrap dealer. “I can carry 10-12 bags of plastic bottles in this vehicle,” says 19-year-old  Mohammad Imran, who drives the truck


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

“If I work I might get sick due to corona, but if I don’t work I will surely become unwell with the tension of feeding my family,” says 32-year-old Riyaz Sheikh, assembling his day’s collection after hours of hard work on the streets of Srinagar


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Tons of plastic and cardboard stocked at scrap dealer Riyaz Ahmad’s junkyard in Bemina


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mohammad Shakoor returning from work disappointed that he could not collect much scrap on a cold winter day in Kashmir

PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mohammad Shakoor and a friend (who did not want to be named) warming themselves after from work on a cold winter day in Kashmir


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Brothers Rabul, seven years old (front) and eight-year-old Rahan playing on their father’s cycle-rickshaw. “Papa has no money so he cannot buy us a remote controlled cycle, so we play on papa’s cycle,” says Rahan


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

“I had to buy my daughter a mobile phone so that she can continue her education. I don’t want her to become a rag-picker,” says Mohammad Iman. His 17-year-old daughter studies in Class 9 in a nearby private school


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Fatima and a neighbour collect water from a nearby canal; their jhuggis don't have reliable sources of tap water


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Fatima, who lives in a slum colony in Batamaloo, has been working as a waste-picker in Srinagar for nine years. “We are around 20 families in this vicinity and as far as I know, none among us got infected by this coronavirus, I have faith in Allah and I go out for work by taking his name,” she says


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

" First there was covid, then the harsh winter. I have never seen such cold in my four years here,” says Mohammad Sagar, 24, who lives in a slum in Batamaloo and is originally from Kolkata. Sagar has been working as a rag picker for four years. “I took a loan of 40,000 from my thekadar [during the lockdown], now I can only hope for things to get better so that I can work and repay my loan"


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Workers of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation with machinery collecting waste. Waste-pickers like the Sheikh family are not formally linked to the waste management processes of the corporation, which employs around 4,000 sanitation workers either full-time or on contract to collect and dispose the city’s solid waste


PHOTO • Muzamil Bhat

Mountains of garbage at the Achan dumping ground

This story is part of a series of 25 articles on livelihoods under lockdown, supported by the Business and Community Foundation.

Muzamil Bhat

முசாமில் பட், ஸ்ரீநகரை சேர்ந்த சுயாதீன புகைப்படக் கலைஞரும் பட இயக்குநரும் ஆவார். 2022ம் ஆண்டில் பாரியின் மானியப்பணியில் இருந்தார்.

Other stories by Muzamil Bhat
Editor : Sharmila Joshi

ஷர்மிளா ஜோஷி, PARI-ன் முன்னாள் நிர்வாக ஆசிரியர் மற்றும் எழுத்தாளர். அவ்வப்போது கற்பிக்கும் பணியும் செய்கிறார்.

Other stories by Sharmila Joshi