In the socio-cultural landscape of India, the notions of waste, class and caste are deeply entangled and intersectional. The supposed occupational hierarchy ascribed by the Indian caste system always associated impurity with Dalits, and they were mostly forced into jobs dealing with discards. This paper attempts to decrypt the complex social systems which shape the semiotics of waste in the Indian scenario, through the critical examination of Sudharak Olwe’s photo stories "Including the Excluded" and "In Search of Dignity and Justice". These texts, which feature labourers dealing with waste, expose how waste is subjectively experienced as a lived, everyday reality by those outside the caste and class ladder. Using Olwe’s work, the paper critically examines the social systems and semiotics of waste in India, analysing how his ‘photo stories’ illuminate both the phenomenology of discards and the mechanisms by which these laborers are rendered invisible. The paper further explores how the visual aesthetics, including colour schemes, reinforce this lived reality of marginalization. Drawing upon the analytical framework offered by the emerging field of discard studies, this paper additionally attempts to study how waste functions as a tool that perpetuates social exclusion in India, by externalising the labourers dealing with discards as ‘wasted humans’.

Authors:
Abhirami S, University of Calicut, India
Moncy Mathew, University of Calicut, India

About the Presenter(s)
Abhirami S is a research scholar in Indian Literature at St. Joseph’s College, Devagiri, affiliated to the University of Calicut, India.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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