Articles by Kabir Khan

Indira, wastepicker from Bengaluru, made a passionate plea to world governments for recognizing contributions of wastepickers in ‘New Urban Agenda‘ during an event organized on the sidelines of United Nations (UN) Habitat III Prepcom at Surabaya, Indonesia. She emphasized on the fact that wastepickers keep the city clean. They save municipal corporations and local governments lot of money by channelizing waste for recycling. According to her, if an area generates 2 tons of waste, waste pickers take at-least a ton of waste from the same. They sort and sell it to the industry as raw material. This reduces the generated…

117 children of waste pickers in Bangalore received scholarships worth Rs 2,16,450. The scholarship programme, initiated by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment at the Union Government level, is extended to all pre-matriculation students, who are children of parents engaged in ‘unclean occupation’. When the scholarship programme was rolled out, the government had not included waste picking as an occupation in the eligibility list. The consistent efforts of the Alliance of Indian Wastepickers led to the inclusion of waste pickers as well. Many organisations across India pursued the case of inclusion at both the state and municipal level. In Karnataka,…