Dignity in every drop: Non-profit interventions bring clean water and sanitation access to rag pickers Premium

More than 6,000 informal waste pickers of Bengaluru have benefited from the programme which is now entering its second phase

It’s a warm weekday, and the afternoon slump has set in over Siddhartha Nagar colony, a notified slum in the Peenya Industrial Area.

Children have gone off to school, most men are at work. Women, majority of whom are waste pickers, are taking a break and finishing off lunch before starting to segregate the day’s collection. One of them is seen doing laundry near the water storage tank located at the entrance to the colony.

“We have enough water now.  There has been no dearth of water this year, not atleast until now,” says Jyoti, who lives in the colony. It sounds pleasantly surprising given the severity of the water crisis that has grappled several parts of the city.

Siddhartha Nagar is one of the nine slums in Bengaluru that have benefited from WaterAid India’s interventions as part of Saamuhika Shakti, a collective initiative by 10 organisations for waste pickers in the city. WaterAid India focuses on the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) aspects, and phase-1 of the project concluded in February this year.

According to the NGO, 6,555 informal waste pickers and their family members have benefited from the project so far. The team is now gearing up for phase-2 of the project.

Initiated and supported by H&M foundation, Samoohika Shakti is a first of its kind initiative in India where multiple organisations have come together to enable informal waste pickers, says Hemalatha Patil, regional manager at WaterAid India.

Phase 1 of the programme started in 2019 and WaterAid India started by identifying slums where informal waste pickers resided. This was done with the help of Hasiru Dala. The criteria for selection of the slums included the number of households (minimum 15-20), scope for infrastructure creation in the locality and operations by other consortium partners also in the geography.