Contingent resistance: The politics of waste commons in neoliberal Delhi

Abstract

This article examines Delhi’s neoliberal regime of solid waste management and the evolving and hybrid trajectory of appropriation that it gives rise to. Working with a commons/enclosure framework, I analyse how the privatisation of waste management unfolds amidst complex waste work community relations and dense labour politics to create contingent and unanticipated scenarios that modify the enclosure of waste. Specifically, I observe that circuits of exchange have developed in the shadow of privatised waste infrastructure and allow materials of value to escape into the informal recycling economy, despite modernisation blueprints planning for their capture by capitalist agents. This messy configuration urges us to nuance our comprehension of accumulation by dispossession in the context of Indian cities. In this article, I argue that variegated practices of commoning and enclosing underlie these everyday arrangements and the compromises on which they rest. This approach allows us to consider how (neo-) customary rights over the resources of waste and labour networks reconfigure under neoliberal regimes to condition the enclosing of waste commons. Finally, I suggest that situated histories and caste politics emerge as central features to understand the capitalist transformation of waste systems.