A historical comparison of the Brazilian and Indian waste picker regime

Abstract

Policies can support waste pickers in order to establish more sustainable waste management systems, as waste pickers are key players in recycling waste. In this thesis the development of the policies relating to waste pickers will be examined in two different countries, namely India and Brazil within the time frame of the 1980s to the 2010s. This is done through the exploration of the concept of a waste picker regime, which focuses on how a national governments create policy relating to waste pickers. This thesis investigates how that changes over time depending on the political and public context. Social inclusion is central to this thesis in that both India and Brazil developed waste picker regimes that attempted to include waste pickers, who are generally marginalized. A comparison of Brazil and India is beneficial because it reveals what differences in the political and public contexts of a country matter to make a difference in policy and consequently in the daily lives of waste pickers. This thesis concludes that the Brazilian waste picker regime integrates waste pickers more than the Indian waste picker regime as it has a broader definition of what social inclusion means. This broader definition has been the result of a collaboration between social movements for waste pickers and the state. In India, the public influence is mainly characterized by working against the government, which may explain why their definition of social inclusion is more narrow.