Ecologies of the excess by ankit bhargava

(DRAFT PUBLICATION)

Ecologies of the Excess

Compiled by: Ankit Bhargava

Srajana Kaikini (1986, India). Currently at de Appel Curatorial Programme , Amsterdam, Srajana holds a Masters in Arts and Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi with a graduate degree in architecture. She writes on art and cinema and is involved in new media art practice with a focus on urbanism. Her thesis (2009) engaged with the rejuvenation and re-scripting of the Kalaghoda Art District, Mumbai as a reinforced cultural node in the existing fabric of the city. Her recent curatorial ventures include ‘Adventures of a Narcoleptic Flaneur’ at the Gallery of the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, Delhi in winter 2011, ‘Familiar Strangers’, part of the India Foundation for the Arts and KCFS curatorial workshop project 2012, in Mumbai. She writes prose, poetry, travelogues and reflections. A classical Odissi dancer by passion , she continues to explore the intersections between word and image. She has co- curated ‘Bourgeois Leftovers’ , presently on show at de Appel arts centre ( April 20 – June 16 , 2013), Amsterdam. Naveen Mahantesh (1985,India). Architect – urban designer based currently in Bangalore, who likes to ‘intervene’. He holds a Masters degree in Architecture and Urban design from Pratt University , New York City and is currently a Visiting Faculty and critic for architectural design at several institutes in Bangalore including R.V School of Architecture and SIT Tumkur. He established AO-i in 2010-11 as a platform for collaborative practices and is currently associate architect at Cresarc , which works as an architecture and interior design practice. Naveen is involved in creative research with a cherished love for urban ecologies and an interest in providing alternative perspectives on everyday practices of the city. As City as Studio (Jan-Feb 2013) fellow at SaraiCSDS, he explored the concept of ‘Talking cities’ and conceived as part of the Sarai Reader 09 exhibition , an exercise in malleable layouts ‘Whats left behind’. His most recent public exchanges include a presentation, ‘Cultural Signages’ at Srushti School of Design, Bangalore as part of the conference Mediating Modernities (Jan 2013) and ‘design for change’ at TEDx R.V.Vidyaniketan (Feb 2013) Bangalore. Conceptual rigour and collaborative practice continues to guide the creative process Ankit Bhargava (1985, India). Architect – Urban designer based currently in Delft, Netherlands. He is currently a student in MSc Urbanism in TU Delft and is part of a graduation project based in Shenzhen, China. He is an Inlaks scholar for the year 2011, one of the four recipients of the design award for the Thesis project at RV School of architecture (2008) and a third prize winner in the national competition on ‘Redefining public spaces’ by the magazine La’journal.

(to be edited)

He has previously worked with EMBARQ(2009-10)- The WRI centre for sustainable transport, UDRI – fort management project(2010-11), Kamala Raheja Institute of Architecture – Cinema City (2009-10), Mumbai Railway – Public toilet design (2010). He has also worked for 2 years as an architect in Bangalore and Mumbai at Charles Correa architects (2009) and Mathew and Ghosh Architects (2008). Suresh Kumar; Artist, Bangalore Prasad Shetty; Urbanist, Mumbai Diego Sepulveda; Asst. Professor, Chair of Spatial Planning, Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft

For any information, please send an email to - ankit493@gmail.com Publication on the web - http://bit.ly/Ecologiesoftheexcess

Contents: Preface Chapter 1

2 3

Khoj Fellowship | May- June 2013 Village Amaravathi

Field Visit 1 Field Visit 2 Reflection

Chapter 2

(2.1) Proposal | August - September 2013

Towards Analysis of Urban Ecology Introduction Approach Aims Tasks Ahead (2.2) Elaborations: How streamlined should our waste management system be? Spatial-ization Understanding the notion of value ............

Fellowship (Generously supported by KHOJ, Delhi. Duration: May- July â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;13)

The fellowship project was a 2 month exercise as a collaboration between - Srajana Kaikini, Naveen Mahantesh, Ankit Bhargava and Suresh Kumar. This project would not have been possible without the generous inputs from - Prasad Shetty and Diego Sepulveda. The work during the fellowship was organized through a blog - which has been kept true to its process and subsequently re-produced in the chapters here. http://ecologiesoftheexcess.wordpress.com/

Proposal

This is a framework for a proposal for a 1 year research project looking at investigating the issue of waste management in the urban ecology as an extension of the work carried out in Amarvathi Villlage during the KHOJ Fellowship.

Prologue The project deals with the growing issue of waste in India. Here the 2 sites considered as case studies are - Bangalore city and Amaravathi village (north Karnataka).

Bangalore: Around this time, Bangalore was going through a panic attack when the authorities realised that the land fills were filled up and there was as usual NO plan B. Opening new land fill sites has recently raised tremendous opposition from those that were going to live next to them (because of the health hazard). Land fills continue to be unscientifically managed leading to toxicity of the soil and ground water and stink. This led to a huge garbage crisis, and the city has since been under intense debate on what must be done next.

Amaravathi: While ...km away in village of Amaravathi on Dashera day Naveen noticed an odd scene. People were lining up behind a cow waiting for it to poop. Essentially gobbar (cow poop) is waste but has enormous value in rural society. The wonder material used as fertilizer, cooking fuel, as construction adhesive and put to so many other uses was in shortage. The research began by taking stock of these two contradictory conditions side by side to understand the notion of loss of excess in one while lots of excess in another. What did this mean? However, due to shortage of time and intimidated with the complexity of the city as to where to start from. We decided to initiate the research work in the village hoping it may provide logics and methodologies which will help in tackling the city.

Loss of Excess

Lots of Excess

Chapter 1 Amaravathi Village

Amaravathi The narrative takes shape from an event of deficit on the day of Ayudha puja, 2012 in the village of Amaravathi, Hunagund taluk, Bagalkot district, Karnataka. Early morning, at around 4am, there was a line of people outside one of the houses in the neighbourhood. The line was waiting to collect a share of cow dung, that the cattle in the house would sooner or later drop. The common ritual on Ayudha puja in the village, and probably in other parts of India as well, involves making five small mounds of cow dung for worship. Each cow dung symbolizes each of the Pandavas. In the year of 2012, there was an apparent deficit of cow dung in the village, where multiple households depended on fewer household for cow dung. Further conversations of intrigue shed light on an apparent shift in the local practices where cattle was no longer an integral part of a household. Most of the houses were now using packaged milk, the bulls and the oxen were mostly replaced by tractors which could be hired on an hourly basis and there were some cases where some cattle had also died on consumption of plastic waste. The packaged milk being the only plastic excess of the village. How do we tell this story of a changing ecology? Rather, how does the village tell its story of lesser cattle than ever before?

Field Visit 1

Digging up the cow story | June 22, 2013

The Idea

The project was conceptualized on the idea of narrating the deficit and highlighting the shift. A basic survey of the village would provide information on the following; - number of households - number of households with cattle - number of households without cattle - number of households that used packaged milk - number of households that bought cattle milk from neighbours Each of the parameters would be represented by a seal that would be stamped onto the house. An additional layer of conversation that talks about the ongoing practices of the household with regard to cattle. We approached the village with the basic idea of generating a visual for an empirical data survey and zero ideas about implementation.

COLLABORATION This stage of the project began with Naveen Mahantesh <architect | urban designer>, Suresh Kumar aka Samuha Suresh aka Per Fumes Suresh <artist> and Mahantesh Golappanavar <enabler | my father>.

Inference 1) The Intervention: Cow stamping June 30, 2013 Cow stamp fashioned from shoe soles were used to mark each house in the village indicating whether they had cows or not. No house was left unmarked…….. Cow stamping as cattle survey – “dana ganitha”. The cow stamping seems to have given a statistical (emperically accurate) and a village scale perspective of the issue of depletion of cow numbers. Stamp as a new denominator Stamps have found their way to the house: developed a new denominator. Deleuze talks of the concept of ‘Difference’. So this action of infiltrating all the houses with a consistent system of signs , allows a new mode of access to an otherwise inert/logistical status quo of numbers. Its like the notion of grouping. By assigning a stamp to a house that does not have cows in the same line as a house that does have cows , foregrounds this difference and hence a new understanding of the condition for the person who sees these stamps. This would not have been the case if only the houses with cows were given some stamp while others not accounted for. This stamping exercise is a practice marking . In assigning a value system to a social condition and allowing an expression of difference. Further, it is for us to discover the other side of this narrative. Whether this has become a topic of discussion between neighbours or when a guest comes their house. Whether this throwing of the spotlight of something otherwise so mundane and common has generated a new consciousness with the stamp as new layer of information.. Post intervention narrative Dung something ingrained into the culture of the village in practice and as a material, has suddenly become scarce, because cow number have depleted significantly. Contrary to initial speculations, new reasons and stories behind this condition have come to the fore. Gradual decrease in cow numbers are because of a lack of rain - drought – fodder scarcity – no fertilizer – low harvest – debt – cows sold (being fixed capital) ”Mahantesh and Basavaraju were very adamant about this cycle of rain enabling farming, farm enabling fodder, fodder enabling cattle rearing, and cattle enabling fertilizer. And they pinned the reduction of cattle in the village to lack of rains and how the farmer had sold his cattle, and also his lands to overcome his debts.”

Changing domestic culture and decreasing dependence on cow: ‘Cow-less’ households buying plastic milk as affordable, hassle free alternative. Cow, now a maintenance issue for some due to lack of capital. In the broader context: farming gradually moving away from being primary source of income. Simultaneously cow numbers are further decreasing due to their consumption of plastic (from plastic milk packets) There are of course several questions here 1) Is cow soon to be an excess? Is there also a possibility where the new generation of ‘out of the village’ educated people that are going to be uninvolved with the cultural relationship with the cow in ‘cow absent home’ will begin to start seeing the remaining cows itself as excess. What impact does this have on rural as a condition, lifestyle and culture? 2) What is seen through this movement from domestic culture to commercial enterprise? a) Keeping cows feasible only in large number 10-15 cows? “ ….I started a conversation looking at the possibility of cattle becoming a primary source of income within a household, irrespective of land and rain issues. The initial response from the people in the village was that, government would have to support them to buy about 10-15 cows/buffaloes, which then could become a profitable enterprise, which the rest of the village would then follow. ” (b) In context of other aspirational agencies like the Milk dairy and Gobargas plant , will having gobbar gas plant assign’ value to something free like gobbar. Will it become incentive for keeping cows? 3) Hypothesis – There is an inevitable path dependency in gradual giving way of gobbar ecology in favour of a plastic one as demonstrated in the extract here - “She was selling curds from house to house. She was carrying the curds in a plastic bottle, … his grandmother used to sell curds when he was a kid in earthen pots. When he tried to take a photograph of this woman, she refused to give permission” Can this be charted in a 20 years time line scenario to suggest future narratives with the cow as a focal point?

2) The Broken Circle The cow trail reveals a story of a circle of sustenance being broken by the external ‘progressive’ factors penetrating the ecology of Amaravathi. In other words, an Agro-based ecology , is strained at certain exit nodes, and pushed into an endless spiralling path which only accelerates under certain urbanising forces , without any forces to contain the spiral into loop back in. ” A spiral is a point in search of an end? “

Path dependency

3) Census as strategy-’in situ’ maps Posted on July 2, 2013

We received an interesting feedback from architect, urbanist Prasad Shetty this week who observed that the Cow story seems to be a ‘new’ story of urbanisation in the rural. This led us to consider the strategy of census as an interesting point to dwell on. Census is a tool to enumerate and categorically place empirical information on the ledger. Benedict Anderson in his much discussed essay titled ‘Census, Map, Museum’ [Imagined Communities, Verso , 1983] saw the Census as one of the three forces of infiltration from the colonisers. About the census he says, “These ‘identities’ , imagined by the (confusedly) classifying mind of the colonial state, still awaited a reification which imperial administrative penetration would soon make possible.[..] The fiction of the census is that everyone is in it , and that everyone has one- only one- extremely clear place. No fractions.” In other words, Anderson, rightly from his context of writing, saw this logic of quantification as an institutionalising force. It will be interesting now, to turn this on its head – to make the institution a fiction and use this fiction to make a condition visible. The conventional method of census depended on numbers. Statistics, graphs, percentiles, numbers. This medium of penetration into any social fabric automatically turns sterile for most people except mathematicians who probably may see magic in these numbers. This is where marks , signs and traces could turn into a new way of using census in a more imaginative way. In the tale of Ali Baba and forty thieves, the house doors are marked with an x in a circle in the middle of the night, and as children watching this show on television in the early nineties, that mark has been etched for life in atleast some of our minds. This system of signing have the potential to take on more creative manifestations in the cultural memory of the place instead of merely becoming parameters of information ; they have the stuff of future folklores. Penetration and infiltration are tricky modes of practice. In this context of the cow stamp, it could be read as a way of mapping a social condition, not on paper, but on site. Creating a language of legends ( as in maps ) that grow through each house they are stamped on the real surface and subject to actual conditions of living. So a stamp that will be soon transformed into a five year old’s scribbling canvas will take a different life of its own than a stamp that will be whitewashed during next season of Dasara. An in situ map has thus its own self regulated tracking system , each carrying marks and stories of layers they accumulate over them over time over people. At the moment, this common denominator that has now found its way onto the walls of Amaravathi, remains almost in a camouflage with its context. The question to be asked is , why no person in the village raised a question or objected to this infiltration into their domestic domain ? The cow stamping exercise now forces us to re-consider ways of taking stock of a social condition. The next step is to perhaps test this strategy by inverting this ‘urbanisation’ story by a ‘ruralisation’ story. What happens when empirical data is mutated, multiplied and allowed to disappear? What happens when folklore takes over facts, and mythologies become means of stock taking? A question to ponder upon.

4) Exit points of a cow-ecology ?

Stage #1 Cradle to Cradle Rural Landscape

Posted on July 8, 2013

The Cow remains the focal point of this ecological transformation process underway. However, the points of investigation are widening as we continue along the idea of a possible new infrastructure: the gobbar gas plant. In the light of this as a Spiral diagram what would be the impact of a gas plant intervention as a new ‘EXIT’ point. Will it then rival the farmers fields as the original exit point? In other words, how will the encouragement of gobbar gas plant affect gobbar demand related to agro cycle. Will this channelizing of gobbar towards gobbar gas plant equate to increase in chemical fertilizers? These questions call for a testing and figuring out certain critical massing numbers that perhaps would be instrumental in mobilising / shifting these agro-cycles. The second stage at Amaravathi would include documenting these changes and confirm whether they are true by examining a sample population of 20 houses on this visit. Some parameters to assess changes perhaps could be – 1.The Spatial structures; An examination of the house types : kaccha vs pacca structures 2. Expanding Daily urban systems; Job profiles : Agro vs more non-agro| Consumption patterns regarding usage of plastic milk 3. Agro ecology; Resources: Tractors vs cattle use in farms | Chemical fertilizer vs gobbar fertilizer 4. Changes in Cattle cycle 5. Changes in Energy cycle 6. Societal changes Low carbon – more carbon based, creating new hierarchies in society, self-organized/sustained to – more dependent and vulnerable. (Perhaps the enlarging circle represents economic growth too) These together give an interesting new trajectory to trace of a possible Cow Dependent Ecology (CDE) and Post-Cow Ecology (PCE) ! 10

Stage #2 Rural Landscape in Transformation

Number of cows depleting affecting the rural, ecological and cultural landscape

Stage #3 Making Interventions

Field Visit 2

The blue cow | July 10, 2013 The second Field trip was made by Naveen and NGO Reap Benefits to introduce the bio-gas plant as a technological intervention in the village. The gobbar gas plant funded through Khoj fellowship was built at the cost of less than 40 Euros/unit expecting to provide 25Ltrs of bio gas per day. The unit will to be fed with cow dung, produced within the household requiring 3-5Kgs of cow-dung everyday for its sustenance and would start producing gas in 15 days time. In other words 1 cow producing 10-12 kg of poop a day can provide for more than a single householdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. This statistic is important to understand in evaluation of a larger scale adoption of this bio-gas technology in favour of common practices of using firewood as well as how it affects the value of a domestic cow and cow poop as a commodity (beyond the cultural value) for the villagers. It was discovered returning from the field trip that the plant was not working as the installation was not done correctly which led to another field a few days layer to fix. By the time of the fifth field trip we learnt that not only was the bio-gas we installed now working perfectly but a neighbour had adopted the technology too. We are looking forward to more field trips to start accessing this trajectory and what is its impact on the village and lifestyle of the residents.

Inference Given that plastic is probably going to become a long term part of the ecology. It needed to be acknowledged here to understand what kind of intervention/ agency could be required to deal with plastic waste in the environment. This is of course not a rural problem alone. The process of deliberation led to constructing a generic model that could assist in understanding the notion of value in waste in a lifecyle model. The diagrams (on the right) demonstrate two possible solutions 1) The price of milk is artificially raised such that when the packets are returned the extra money is returned too. This generates an incentive for users to not carelessly dispose the plastic but horde it and perhaps on a given collection day give it for recycling. While case 2) suggests that changing the packaging material itself to increase value of the post-consumed can have a similar effect. This model will be elaborated further in chapter 2.

Reflection This is a story of urbanization! This research at Amaravathi village points at ‘urbanisation’ being far more interactive and nuanced - and much beyond the regular ‘urbanisation ‘ discussions based on numbers (like 50% of India will be urbanised by 2020 etc) and ‘maps with dots’ of new emerging cities (these kinds of maps are being shown in every urban conference these days). Such numbers and maps have been the only forms to imagine ‘urbanisation’ and every urban expert has been grappling with these two. (Shetty, P) Perhaps the case of Amaravathi shows that ‘urban’ is not a blanket state indeed. Urbanization and the associated developments are taking place along a gradient. In analysing waste also lies clues of understanding how the production and consumption processes are changing across this gradient.

Stamping as a tool As mentioned earlier on page 8, the stamping we imagined would (for the villagers) create a sense of being a part of a process which the villagers may not have collectively been conscious of. While it is surprising that no questioning or objections from the villagers were documented; it leaves room for further investigation. Nevertheless, this method of surveying does provide an intriguing tool demonstrating how this mechanism of collecting data and documentation critical to understanding the processes going on, can be brought closer to the end user so they not only feel a part of it, but feel accountable to it. Sharing this process can even empower concerned residents/entrepreneurs/communities to act faster and more appropriately rather than the usual long winded and often mis-guided processes led by authorities.

Proposal The project engages with the problem of management of waste in Indian cities where the linear system of collection and disposal has proved to be a myopic strategy and an unsustainable business model. With regard to this seemingly logistical challenge at hand, the project proposes to deal with 2 main issues. The first is the inclusion of the spatial perspective (disregarded in the current system approach). The infrastructure of storage/processing/segregation or polluted landscapes that are involuntary recipients of trash donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just correspond to material flows but occupy physical spaces in our cities affecting quality of life and environment in real time. They not only make for invaluable natural resources, real estate/public spaces, but importantly, even work-spaces for many thousands of workers in the city. At the same time these spaces are nodes in the network that inform the logistics of management (dump truck trips or ease of access recycling centre or recovery point). The second aspect of the project deals with moving away from the linear approach to circular model favouring â&#x20AC;&#x201C; production- consumption-recovery. Thus, providing a lens for analysis targeting not waste streams, but waste as part of intricate and intertwined local ecologies. The key aim here is to increase visibility, access-ibility and assess-ibility of value in the excess by a wider stakeholder base, branded otherwise as waste. While from an urbanist perspective, this is an intention to enquire what does the spatial-ization of the circular economy mean from an urban development perspective towards envisioning not just 19th century sanitary city but a 21st century sustainable one.

Chapter 2 Bangalore City

“

“Dharavi may be one of the world’s largest slums, propelled by thousands of micro-entrepreneurs ... turning around the discarded waste of Mumbai 19 million citizens. A new estimate by economists of the output of the slum is ...£700m a year. This is where 80 per cent of Mumbai’s plastic waste is given a new life.” - Dan McDougall (2007)

Income Gradation

If an efficient system were in place, roughly 5070% of the waste that is paper, glass, plastic, etc and organic matter could be recovered and recycled leaving less than half for landfills - World Bank report (2008)

Social dimension to the economics of waste.

”

Introduction Main Issue The current problem of waste is a failure of a centrally administered system (led by local governments) in providing adequate infrastructure and management to handle the growing supply of waste particularly in cities. Three key reasons have been the lack of resources prioritization, community involvement and acquisition of technological know-how. The formal sector has followed a linear system of collection and disposal leading to uneconomical and environmentally damaging path dependency. Economic issues; Financing This is evident from the very limited budget that state governments have allocated to management of waste. Within the current budgets, over 85% of it is spent in sweeping and collection with only 0-15% in actual disposal and treatment. Further, the shortage of workforce, inadequate administrative coverage and increasing urban population pressure has made it difficult to provide even basic sanitary environments. Cultural reasons To a large extent this stems from a cultural attitude to waste as a business/service as untouchable and unspeakable limiting the intellectual and economic engagement with the issue. Why the Neglect of public realm? These being also true for local people who may keep their houses clean but care little for public realm in general. Perhaps this points to issues of governance perhaps owing to the long history of being colonized where right to a place, sense of whats public was never very clear. Currently open defecation is rampant, we see our streets littered with rubbish and rivers have turned into â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;nallasâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; drains (and even relabelled so). The current approach of linear system of collection and disposal, focuses on flows. In doing so, the system undermines the spatial quotient that encapsulates the experience of/engagement with waste in everyday life via spaces littered or those polluted or used for scavenging or reselling. Lack of a holistic approach This linear view also fails to acknowledge waste through the prism of overall sustainability - as part of the cycle of production-consumption and recovery. This is demonstrated by the fact that the majority of recycling and segregation is done by informal sector (increasingly employing the economically weakest, working and living in the most hazardous conditions) and despite that, they remain unrecognised and unsupported. In recent times there has been a proliferation of NGOS extending them support, yet they remain largely unintegrated with the rest of the system. Informal sector, demonstrates a profitable & sustainable way forward. However, the informal sector (even if it is out of necessity ) does demonstrate a counterpoint to the waste story recognizing value in our waste, seeing it as a resource, through practices of up-cycling, down-cycling as well as just dealing in second hand goods building a macro scale circular economy model. Notion of waste/value is subjective This raises the inquiry that perhaps waste can be seen as an apparent perception of a lack of value. While value is also subjective, the famous phrase comes to mind - trash for one may be treasure for another. Value in waste or making of waste is at the same time also subject to variables such as - cultural practices, technological know-how, even labour prices etc. In this context it is perhaps in recognizing/instilling +ve value in waste as a commodity as well as in our environment littered with it, by a larger stakeholder base of our society where lie the clues for developing an environmentally, socially and economically sustainable waste management system. In other words, for recycling to become common practice, or for people to stop littering for example, it has to be seem/be culturally and/or economically valuable to the end user. Considering the state of affairs we see today and lack of any civic pride in the seemingly hopeless situation, it is important to demonstrate how new developments in particular are part of a larger system/ or accountable to it. The question is what are the mechanisms and infrastructures that need to be in place to facilitate this particularily given the impending urban pressures in the coming decades where over 200 million people are expected to move to cities. This also relates to other issues such as severe pollution and depletion in water resources and over 30% of population lacking basic sanitation etc. 17

>> “Outside Bangalore’s last official landfill, the garbage trucks regularly lined up here for hours, their burdens putrefying in the afternoon sun. A stinking mountain of trash, the landfill has been poisoning local waters and sickening nearby villagers. Another dump site was in even worse shape before it was closed recently after violent protests.” - Gardiner Harris, 26 Oct ‘13, NY Times

>> “It seems the BBMP has made absolutely no effort to ensure the garbage crisis does not recur. Garbage has been lying uncleared in our locality for the last two months. The situation has only worsened following the rainfall,” Dhiraj Kumar, a resident of HSR Layout, complained. Meanwhile, the State government is yet to okay the biomining proposal, delaying the BBMP’s efforts to reduce the garbage pile-up.” - 27 May ‘13, Decaan Herald

Bangalore

“Bangalore used to be India’s cleanest city, now, it is the filthiest.” Amiya Kumar Sahu. President of the National Solid Waste Association.

The choice facing Dr. Goel (Bangalore’s chief civil servant) is stark: find a new place to dump 4,000 tons of garbage a day, or make that garbage somehow disappear. - Gardiner Harris, October 26, 2012, NY Times

>> BBMP apathy may set off another garbage crisis!!

Last year’s images of City streets filled with uncleared garbage may come to haunt the citizens again if Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) fails to get its act together. May 27, 2013, Deccan Herald

>> “While the whole world prays for rain, the residents of Roshan Nagar send out silent prayers hoping the skies don’t open. The sewage just flows into our one-room home.” - July 26, 2013 Chitra V. Ramani, The Hindu

>> “Despite BBMP claiming it offers them protective gear, pourakarmikas are usually seen working with bare hands. It is a shocking denial of dignity for doing a job nobody wants to.” - 24th July 2013, Rachelle Chandraan,The new Indian Express

>> “Despite several complaints to authorities, residents say that hotel workers in the area wait for nightfall to dump the waste on street corners.” July 5, 2013, Venkata Susmita Biswas, The Hindu

>> “Ever since the garbage problem erupted in the city last August, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has been making noises about segregation of waste at source. Though segregation has been made mandatory, it has still not taken off.” - June 20, 2013, The hindu 19

Types of waste Household waste Electronic waste Biomedical waste Construction waste Packaging waste ..................

Project Approach The Aim The project seeks to deal with the generic and potent issue of increasing visibility, accessibility and assessibility of value in the excess, branded as trash. This is expected to initiate a more conscious, even an entrepreneurial attitude inviting wider and more enthusiastic participation as well as empowerment of local citizens, and local representative bodies. As a result not only removing the stigma off the industry but also motivating clearer visions rather than the often uncoordinated, top down and myopic interventions.

Focus The focus on the project is on the critically understated notions of time and space and how their inclusion can fundamentally change the attitude to management of waste in our cities. This spatial perspective corresponds to the exit points of trash that account for 0-15% of the budget but most certainly form the most visible problematic. Whether it is the places where trash tends to be dumped, ending up as pollution or the formal/informal infrastructures that facilitate collection, disposal or processing don’t just correspond to material flow. They occupy physical spaces in our cities affecting quality of life and environment in real time. They make for valuable real estate while also being work-spaces for many thousands of workers in the city. At the same time, these same spaces also make for nodes on the network. However, they are neither strategically engaged using location/proximity to inform the logistical challenge posing the city, nor are they accounted for/imagined, with respect to their role or potential as a territory for design and intervention within the centralised system to influence production/ recovery/processing of waste. This brings a new perspective that solutions for waste management need not always be about increasing frequency of collection but may lean towards conditioning the space such that – they don’t become a receptacle of trash in the first place or how they can be restructured, to rework the way trash is organized/processed. These agencies may range from architectural interventions, landscape solutions or just re-branding/reprogramming of the space influencing the way various type of users engage with it While notion of time corresponds to providing new variable to discern where infrastructure must be located wrt to life-cycle of products/materials in question or in terms of distance, manifesting in terms of logistics of ease of access or transport costs. Perhaps also ease of access for end user to a proper waste disposal area/recycling centre/ recovery point etc. Recognizing these is critical to a comprehensive understanding and evaluation of the waste landscape and network.

Method Any urban process that is the object of research, accommodates the academic sector as an aftermath. Academic sector is seldom the first sector to ‘move-in’ to an urban situation. “Ecologies of the Excess” will create a platform, a common ground, to bring professionals of diverse disciplines to investigate/intervene, not only the existing issues, but also simulate urban situations that are beyond the text and the numbers, CDP of the social fabric.

4 Tasks Ahead Establishing the status quo (a datum) Gathering other comparable practices Creating/recognizing open and inclusive platforms Develop Design tool-kit

Establishing the status quo

Delineating the current system and its players (actors & stakeholders) highlighting behavioural trends, opportunities and threats.

1) Tackling Scale and Complexity; Methodology for Field Research Given the enormity of the scale and complexity of the city, the approach for field research is imagined, as visualizing the city as a sum of parts. These parts in their individual examination are seen through a multi-scalar lens. Where a space may exist as â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1) in its specific location and context, 2) as part of/catering to the large context of the city 3) in relationship to the large urban-rural ecosystem. This learning is then imagined to be aggregated towards establishing bigger system at city scale or urban-rural scale. This method essentially reflects a typological approach of understanding and engaging with the city. It is based on a hypothesis that similar spaces are going to produce similar kind of waste and emulate similar governance structures. Perhaps, they may even be comparable morphologically. Therefore, few sample studies of these typologies can be combined to provide a holistic picture of system of the city in reading the physical and empirical scale involved. This may be closest to the way informal networks have established over time that recognise this aspect, rather than single stream collection and disposal by authorities that are tend to be bound by administrative divisions or wards. Breaking down into typologies will allow for strategies and models to be developed that are comparable and repeatable elsewhere. From data collection (surveying) perspective too, this decentralised system allows local citizens and authorities closely associated with the space to be intimately linked with the solutions and the subsequent process of change. As demonstrated in the earlier project case of Amaravathi Village, surveying methodologies can be key to spreading awareness/creating broader consciousness and participation. (Say to motivate production of less waste, or more recycling or self-segregation etc). A few examples of such classifications are as follows: Typologies of private residential spaces may be classified as gated communities, apartment complexes, single standing residences (within which will also be income brackets). While typology of public open spaces may be classified as parks, lakes, streets etc.. Typological approach to target local ecologies Following this methodology is a way of targeting local ecologies to recognise their narrative intricacies. Working at this scale appreciates a grey area within which these ecologies function. For Ex- a particular street adjoining a market in the CBD of Bangalore is blocked from vehicular traffic by the dumping of wet waste produced in the market. This allows prostitution in those streets in a particular time of the day. The same market produces 30,000 tons of wet garbage on a daily basis. Such amounts of wet garbage are the raw material for a thriving business in producing compost (run by informal networks).

Figure2: Zoning reinterpreted as typology of space each of which will have specific type of waste output and inherent morphology.

** Very basic divisions meant only for demonstration intent

Example:

Lake

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Another Bangalore lake becomes a garbage dump!! The Sarakki lake, once a yearround water recharge area is now a garbage dump. Its Lake Trust calls on the Karnataka government and people to save the lake. Sarakki Lake Trust is prepared to play the role of a watch dog for its lake. It has put all correspondence with the authorities in the public domain, in the interests of sharing and transparencyâ&#x20AC;?

Following the proposals, Sarakki lake here represents a typical example of a case the project seeks to demonstrate- failure of the centralised waste management system, leading to illegal dumping and environmental damage. The project view is that the solution need not necessarily be only to improve waste collection in the area near by but perhaps the lake itself can become a territory of engagement, as a contributing factor to improving the management of waste of the area near by leading to more sustainable and long lasting solution embedded in the community.

2) Mapping & Visualizing the invisible

Visualization is fundamentally important to analyse the complexity of the system but also recognizing its interconnections. Here are three visualization methods conceptualized during the fellowship period -

(a) System based Analysis

Drawing waste and as part of larger metabolic process. This view is critical to understanding the relation of one variable within the larger ecosystem. Demonstrating - Interaction between different process and path dependencies.

** Example taken from the study in Village Amaravathi. Relation of negative consequence of reducing number of cows with loss of products such as fresh milk, fertilizer and the advent of plastic waste (from milk packets) in this pristine landscape.

(b) Life-cycle models

Assessing individual flows in relation to value and time. Such models can be useful in influencing recovery, extension of lifespan of a particular product/material. As well where should intervention take place with regard to life time of product. Product lifespan extended

Time

By maximizing recovery, minimizing waste

c) Cost based quantitative analysis

One of the key factors to empowerment of citizens and representative bodies to act is introducing transparency and clarity with regard to cost and reward of an initiative/investment. The scheme incorporates the dimension of time and space â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;taking together all the individual flows visually demonstrating the empirical assessment of its impact.. It is expected to serve as a base platform for archiving narratives/information as well as scientific model for developing visions for taking future steps as well as comparison with diverse configurations. As a logic, it can used at any scale, a house, office of a city to provide visual clarity of the entirety of the system.

Key Questions 1) What does institutionalization of waste mean in the Indian context, and how will it influence behaviour of those that throw rubbish and businesses that thrive on it? Further, how can the system remain porous and inclusive and democratic as we upgrade? 2) How streamlined should our waste management system be? How does time and space play a role in influencing the people engage with the waste. 2.1) (In this context) what role can architecture and spatial design play in reducing the current managerial burden of waste management, the logistical challenge at hand?

Elaborations

2. How streamlined should our waste management system/ infrastructure be? The inclusion of dimension of time and space opens question of streamlining which is a critical deciding factor for how much and how easily people will engage with the excess. In India fortunately all roads don’t lead to landfills. There is a strong intermediately fabric that makes it easy to improve life-cycle of a product or a material. Of course this also includes surfaces that become stop-over dump-yards which are a cause of much surface pollution. The presence of this intermediate layer is obvious in India due to ample people who need the second-hand goods that would otherwise just get wasted. In richer countries like the Netherlands this has not been required. The waste management infrastructure is much more speedy, and efficient point to point. This efficiency has meant, its amazingly difficult and expensive (high labour costs and cost of substitutes) to get anything repaired, so people prefer to rather buy a anew fuelling the consumption-shopping based economy. However, in recent years,the demand for this intermediately layer (with real estate still too expensive to allow large physical storage) has given rise to social networking platforms for exchanging used goods, repairing services and occasional events.

Perhaps one can imagine the materials flows of waste as a conveyor belt to think about the role speed and scale play in raising the question, as to what kind of infrastructure do we need to put in place? For example: The faster the airport baggage conveyor belt moves and how wide it is, determine how easily people are able to pick up the baggage and how many people’s bags flow out at a time. In other ways, speed and volume determine how people interact with it. Similarly the speedier the waste management system, that is the time you dispose an object, to it getting picked up by the garbage truck and whisked away to a landfill/recycling facility, the less time it lingers to allow other forms of interaction/usage. The images on the left from India show spaces where waste lingers, giving it new life/second use, very much a part of the city ecosystem and people’s lifestyles. This aspect of speed clarifies the relevance of the variable - ‘time’ in relation to life cycle of a wasted commodity/product.

Airport baggage conveyor belt

Moving sushi table

Soft and Hard infrastructure. THE NETHERLANDS

City scale Garbage collection Network

Albert Heijn, local grocery store, Bottle recovery point

Repair cafes

Neighbourhood garbage collectors

Second hand goods

Hard Infrastructure: Formal and Informal, INDIA

Repair shops

Neighbourhood recyclers, waste collectors

Rag-pickers

Second hand good dealers

2.1) What role can architecture and spatial design play in reducing the current managerial burden of waste management, the logistical challenge at hand?

All roads lead to land fills; System at city scale Modern construction technology methods has made infrastructure invisible, making it also disappear from the public eye and public consciousness. With this has gone the idea of civic pride. It is not community led but organized through centrally administered public works. The project intends to draw attention to infrastructure not only as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a tube but as spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hoog, 2010), not only as a technocratic system but also as cultural artefacts. The problem which a large segments of people are facing is that pipe typology infrastructure is not built for the lack of money or legal recognition or corruption or so many other reasons and there is no plan B? With increasing population pressure and lack of formal infrastructure to match up, Can the spatial approach provide new answers?

Landfill

From Linear to cyclic approach

Towards Zero waste

Storage infrastructure as Place making (For water run off/rain water)

Hampi In ancient cities such as Hampi water storage was well recognized as central to the development and survival of the people and served not only as infrastructure but also as community spaces.

Sewage Treatment as Productive Landscape

Spatial-ization

Wet-lands, Kolkatta These wetlands constructed over 100 years ago not only serve as digester for much of the cities sewage but also provides livelihood to many other by facilitating farming and fishing. It is a great resource for a city however this too is under pressure from developers wanting to buy out this land for new development projects.

Recycled goods market as Cultural icon

Existing Infrastructure like waste dumping sites + Program

• Maker clubs • Community hobby Workshops • Vocational learning

(On one hand)

Chor Bazaar, Mumbai ‘Chor Bazaar’ or translated to - ‘Thief’s market’. It is the large and organized flea market (not really of stolen goods) but of recycled, up-cycled goods. This is not a scrap yard, this place is a cultural paradise. Its for the whimsical and for those looking for spare parts or just unique or odd items to buy.

Cleaned up area as Reclaimed public space + ecological landscape. Grand gestures to making the sanitary city - Boston

Required Base Infrastructure + Technological Know-how E.g.. Public Toilet

Emerald Necklace, Boston The project began as an effort to clean up and control the marshy area which became the Back Bay and the Fens. “The entire Fenway is filled space. It was used as a dump for horse droppings and dead horses,” said Burke. “They filled it in to cover the stench, so the park served as a sanitary project, as well as one that beautified the area.”

Existing Place + Infrastructure

(While on the other)

These too represent the spatial dimension to how management of waste is organized in the city. These spaces are where much of segregation and recycling takes place. It is here where people live and work, children grow up in... While we need to concentrate on the waste in the form and places it actually ends up last, following its journey is critically important.

Notion of value As mentioned earlier, perhaps waste can be seen as an apparent perception of a lack of value. While value is also subjective, value in waste or making of waste is at the same time also subject to variables such as cultural practices, technological know-how, even labour prices etc.

Cultural practice

Technological know-how A city that turns garbage into Energy copes with a shortage

Cow poop is regarded as unhygienic in cities but is a valuable natural resource in villages.

Branding

Ecomark has become common practice in most countries of branding, letting end users also participate and be conscious of eco-friendly manufacturing processes or materials. However this idea of branding to create differentiation can also be applied to space like land-use, but may be temporal. This may be redefining rules of usage or ownership to facilitate new roles/programs. Example case of a public park where urban farming is allowed.

In Norway where electricity supply is dependant on the incinerators. Everyday waste has acquired a new value as fuel for combustion to such as extent that it is having to import it from other countries.

Fiction

Atari, a game making company dumped thousands of ET game cartridges in a Mexican landfill feeling that it was not worth it back in 1970s. However some time ago, Canada-based filmmaker Fuel Industries has decided to dig it up. Generating a trajectory where Fiction leads to Practises establishing Practice leading to creating Policy as opposed to making Policy hoping to influence Practice.

Gathering other comparable practices Creating an atlas of comparative practices and systems. Documenting and delineating the value system driving them w.r.t time, technology, cultural practices, labour that are responsible in influencing the narratives of reuse, recycle and reduce.

Creating/recognizing open and inclusive platforms

For people to engage enabling dialogue, gathering local know-how and enabling commerce.

Develop Design tool-kit

To empower entrepreneurs and local representative bodies. To develop interventions/business models that can be repeated.

ss ..

...