ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore the relationship between citizenship, waste, time and democracy by analysing the debates on waste in India. The chapter is divided into eight sections. The first section explores some of the ideas of the geologist A. K. Coomaraswamy and Mohandas Gandhi. In the next section, the author explores the ideas of Patrick Geddes, outlining how he makes waste central to the idea of the city. In the fourth section, the author discusses the works of Frederick Nicholson and Albert Howard’s ideas of soils, waste and civilization. While the first four sections focus on waste in the nationalist period, the next few sections deal with waste in the independence period. The next section deals with ideas of C. V. Seshadri, the chemist who explored the slum. The conclusion then offers a tentative link between dirt, waste, citizenship and democracy. A reinvention of categories permits a reinvention of worlds, allowing new ways of defining freedom, subsistence and democracy.
