They literally live in a huge pile of garbage. In a place called Bhopura, a heavily-polluted industrial suburb of Delhi, about a thousand people live in shacks made of bamboo and scrap materials amid what appears to be a sprawling landfill. In fact, these people have brought the trash here themselves so they can spend all day sorting it into recyclible and non-recyclible materials. They will then sell the recyclible bits to junk dealers, earning an average income of about one dollar a day. They are the Bhopura wastepickers.

Wastepickers, also known as Kabari, represent almost 1% of Delhi’s total population and handle about 20% of the city’s enormous daily waste, providing an efficient mechanism for recycling in a society where the most common means of disposing of trash is dumping it on the sidewalk. Despite this invaluable service they are largely shunned by society and constantly harassed by the Delhi Police, who demand bribes from almost all wastepickers. In a caste-based society, most wastepickers fall naturally at the bottom, being either untouchables or illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. All of them are incredibly poor; otherwise they wouldn’t be doing the job they do.

Yet despite their poverty and the very unappealing nature of their work, I was astonished by the dignity of the wastepickers I met on a Sunday afternoon at Bhopura: the way the men looked me in the eye and shook my hand with a smile, while the women, dressed in saris as beautiful as those of any other Indian women, smiled and held their young children in their arms. They were clearly not the kind of people who can be kept down even by the discouraging circumstances in their lives.

Located on the outskirts of Delhi, the Bhopura wastepicker colony is home to perhaps a thousand people who live in shacks amidst piles of garbage they have accumulated. Everyday, the wastepickers sort through those piles in the hope finding recyclable bits which they can sell to make a living.

A man and a boy scavenge for recyclable trash at the Bhopura wastepicker colony where they live and work. Whole families typically work together in the wastepicking business, and most wastepicking children are not able to attend school.

Anand Mishra (farthest from camera), a Chintan employee, speaks with two wastepickers about the planned distribution of free clothing at the Bhopura wastepicker colony on the afternoon of June 6th, 2008.

Chintan employees unload bags of free clothing for distribution to wastepicker families who lost their homes in a fire the week before at the Bhopura wastepicker colony.

Inhabitants of the Bhopura wastepicker colony wait to receive bags of free clothing following the destruction of their homes by a fire the week before. Many wastepickers at Bhopura and in greater Delhi are in fact West Bangli immigrants who are unable to find other means of surviving in the overcrowded and poverty-stricken city.