Kolkata

Some things in India really cannot be measured by German standards – including, and above all, the way they deal with garbage

If the streets of Nürtingen looked like those of Calcutta, then there would probably be a popular uprising. Whereby the Bengali metropolis is no exception. It is rather a prime example of the rule: whatever one regards as superfluous is simply thrown away in India, heedlessly, without thinking about it - whether on the pavement or on the street. This is perhaps the most disturbing thing that someone from Swabia - where “spring cleaning” is a central aspect of our national identity - can experience.

And no-one in India is bothered by this. Not the slum-dwellers in their rags and tatters, nor the business men in their tailor-made suits on Camac Street – no-one thinks twice about simply dropping or throwing away the packaging of the sandwich they were just eating on the way to the office, the cardboard or plastic cup they were just drinking tea or coffee from en route, or even the plastic bags in which the poorest of the poor forage for something useful or edible.

Even when one (as I did) travels by bus to the Sundurbans National Park and stops for tea at a petrol station, the young man accompanying the group answers the question as to where one should dispose of the empty plastic cup with “Throw it in the corner.”

Whereby “in the corner” is already progress. Normally one wouldn’t even bother to take the few steps to the corner, but simply drop it - end of problem. A litterbin at a petrol station, a street corner or in a park? Sheer nonsense!

And so, over the entire city, there lies a layer of refuse of varying ages and diverse consistencies, simply rotting away. Now and then, you see someone with a huge straw broom sweeping the few square metres in front of their own vegetable stall or ice-cream van. But sooner or later they must feel like Sisyphus: after half an hour, at the latest, it looks just as it did before.

At a five-minute walk from the Goethe-Institut is a small square, surrounded by three walls, about four metres high. Here lorries constantly manoeuvre in backwards and dump their freight onto the ground: evidently household waste from the surrounding district that is delivered in large plastic sacks.

Rubbish tips as Calcutta’s new attraction?

But there is more to come: immediately about eight to ten people fling themselves on the pile, tear open the sacks and rummage through the heap of garbage on the ground beneath them. As I watch them for a while, I think to myself. “This must be the Indian version of recycling.” For waste separation is, of course, unknown here. The only difference is whether one throws something onto the street or first packs it into a sack at home.

The people rummaging through the garbage there are filthy. I would feel disgusted, and I have great scruples about even taking photos of them. It seems too undignified to me. However, it doesn’t seem to bother the men and women in the niche of the wall, at the edge of the premises of the Calcutta Cricket Club. For Indian conditions it’s not the worst job, says Basav Bhattacharya, with whom I am travelling to the little village of Karanjali, some time later.

They have to clamber through the refuse from morning till night, he goes on, but particularly the plastic that they salvage is in great demand. They can earn 1,500 rupees a month with that. At current rates about 24 euros. From a German viewpoint this seems a pittance. But in Calcutta one gets 50 kilos of rice for this. And in Karanjali almost 70 kilos.

There is also, by the way, another dimension to this garbage. At the office party of the Times of India at the fishponds of Salt Lake City, two hills loom up on the horizon. I ask Bob Rey, chief editor, about them. “All garbage,” he replies. “It piled up over the years. Now the deposits are being greened up.” Calcutta is normally as flat as a pancake, there are no hills, he explains.

There seems to be a hint of pride in this. One senses here a certain happy anticipation – garbage mounds as a kind of attraction, as a new leisure facility. Well, there are always two sides of the coin.