Accepted Panels

This article focuses on the materiality of waste, and the agency of waste pickers, a group of urban poor at Guwahati. As a close association of the two, it is mistakenly believed of both to live non-conflicted at edge of the city. Through their practices, the agency of the waste pickers is projected as strategy of extracting livelihood from the margins. The contexts under which the human-thing relation is dealt or lived articulates how they situate themselves in the relegated areas. While the waste pickers make meaning of the work and space, their experiences remain invisible under the weight of marginality. The urban poor remain subordinated owing to their religious affiliation, and dirty work status. The article denotes how waste pickers have been made a domain of inattention but imagined as a satisfied category of workers. The persistent gap between creative agency of the urban poor and powerful agency of the state obstruct vocalizing the challenges faced by the former. Towards the end, the article concludes that it is the performative force of the state power facilitating lack of potentiality among the urban poor to claim rights as city dwellers.