You are Siddhant/Saranya, a resident of New Delhi. You watched a documentary recently about the plight of ragpickers in India. You are disturbed by the callousness of the residents of your locality in disposing off waste. Write a letter to the Editor of The Times of India drawing attention to this and suggesting suitable measures that can be taken.
Answers
Explanation:
The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessert and more food than an average person can eat in that time.
As soon as passengers start getting off the train, ragpickers jump in and start scrounging for waste material and leftovers – samosas, biscuits, plastic bottle, wraps and so on. They are a part of India’s massive reserve of ragpickers – their numbers are estimated between 1.5 million and 4 million; Delhi itself has over 500,000.
Ragpickers sustain themselves by collecting, sorting and segregating waste and then trading it. In doing so, they help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes