the Scavengers of Mumbai

Krsh Chawla

Director(s): Krsh Chawla

The Scavengers of Mumbai is a film based on the informal waste sectors of our society who almost invisibly play a very important role in our society. This film will help spread awareness to the citizens of Mumbai and elsewhere as to how our society must contribute on a personal level to improve the methods used to manage our waste resources. The film will also alarm the people of Mumbai about the current state of the ragpickers who help our society effectively. The improvement of their conditions will only help them to help us. Their involvement is key to managing our resources and 'the Scavengers of Mumbai' is based around that. The film shows the mere condition of the ragpickers and how their efforts are helping our city to maintain the cleanliness it does and if we empower them and make their jobs simpler, our city could be in a much better state than it is. I have interviewed Adv. Vinod Shetty of the Acorn Foundation (India), who is leading the Dharavi Project which works for the welfare of the ragpickers and he has provided me with the facts and figures used in my film. There is a quote in the end by Wendall Berry, 'We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.' which makes complete sense featuring in the film and gives the viewer a sense of understanding and maybe a slight hint of guilt regarding the situation of the Earth as a whole, and how we should treat it. The whole film is made with the intention of changing the mentality of the citizens who do not implement the methods which would cost nearly nothing and could change the face of our environment, or just don't have the knowledge to, by making them aware of what the Informal Waste Sectors mean to us.