In one frame in the film, Jamal, and his older brother Salim, after being rendered homeless, go to a place not many would be chummy with: atop a plastic sheet in a crook of a mountain of garbage in a landfill. It’s only one stop in their dirty-faced misadventures, but it illustrates profoundly the “dirtiness” of the two boys.

It also shows us, briefly, the life that is lead by the lakhs of waste pickers who clean up our rubbish, living on the rubbish and next to our drains. In real life, it is the “dirtiness” of the men, women and children that adds, simply and profoundly, to the stigma that comes with them.

“Chhee, kitne gande bacche hain (Yuck, what dirty children)” is the caption for a drawing made by a waste picker, displaying how other children look at him, for Chintan, an environmental research group. It also demonstrates the urban gaze on urban garbage pickers: we think waste pickers take irreverent pride in being dirty, or do not care about being dirty. But a study done by Chintan on waste pickers in Delhi, shows that it is the “dirtiness” of the waste pickers which prevents them from finding a place in hospitals, toilets, public water points and society itself. Further, the study shows that the dirt is not just a consequence of work conditions, but also waste pickers’ living conditions, with most of them simply not having access to facilities for cleanliness. And finally: nearly hundred per cent of the waste pickers say they aspire to be clean.

... contd.