what I've learned about Kolkata streets

Garbage cans are rare so when I saw this at a park, I laughed. But this park is different than the Kolkata norm. More on that later.

Garbage cans are rare so it is common, assumed, expected and normal to throw your garbage in the street. I've seen folks toss boxes, food scraps, you name it, into the street. When volunteering at one of the pre-schools teresa even saw a child in a classroom bring a piece of garbage to what looked like a garbage can but the massi, a working adult, told him to throw it outside.

As you can likely imagine, Kolkata streets are pretty dirty. But they aren't always, and this is where things get interesting.

One day teresa and I stayed on the bus too long and then got off at the next opportunity, which meant new things to see and learn. 

We got off in front of a garbage compactor where there were maybe 5 people with metal carts full of garbage. We'd often seen these metal carts and their pushers throughout the city streets. These folks have their brooms with their carts, but their brooms are typical Indian brooms: they're maybe the length of my arm. They need to be used while crouching. We'd seen them sweeping up garbage and pushing carts full of garbage through the streets. Now our A met our Z. These folks are paid to daily clean the streets. I imagine they're paid either to cover a specific area or for how much garbage they collect and bring to the compactor.

I suppose you could argue that by throwing garbage in the streets you are keeping people employed.

It is hard not to think of my norm as right and best. It seems to make more sense to me to employ people to empty garbage cans so your streets don't go through regular drastic transformations. But that means garbage cans need to be supplied. That's quite a process to initiate. I don't have answers. 

I used to work at a construction company which had contracts for street sweepers: hefty machines. Who knew I'd experience drastic alternatives to the term.