Christians make up a majority of the sanitation workforce in Lahore while management and most of supervisors are Muslims.

There are historical reasons for this division along religious lines. From the late 19th to early 20th century, a large number of lower caste Hindus (untouchables) converted to Christianity in Punjab, increasing the numbers of Christian population. Because of this historical context, it makes sense of how the Christians have been recruited into the sanitation field. But this does not sufficiently make sense that why Muslims had not been employed in the municipal cleaning jobs or why many Christians had not got management or supervisory positions.

The workforce, both Christian and Muslim, are employees of the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), formed a few years ago as a publicly-funded private company to monitor the collection, transportation, and disposal of solid waste in the provincial metropolis. Its operations are carried out by two private Turkish companies. Previously, the Solid Waste Management Department, under the city district government, was entrusted with the responsibility to clean Lahore. It has more than 10,000 sanitation workers are employed in numerous positions, such as municipal sweepers, drivers, and supervisors. They perform different kinds of labour, some being more physically demanding than the others.

This workforce became this writer’s ‘insiders’ over the course of field research who, as an ‘outsider,’ moved between Christian workers and Muslim supervisors. This is where the position of the anthropologist gets tricky. In pursuing the knowledge of ‘insiders,’ he becomes a figure of suspicion.

Though the purpose of the research was explained to them, the workers were still uncertain about the objective of the writer’s interaction with the people who were generally considered untouchables. It happened perhaps due to the lack of trust, a primary component in research and conducting interviews. The research was made possible because of the intervention of a bureaucrat who helped win the workers trust as being a Muslim this writer, by default, was on the side of management.

This Muslim-Christian divide, suspicion, mistrust and hesitation on both sides was one of the causes behind the selection of the topic for the research project and the resultant interest in Christian sanitation workers and their living and working conditions.

Christian sanitation workers were unexpectedly open, freely criticising the LWMC and its policies and speaking frankly about how everyone treated them. On finding a man coming from ‘outside’ of their community, a sympathetic person ‘who sits with them’ and gives attention to what they had to say made them open their hearts.

Despite this unequal relationship, in terms of education, wealth and life opportunities, they were surprised to see someone taking a genuine interest in their lives and listened to them with a seriousness and curiosity. Sanitation workers shared their knowledge, hopes and disillusionment.

What most of Lahorites don’t realise is that their capacity to live and work in an overpopulated mega city like Lahore depends on what happens to the sanitation workers and the kind of labour that they must perform. The sickness they undergo, the debt they incur and the daily effort they put forth are only a fraction of challenges and difficulties that they face.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2014