A spectre is haunting Europe.
—Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848
It’s not a spectre that is haunting India. It’s a tangible, evil-smelling, health-impairing, socially divisive reality: waste. India’s battle with “waste”, now led by the dashing sowarsof Swachh Bharat, faces two formidable obstacles unique to India. The first is magnitude. No other country in the world (excluding islands and city-states) has so great a population density, coupled with the capacity to produce so much discarded “stuff”.