The environment is often invoked in the context of growing municipal waste, a result of rapid growth and burgeoning consumption in urban India, in a manner that would appear to be class and caste neutral, as well as accommodating of the interests of labor. In actuality, waste policy and practice have been contoured in distinctly opposite directions to that dictated by a genuine concern for the environment. The article draws on primary qualitative research in a medium hill town, primarily key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and official documents, to substantiate its arguments. Key findings suggest that the benign platform of the environment disguises ever greater informalization of the formal, in newer and structurally more damaging ways, to both labor and the environment. Indeed, as hypothesized by Roy (2009), the waste sphere shows the idiom of India’s urbanization and planning itself to be one of informality, characterized by deregulation, ambivalence, opacity, and exemption.

在印度城市快速增长和消费迅速增长的结果下，经常会以城市废物不断增加的方式来调用环境，这种方式似乎是阶级和种姓中立的，同时也符合劳工利益。实际上，废物政策和实践的轮廓与对环境的真正关注所指示的方向截然相反。本文借鉴了一个中等山区小镇的主要定性研究，主要是主要的线人访谈，焦点小组讨论和官方文件，以证实其论点。主要发现表明，环境的良性平台掩盖了对劳动力和环境的形式化，形式化和破坏性更高的正规化的更大程度的非正式化。实际上，正如Roy（2009）所假设的那样，。