The landfill site in a city has many stories; it is a visual memory of the city’s legacy waste, an ecological hazard that keeps getting harder to ignore, and a space that often quietly sustains the lives of many residents living at the periphery. For Raina (Dhiman) Roy the landfill dumping ground at the fringe of East Kolkata popularly known as ‘Dhapa’ was a call to empower the transgender waste collector’s community through environmental justice.

Raina has been a vocal activist for Trans person rights in Kolkata for over 20 years. Raised in a middle-class Bengali household she remembers how the violence, ridicule and discrimination she faced since adolescence shaped her determination to fight for the transgender community. But it was a particular incident that left a deep impact and pushed her further.

“When I was younger, I had once seen a policeman beat up a transgender person at a famous public place in Kolkata, and I had put a stop to it by holding back the policeman’s lathi (baton).  That day I realised that I have to speak up, come out and defend the rights of my friends. That I would say was the start of my activism on the issue,” says Raina.

She has been part of significant movements like Manas Bangla, a collective of community-based groups under West Bengal State Aids Control Society (WBSACS) that worked with mainstream media and transgender women. After recognising elitism in activism and the lack of space for Trans people from Dalit communities, lower income groups, rural areas, artists, et.al. she started her own organisation called Somobhabona (which means ‘possibilities’). Now, Raina’s initiative looks at balancing the economic resilience of the community and the growing environmental needs.

“The rag pickers (near Dhapa) collect non-biodegradable recyclable waste from the ground and sell it to Local distributors of different recycling factories for their living. Their earnings are meagre, while the risk to their health considerably higher. The dumped waste in the Dhapa ground, produces toxic methane gas which is dangerous for both human health, causes air pollution and degrades the soil fertility, thus causing irreparable damage to the  local ecological balance,” says Raina.

Her initiative looks at informing a larger community of transgender waste collectors on health and environmental hazards of working on solid waste management without proper care and protection gear. She is creating sustainable livelihoods options by gradually helping the community adopt environmentally friendly steps such as training and practicing organic farming, making organic composts using bio-degradable, learning developing handicrafts by training in creating art out of nonbiodegradable waste and designing an income generation project. She dreams of having a trans person owned and led organic food stall using organic produces.

“As a transgender human rights and environmental justice defender, I feel it is very important to do justice with the environment at a time when we face ecological crisis,” says Raina

She is also connecting with different environmental justice groups to create a secure environment for the trans* community.

The waste collectors’ group are now interested to organise themselves into a collective which may become a registered Self-Help Group (SHG) in the Khanaberia area. Raina acknowledges that the journey to economic sustainability and ecological balance is going to be long-drawn but she feels that they are taking a step in the right direction. “Forming a collective is essential for this community to come together and engage in conversation around their lived realities and explore economic opportunities which are non-traditional,” says Raina.

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