At a time when India’s waste crisis is burgeoning, this book offers an illuminating insight into Mumbai’s Deonar dumping ground and the lives of waste pickers around it. During the session, author Saumya Roy will be sharing excerpts and reflections from the book. Professor Nandini Gooptu will be chairing the session and Aparna Agarwal, DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development, will be acting as discussant.

About the author
Saumya Roy is a journalist and social entrepreneur from Mumbai. She has written for Outlook magazine, Mint newspaper and Forbes India magazine among other publications. She co- founded Vandana Foundation to support the livelihoods of the city’s poorest micro entrepreneurs, in 2010. It was through this that she met the waste picklers of Deonar and began to chronicle their lives.

‘Mountain Tales: Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings’ is her first book. She received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Blue Mountain Center, Carey Institute for Global Good and Sangam House for writing it. It is being published in the UK, US, India and in Chinese translation.