Governing waste and producing environmental subjects: a sociological analysis of decentralised solid waste management model in Kerala, India.

Municipal solid waste management has become one of the most pressing challenges of environmental governance, as rapid urbanization, population growth, and changing consumption patterns continue to expand both the volume and complexity of waste generation, particularly in developing countries (; ). Effective waste governance is now understood to depend less on technical fixes for collection, transportation, and disposal than on institutional coordination, regulatory design, and the active participation of governments, local authorities, communities, and households (; ). In India, this governance challenge has been shaped by a layered legal and constitutional architecture. The Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 first empowered the central government to act on environmental protection, and judicial intervention by the Supreme Court in 1999 led to the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000, which assigned local authorities’ primary responsibility for waste collection and disposal. The Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 extended this framework considerably, mandating source segregation and door-to-door collection while extending responsibility to waste generators themselves (). These statutory developments rest on constitutional foundations: Article 48A directs the state to protect the environment, Article 51A(g) makes environmental protection a citizen’s duty, and Articles 243G and 243W—introduced by the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments—devolve planning and implementation authority to Panchayati Raj Institutions and Urban Local Bodies (). Together, these provisions position decentralized, citizen-engaged waste governance as both a constitutional mandate and an administrative reality. Kerala has emerged as a distinctive example of this decentralized model through the Haritha Karma Sena (HKS). Constituted under the Local Self-Government Department and recruited through the Kudumbashree Mission, HKS is a women-led, community-based system responsible for door-to-door collection of segregated waste across the state’s local self-government institutions (). Operating at the interface between households and local government, HKS translates policy mandates into everyday waste-management practice while simultaneously functioning as a livelihood programme for women from economically marginalized backgrounds.