https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.020
Coloniality of Waste: Foreign Policy, Toxic Exports, and India’s Ecological Futures
Roshima Uday
Research Scholar
P.G. & Research Department of English
Government Victoria College, Palakkad, Kerala, India
Affiliated with the University of Calicut
ORCID: 0009-0006-4685-3270
Dr. Abubakkar K. K.
Associate Professor
P.G. & Research Department of English
Government Victoria College, Palakkad, Kerala, India
Affiliated with the University of Calicut
Abstract: The current paper examines India’s ecological precarity as it becomes a major destination for hazardous and discarded materials from wealthier nations. Rather than a neutral byproduct of globalization, the influx of e-waste, plastics, and decommissioned ships represents a continuation of colonial patterns where environmental risk is displaced onto the Global South. Through the critical examination of Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey’s Waste of a Nation (2018) and Jennifer Clapp’s Toxic Exports (2001), the present paper examines how India’s ecology and labour systems are entangled with foreign policy decisions and global trade regimes. The study employs textual analysis of these key works alongside policy examination of the Basel Convention (Basel Convention, 1989), the Basel Ban Amendment (1995), and India’s 2019 prohibition on plastic waste imports by MoEFCC (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 2019). Case studies of Alang’s shipbreaking yards and urban e-waste hubs illustrate how toxic inflows affect not only landscapes but also the lives of marginalized workers who bear the health and social consequences of hazardous recycling. By foregrounding India’s position as both a site of ecological vulnerability and of resistance, this paper argues that foreign policies and global trade logics treat India as a dumping ground while local activism and regulatory shifts attempt to contest this ecological injustice. The central argument is that imagining sustainable futures requires reframing foreign policy as an ecological responsibility, where justice and accountability are prioritized over economic convenience.
Keywords: India, Hazardous Waste, Foreign Policy, Environmental Justice, Coloniality, Ecological Precarity