Links between adequate urban water and sanitation services and human well being make this area of social provision a key factor in poverty reduction, while uneven supply across cities means there are also equity issues at stake. The negative externalities associated with poor water supply and sanitation and the impact this has on the effective functioning of cities also point to efficiency arguments. Urban water supply and sanitation are inextricably linked. In addition to creating a health hazard in itself, failure to collect, recover and dispose of wastes can lead to contaminated groundwater and to blocked sewers and drains. Yet SWM remains a neglected issue, a Cinderella among urban services.

It is, even so, attracting growing attention in the South for reasons that extend beyond obvious public health concerns. International agencies and (in their wake) big municipalities, have targeted SWM as a key entry point for promoting private involvement in urban service delivery. In justification, they point to administrative failures and to labour-intensive methods that smack of inefficiency. They see services for collection (as distinct from disposal) of solid waste as goods of a dual character, private and public in one.

The primary emphasis of existing schemes for boosting private participation has been on contracting services out to large-scale private operators. Though many see potential for integrating informal waste recycling and community participation into official SWM systems, it has proved difficult to scale-up or replicate informal and decentralised initiatives to the city level.

Research in India and Pakistan shows how important it can be to understand the social relations that underpin SWM. The low social status of people working with waste almost worldwide is compounded in South Asia by the idea that people are born to this work due to their caste or hereditary group status. One consequence is that it is inordinately hard to get householders to participate in community-based schemes.

Figure 1: Participants in waste collection and recycling, urban South Asia