I’ve become a waste management expert. The Delhi government should hire me as a consultant, not only to tell them how to quickly clean up the city ahead of the October 2010 Commonwealth Games, but how to do so in an inclusive fashion so that the informal sector comprising of workers functioning as door-to-door garbage collectors and wastepickers on the landfills aren’t marginalized and stripped of their sole source of income.

About two months ago, I was invited to be part of a panel of experts on climate change. The organization wanted me on board because they were aware of the work I had been doing (personal project on the lives and livelihoods of wastepickers in Delhi) and knew that I had spent time on the landfills and with door-to-door garbage collectors, recyclers, etc. They had also read one of my first pieces on the topic that ran 3,500 words and was published in the American magazine, Scrap.

The organizers wanted me to talk about how wastepickers in the city were helping recycle the city’s garbage and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and the lousy deal they were getting from the city and its people in return.

There were a couple of reasons I wasn’t able to participate, the primary being that I was out of town, and the secondary being that I was very hesitant as an objective journalist to become part of the story or a voice for the wastepickers themselves. In addition, I really didn’t know that I had anything to say on the topic.

“I don’t know that I can talk intelligently about climate change,” I said to the organizer when she called to invite me. “My focus is on human rights, not environment.”

“Oh trust me, you can,” she replied. “We’ve been using your [Scrap magazine] piece as an educational tool in all our meetings to explain how these things are linked together.”

When I received that first assignment from Scrap, my brief was simple: go out and research the lives and livelihoods of the wastepickers and come back with a human story against the backdrop of their business. I owe my editor big time for educating me about this issue and for trusting me to go and find out what I could. I was asked to explain, in detail, how the recycling systems work in India, and what role the wastepickers play in it.

I had intended to approach the subject with an eye on the human rights of these people, which is of course, the most obvious aspect in this story. But as I dug deeper– and I really did dig quite a bit– I found there was more to this story. That it wasn’t all that much a human rights story as it was the story of a system that was being broken down in a targeted fashion at the expense of the informal workers and the citizens of the city.

The issue, to me at least, became a complicated one, involving the government, environmental agencies, and of course, the wastepickers themselves. Without intending to, I got hold of laws, court cases, private and government contracts, anything I could get my hands on basically, that proved with no ambiguity what was happening in this arena.

I’ve now been researching this topic on and off for almost six months. And I’ve become some kind of expert on it. I’ll feel confident attending the next conference.

Editors have noticed, of course (one said he could tell I was really passionate about the issue and that was the sole reason he was assigning the story), and I just finished my third story on the topic, with two more editors seriously considering other angles as well.

I never intended to write about the environment or to get involved in the research of the human and environmental impact of the waste India’s cities produce. Far from it– I thought the environment thing was too complicated for a simpleton like me, was too much of fad writing, and better left to other writers who would do a good job of it because they had the knowledge. Yet, my path led me here anyway because I found a group of people I found fascinating and cared about, which led me to explore various angles of their lives, including the angles that touched on environmental policies and government agendas.

When people talk about personal projects, usually they’re thinking of this one big 10,000-word project that will bring in the big bucks. While those do happen occasionally, personally, I’ve found that I’ve achieved greater success with finding a topic I care about– such as this wastepickers issue– and selling shorter pieces with the various angles that would interest different publications. All three pieces that I’ve written so far have a similar thread to them, but they’re each different stories with their own focus. They each have information that isn’t in the other pieces, and as I’ve learned more about the topic, my articles have become more detailed as well. As I’ve collected proof, I’ve become more confident in explaining the why’s behind it all.

I haven’t so far written one 10,000-word piece on this topic, but in total, I’ve already written 9,500 words (3,500 + 2,000 + 4,000). And I have at least eight or nine more tangents within this topic that I’m planning to sell.

This for me, is a long-term project and I’ll admit, I wouldn’t mind becoming THE expert on waste management, a topic most journalists I know won’t even touch. I already know quite a bit about Delhi, Bangalore, and Ghaziabad, and there are dozens more cities to explore. But instead of doing months of research and then selling one big 10,000-word story on it (which I hope to do anyway), or thinking of it as a book (which might be a possibility, but I understand has limited sales potential), I’m writing shorter pieces as I go along. I also got lucky and found a photographer whose work and attitude I love. Funny too, that I was definitely not in this project for the money, but I have been paid very well for my work on it. What was that about doing what you love and the money will follow?

As you can see, there’s more than one way to make a long-term dream project work. I’m trying one now, we’ll see how the others go later.

Check out this video I shot at one of the landfills: