Broomscapes: racial capitalism, waste, and caste in Indian Railway Stations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with cleaning workers in the railway stations of Hyderabad, I present a “minor theory of racial capitalism” centring the humble jhadu or broom as a heuristic tool to understand how racialization and racial capitalism intersect with caste. Employing a relational approach to study how caste intersects with gender, capitalism, sanitation, and labour, I demonstrate the perpetuation of caste and gender-based practices in railway stations. I argue that racial capitalism is operationalized through management practices related to cleaning activities, differential allocation of spaces and technologies, and the purposeful absence of cleaners from policy articulations on cleaning. My research places racial capitalism in conversation with caste and extends its application beyond the Atlantic, to demonstrate that caste is instrumental in organizing space and labour within urban public infrastructure like Indian railway stations.