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Saumya Roy started writing about the waste-pickers of Mumbai after a major fire started on its largest “garbage mountain” in 2016. By then she had already met a number of waste-pickers and -traders through a micro-loan NGO she ran with her father. Her book Castaway Mountain is a fascinating portrait of the economy of garbage, as well as the slum established on the edge of Mumbai’s notorious Deonar landfill — on purpose — as a feckless answer to homelessness, especially after the city grew into an international business hub in the 1970s.
Saumya has written for Forbes India, Mint, Outlook, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and Bloomberg News, among other publications. She co-founded and ran the Vandana Foundation to support the livelihoods of Mumbai’s poorest micro entrepreneurs by giving small, low-interest loans.
Resources: Castaway Mountain, by Saumya Roy
The UK edition is called Mountain Tales
NPR “Books We Love,” 2021: Castaway Mountain
A picture from space of the 2016 fire:
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