The paper examines the dichotomous world of sanitation management in Coimbatore, India. Sanitation management
is a process of safely managing and disposing human excreta and wastewater. As it flows from the
private sphere to the public, many actors have social aspirations and discriminate according to class, thus
maintaining a dichotomous world – the purity (clean, orderly, simple, and aesthetically appealing) and the
pollution (filthy, dirty, poor, complex) – in their everyday struggle to manage. The paper examines the micropolitics
of actors using the lens of ’purity and pollution’ as they engage in managing sanitation in Coimbatore.
It combines semi-structured, and in-depth interviews with sanitation workers, government officials and
private companies. The paper reveals that government and international agencies take a narrow view of sanitation
management, embeds its approach on the stigmatic practice, and adopts a backdoor form of governance in
the city. The lens of purity and pollution reveals structurally distinct, mutually reinforcing, and dynamic approaches
by actors to keep sanitation a ‘matter out of place’ and limit opportunities to professionalize the
workers.   
Open Access:  The dichotomous world of sanitation management: ‘Matter out of place’ in Urban India - ScienceDirect