Two weeks ago, there was a fire in the Mulund dumping ground in northeast Mumbai – the second in two months. As it spread, walls of flaming garbage collapsed, blocking soggy pathways and generating clouds of acrid smoke. It took the fire department more than five days to put out the fire. Fortunately, nobody died.
Yet even as the fire raged and the heat grew unbearable, small groups of ragpickers continued their daily routine in the dumping ground, picking out paper, plastic and other recyclables.
“If we don’t touch your garbage, how will the city live?” asked Sangeeta Phupale, one of those ragpickers. “All of you sit with ACs, but we are here in the open. Do we have the option to stop?”
As in the case of the city's two other dumping grounds, settlements of ragpickers have grown around the edges. In Mulund, the city’s second-largest landfill, the cluster is called Durgawadi, a set of around 60 or 70 shacks that has been around for decades.
Only a few hundred metres separate Durgawadi from Hari Om Nagar, a relatively new gated housing society. Between them is a large gate and a half-built tank that will be used for the society’s Ganpati immersions at the end of the monsoon. Hari Om Nagar residents have been trying to have the landfill shut for years.
After the fire, Hari Om Nagar residents accused ragpickers of having set it off. They vehemently denied this. “Why would we burn the garbage?” Phupale said. “We get our living out of it and we would also be putting our own lives in danger.”
Manda Kudiya, another resident of the shanties, spoke of how theirs was a longstanding fight. “They also shit, just like we do,” she said. “If we did not clean up after them, what would happen to their toilets? It’s their shit that is coming here and adding to the pollution.”
Across the city
Of Mumbai's three working dumping grounds, those in Mulund and Deonar have long since exceeded their capacity. The one in Kanjurmarg is not fully operational.
Ragpickers, invariably Dalit, go through the waste with bare hands. They sell their collections to small manufacturers and salesman, who reuse these raw materials.
In addition to the families in Durgawadi, the Mulund ground provides sustenance to people across the city. Each day, people trek all the way from Govandi, Malad and even Borivali to manually segregate the city’s refuse. Those from outside work from morning to late evening. If they have infants with them, they usually put them down in the shade of a propped-up dupatta.
People living in Durgawadi have a small advantage: they can return home in the afternoon to have lunch and rest in the shade of their houses for a few hours.
In the summer, their jobs get worse. As the middle-class residents of Hari Om Nagar residents complain of respiratory illnesses because of the fumes, the situation on the dumping ground is worse. Because of the heat, nobody in Durgawadi has slept inside their makeshift homes for over a month. At night, they are attacked by mosquitoes. Even wind gives no relief. Dust from the rubbish swirls up with the breezes, leading to severe coughs and streaming eyes.
With the monsoon set to begin in just a week, their worries have now begun to turn to the months ahead. Even a little rain turns the already-toxic hills of garbage into rivers of sludge. But work does not stop, even if the keechad is waist high. The only time it did stop was in 2005, when a cloudburst flooded the entire city. All of Durgawadi’s shaky huts with all their official documents were washed away.
On the edge
As with so many other settlements in Mumbai, Durgawadi lives in uncertainty. As Phupale spoke, a closed grey van from the municipal corporation a rolled in through the gate that separates Hari Om Nagar from Durgawadi.
Almost immediately, an informal drill began. People ran down the lane, yelling for everyone to get out of their houses and form a large group with women and children in front to deter the vans. Some began hurried negotiations with the officials.
“If they break our houses and go, what will our children do in this heat?” Kudiya asked. “Are we supposed to feed them and send them to school or spend all our time dragging wood down to rebuild our houses?”
But work goes on.
“When I got married 30 years ago, there was only the jungle, the creek, the dumping ground and us,” Phupale said. “Now they say we cannot stay here. My parents brought us from the village to this garbage and my children were born in garbage. Where else can we go?”
Yet even as the fire raged and the heat grew unbearable, small groups of ragpickers continued their daily routine in the dumping ground, picking out paper, plastic and other recyclables.
“If we don’t touch your garbage, how will the city live?” asked Sangeeta Phupale, one of those ragpickers. “All of you sit with ACs, but we are here in the open. Do we have the option to stop?”
As in the case of the city's two other dumping grounds, settlements of ragpickers have grown around the edges. In Mulund, the city’s second-largest landfill, the cluster is called Durgawadi, a set of around 60 or 70 shacks that has been around for decades.
Only a few hundred metres separate Durgawadi from Hari Om Nagar, a relatively new gated housing society. Between them is a large gate and a half-built tank that will be used for the society’s Ganpati immersions at the end of the monsoon. Hari Om Nagar residents have been trying to have the landfill shut for years.
After the fire, Hari Om Nagar residents accused ragpickers of having set it off. They vehemently denied this. “Why would we burn the garbage?” Phupale said. “We get our living out of it and we would also be putting our own lives in danger.”
Manda Kudiya, another resident of the shanties, spoke of how theirs was a longstanding fight. “They also shit, just like we do,” she said. “If we did not clean up after them, what would happen to their toilets? It’s their shit that is coming here and adding to the pollution.”
Across the city
Manda Kudiya. Behind her is a building in Hari Om Nagar.
Of Mumbai's three working dumping grounds, those in Mulund and Deonar have long since exceeded their capacity. The one in Kanjurmarg is not fully operational.
Ragpickers, invariably Dalit, go through the waste with bare hands. They sell their collections to small manufacturers and salesman, who reuse these raw materials.
In addition to the families in Durgawadi, the Mulund ground provides sustenance to people across the city. Each day, people trek all the way from Govandi, Malad and even Borivali to manually segregate the city’s refuse. Those from outside work from morning to late evening. If they have infants with them, they usually put them down in the shade of a propped-up dupatta.
People living in Durgawadi have a small advantage: they can return home in the afternoon to have lunch and rest in the shade of their houses for a few hours.
In the summer, their jobs get worse. As the middle-class residents of Hari Om Nagar residents complain of respiratory illnesses because of the fumes, the situation on the dumping ground is worse. Because of the heat, nobody in Durgawadi has slept inside their makeshift homes for over a month. At night, they are attacked by mosquitoes. Even wind gives no relief. Dust from the rubbish swirls up with the breezes, leading to severe coughs and streaming eyes.
With the monsoon set to begin in just a week, their worries have now begun to turn to the months ahead. Even a little rain turns the already-toxic hills of garbage into rivers of sludge. But work does not stop, even if the keechad is waist high. The only time it did stop was in 2005, when a cloudburst flooded the entire city. All of Durgawadi’s shaky huts with all their official documents were washed away.
On the edge
As with so many other settlements in Mumbai, Durgawadi lives in uncertainty. As Phupale spoke, a closed grey van from the municipal corporation a rolled in through the gate that separates Hari Om Nagar from Durgawadi.
Almost immediately, an informal drill began. People ran down the lane, yelling for everyone to get out of their houses and form a large group with women and children in front to deter the vans. Some began hurried negotiations with the officials.
“If they break our houses and go, what will our children do in this heat?” Kudiya asked. “Are we supposed to feed them and send them to school or spend all our time dragging wood down to rebuild our houses?”
But work goes on.
“When I got married 30 years ago, there was only the jungle, the creek, the dumping ground and us,” Phupale said. “Now they say we cannot stay here. My parents brought us from the village to this garbage and my children were born in garbage. Where else can we go?”
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