[They are fighting a David-vs.-Goliath-style battle online and offline to make the government shut down the dump and take the garbage out of the city. The actions take place as rising middle-class concerns about pollution and public health have fueled a new kind of civic activism in recent years in many Indian cities.]
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A boy stands amid garbage as
smoke billows from the burning Deonar dumping
ground in Mumbai in March. (Shailesh
Andrade/Reuters)
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Beyond the sheer panels,
however, is a jarring view — a mountain of trash the size of the Mall in Washington
The
Deonar garbage dump is Asia ’s oldest and largest, and when it caught fire recently the
smoke was visible from space, according to NASA images.
Called “Mumbai’s silent killer”
or “toxic time bomb,” the dump in recent months has given birth to a new
environmental awakening among the middle-class residents in the area.
They are fighting a
David-vs.-Goliath-style battle online and offline to make the government shut
down the dump and take the garbage out of the city. The actions take place as
rising middle-class concerns about pollution and public health have fueled a new
kind of civic activism in recent years in many Indian cities.
“The stench remains in our
clothes, curtains and the upholstery,” said Trivedi, 38, an asset-management
professional. She had not sent her 6-year-old daughter to school for a week
because of the noxious smoke, so the girl was skating in the living room,
snaking between the sofa and the table.
“How do I protect my children
from the very air that they breathe?” she asked. “I feel so helpless as a
mother.”
The Deonar garbage dump, which
has been around since 1927, has grown into a 300-acre open sore of putrefying
trash.
More than half of Mumbai’s
10,000 tons of unsegregated and untreated garbage is dumped there every day.
It is an emblem of the poor management of Indian cities,
which can lack even the most basic services. More than 350 million
Indians live in cities today — and that will probably rise to 650 million
by 2020 — but only 23 percent of urban solid waste is processed.
This year, the trash dump caught fire several times,
worsening the city’s air quality to “poor” and “very poor” in March. In
January, the thick, poisonous smoke blinded residents and left them coughing
for days. Schools and malls were shut down. Last month, two of the firefighters
working round-the-clock to douse the blaze were taken to the hospital after they
fell sick.
Officials
say the fire was set off by methane gas in the trash or started by individuals
wanting to recover plastics and metal.
Rajesh Valappil, 42, who heads a tech start-up and lives near the trash pile,
said neighbors who had previously been apathetic about it have been moved to
action by the string of fires. He said he worries about dioxins being released
into the air from the burning plastic.
The residents — most of them
urban professionals who want to jog or walk outside — have dubbed themselves
“the weekend warriors.”
They have conducted marches and
protest sit-ins, tweeted to public officials, flooded inboxes and procured thousands
of signatures in online petitions.
They regularly monitor an
air-quality-index app on their smartphones, conduct strategy meetings in
WhatsApp groups and upload videos of the smoke on their Facebook pages with
posts that begin with phrases such as, “Another day, another fire.”
In a large slum that hugs the
dump, children playing cricket run in and out of the area to fetch the ball.
Rotting trash overflows the dump, floating in open drains and collecting in
small heaps outside homes. Infants cough all day, while billboards hanging
overhead demand that the dump be shut down.
And yet, said Syed Shah, 46, a
trash picker whose family of seven lives less than
20 feet from the noxious mountain, “this garbage dump is our daily bread.”
He said he feeds his family by selling the plastic and metal scrap and coconut
shells that he pulls from the dump each day. “The whole city is up in arms
against this dump. But where do we go? They cannot close it abruptly and kick
our stomachs.”
“For saving the livelihood of a
few thousand trash pickers, should the health of the entire city be
compromised?” asked Akbar Hussain, a local political worker who heads a public
union for transport drivers.
Clinics in the neighborhood are
swarming with patients who suffer from respiratory illnesses, diarrhea and jaundice.
A doctor said that since the fires started, many of his asthmatic patients have
stopped responding to their regular medicines.
“The frequent fires will cause an epidemic of infectious diseases in Mumbai. It
is no longer about the people who live near the dump,” said Sanjay Nirupam, a
senior leader of the opposition Congress party who has protested the dump.
Residents say the city has not
issued a single health advisory, despite the toxic air quality.
The government has identified a
rural site outside Mumbai for a new dump. But officials say nothing can change
overnight.
“Even if we start working on a
war footing today, it will take at least a year and a half to stop the dumping
here in Deonar,” said Shailesh Phanse, the chairman of the standing committee
in the city municipal corporation. “We have to prepare the new site — we cannot
repeat the mistake of just dumping the garbage there.”
Authorities have installed 12
surveillance cameras and increased police security at the dump site in hopes of
determining whether the fires are self-igniting, from environmental factors or
being deliberately set.
Officials are also considering
making mandatory the segregation of trash by residents, a difficult move as
recycling remains rare in India
And even if residents sort
their trash, the city municipal corporation does not have enough trucks to
collect segregated garbage or processing plants to treat it, according to Raj
Kumar Sharma, an environmental activist.
Instead, the resident-activists
have faced criticism, accused of tarnishing Mumbai’s image globally and
spreading panic on social media.
Recently, as the fourth fire
raged on, Valappil, who heads the tech start-up, fought online.
“I updated the Wikipedia page
on Deonar. Then I emailed NASA and requested them to release a new image. That
is how desperate we are here,” he said.
On the same day, not too far
away, a 7-month-old infant named Hasnain Khan began coughing nonstop. The deadly
smoke had been swirling all day in his neighborhood on the edge of the dump.
His father rushed him inside and closed the windows tight. It didn’t help. That
night, he died in his sleep.
“No parent should go through
the trauma of burying their infant son again,” said Sarfaraz Khan, his
36-year-old father. “The garbage dump must go, whatever it takes.”
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