What It Means To Live Near Mumbai's Deonar Dumping Ground

In 2015, there were 14 blazes at Deonar dumping ground that made the news. The name ‘Deonar Dumping Ground’ doesn’t invoke too much sentiment. Still few articles in newspapers have picked stories nonetheless, describing a cloud of smoke enveloping the city, burning garbage that was making it hard for city-dwellers to breathe, pollution reaching an all-time high and even a few stories about rag-picking gangs may come to mind. Not many people have seen the landfill with their own eyes though. Those who have, talk about unusual things like floodlights between the dumping ground, cctv cameras placed by the garbage mafia to intercept incoming trucks, and children segregating recyclables from wet waste without any footwear or a mask. We spent a day in the vicinity interviewing members of the Apnalaya NGO and people who live there to better understand what it means to live in one of the most toxic places on Earth.

The life expectancy of people living in the M (East) ward of Govandi is 39 years while the national average is 67. Swaziland ranks the last in the United Nations List of 201 countries and its life expectancy is 49 years. What does that tell us about the quality of life in this area? So why do people continue to live here, making a living by selling scraps?

The dumping ground was opened in 1927 and an order to shut operations in three months was given in March, 2016. If shutting operations made problems for the city disappear, it would have been a welcome move. Without an alternate work opportunity, people who survive on the garbage will keep entering the premises to make ends meet.

“There are fires in the dumping ground almost every day, we just don’t hear about them. Just one fateful day, when the wind was blowing in-land and not towards the sea, changed everything,” says Dr. Arun Kumar, CEO of Apnalaya NGO, that has been making concerted efforts to make lives sustainable in Govandi since 1993. “These people live and breathe this fire every day for the entire year and the entirety of their lives,” he says.

Data received from Dr. Kumar suggests that Apnalaya works with 40,000 people from the six lakh residents of the area. 82% of the population is Muslim and 4-6% of all children are malnourished. Dr.Kumar says that the number of malnourished children has come down to 48% from 52% in the last few years and he considers that to be a big deal. Sanjay Bamne, a Deputy Program Manager in the Health and Disability Clinic for Apnalaya had other information to give. “There were 40 deaths in the 0-6 year’s age category last year owing to Pneumonia and Diarrhoea in the 12 clusters that Apnalaya operates in. The major killers are chronic diseases like TB, asthma and other respiratory diseases,” he says.

“Only in this area have I heard the death toll being announced after an Azaan( call to worship) at the mosque. The mullah informs the area about the number of people who died over a megaphone,” says Dr.Kumar. “It is a matter of great pride if someone moves even 50 metres away from the dumping ground. If you manage to do that, you have made it far in life because the farther you are, the more chance you have at surviving,” he explains.

Most of the issues of the area could be attributed to the attitudes the normal public has towards their own waste. In Dr. Kumar words, as long as we know that a Deonar exists to take my garbage and a person picking it up, the scenario will not change.

Women and children in the Venus fly-trap

“It is great news if your daughter from Sanjay Nagar has married a boy in Rafiq Nagar, which is barely a kilometre away. Areas that are far away from the dumping ground carry their own status,” says Dr.Kumar. A girl’s fate in the area is mostly sealed once she has finished school. “There are 25 BMC schools in the area but none of them is a secondary school. You’ll see that most girls drop out after 7th standard because parents would rather send their boys to a secondary school in Chembur and other areas. 70% of the girls drop out because of this. They marry her off so that my headache becomes someone else’s headache.”

Many children have single parents and many siblings. In the absence of a creche, the girl of the family drops out of school to take care of the siblings when parents go to work. “50% of the girls in the area get married by the age of 18 and more than 25% get married by age 16. Boys get married by age 18-20. The waste segregation is a tough and demanding job but more so for the women. They have to work as waste-pickers, bear children and take care of them as well. We are trying to intervene at a point where a child doesn’t have to bear a child,” Dr.Kumar says.

Many women volunteer with Apnalaya to bring awareness about living conditions in the area. While some volunteers give the health of children priority, others operate a day care centre for working parents. Geeta Jadhav is a teacher at the Apnalaya Creche where she overlooks the care of some 20 children below the age of six. Geeta has lived in the area since 17 years and has been with the creche since 9 years. She teaches English, Hindi, Marathi and takes tuitions as well. The creche takes Rs. 40 per child for a month and provides them daily meals, snacks, milk and fruits.

“Before the creche, parents would lock children in the houses and go to work. I know of cases where a boy’s parents tied his legs with rope and put rice and a glass of water in front of him and locked him in the house to go to work. It was like keeping chickens in a cage. How do you think a child will develop in such a place. Children would either be locked up or roam aimlessly in the streets. Many would fall in the gutters and die and their bodies would be found days later. Nine years ago, I heard such incidents twice every month, now not so many,” she said.

“Many people just give ten or twenty rupees to children for the day to manage their own food. They don’t care if the child ate or not,” she said. “Earlier, we only took children of the rag-pickers but take others as well. We try to provide alternate occupation to these people by suggesting them as house-help in nearby areas. Many don’t know how to manage monthly wages as they are daily wage labourers so we teach them how to manage their finance,” she says.

Women have taken it upon themselves to improve their condition and many have succeeded in improving their life over the years. Some did not have support of their husbands but after seeing them work, their husbands also have a drive to do something for the family.

A project by Apnalaya teaches residents about house-keeping and takes tailoring workshops. “Around 60 tailors have trained with this program and now work in garment factories. Four of them work with us and make bags, they are exported throughout the world,” said Sudha Waidande, field officer for the Svavlamban program for Apnalaya.

Bread-winners

The grim reality of the dumping ground is that waste is a lot and the hands sorting it are few which translates into child labour. In a baseline survey of 7000 families that had over 30,000 people last year, around 45% of people had only two meals a day and 11% were not sure where their next meal would come from. “The average monthly income of a family is around Rs. 7800 per month and the average size of the family is 5.6. So for 6 people in a family, kids are under pressure to work. Family planning doesn’t make sense to these people because according to the child mortality rate in the area more than 66 children die out of 1000 live births. Children mean an extra pair of hand and if the child earns even Rs. 1000 each month, it offsets the load,” said Dr. Kumar.

“A rag-picker or a waste-segregators work begins at 4 to 5 am when the garbage trucks arrive for dumping. The work goes on till 10 am and once recyclables have been collected, they sell it to the scrap dealers. If they are lucky, their entire lot will be bought the same day, otherwise they will carry some of that to their house where they will store it for the next day. The first proper meal some of these have in the entire day is at 4 p.m. Children survive on whatever can be eaten easily, you think an eight year old or 10 year old can cook food and provide for their siblings? Now imagine 6 people living in a 10X10 room with garbage for company. They expose their entire family to the environmental hazard of this waste. God Forbid if it rains, they live with foots crawled up as water and the muck enter their houses and they wait for it to recede to resume working. You think they care about washing hands and wearing footwear?” he said.

Please don’t stop the music

To stop man-made and natural fires from occurring in the area and to get a better grasp of the labour working in the landfill, ID cards were introduced for waste segregators. Do these ID cards serve a purpose and make an actual difference to the dignity and quality of life of these workers? “Even though the dumpyard has been shut, people’s livelihood depends on it. Some have ID cards to enter the grounds and some don’t’. Those who don’t, bribe the guards and enter the grounds after all sorts of exchanges. There are many cases of child sexual abuse as well. You can’t just shut the dumping and expect the problem to go away. These people need to be rehabilitated and given alternate livelihood options,” said Dr. Kumar. He also said that the garbage sorting in the dumpyard is a well-oiled machine. “There are many mafias who have their territories earmarked and when a truck with a garbage arrives, the people are informed and a select few are allowed first to cherry pick their recyclable waste,” he said.

“For a population of 6 lakh people, there is not a single hospital in the area and the nearest govt run hospital is in Sion. There is no political representative for this area in the BMC. No budget is allocated for this area. Many people including the rag-pickers don’t want the dumping to stop. The BMC truckers earn close to Rs. 175 crores every year by transporting the garbage,” he said. The problem starts when people think that whatever I throw will be picked up by someone and that there is always a Deonar where my garbage can be dumped. Our attitude towards the lower caste and people who do the dirty work is what makes the situation what it is today.

A new day in Govandi

Some of the boys from the area are trying to bring out their talent by filming C.I.D episodes based on the troubles of Govandi. They also want make their own grass-root film industry called Gollywood and produce their own songs as well. While some residents can’t seem to find a way out of the dumps, there is improvement in the lives of the population residing in and around Govandi because of the efforts of continuous reportage and the various NGOs that work in the area to make lives better. There are still many loopholes that continue to be exploited and the drug problems existing in the area seem to hide comfortably under the carpet. Yet, the sun rises again and uplifts the stink of the wet garbage and the abattoirs nearby.

All Photographs by Karan Khosla