Landfill fires are becoming a big challenge for India’s urban civic bodies. In late April 2022, fires broke out in landfills in Chennai, Delhi and Chandigarh. Since 2015, the number of landfill fires in metropolitan cities has surged across India. Waste accumulation in Delhi and Bangalore has risen dramatically, by 1,850% and 2,175%, respectively, between 1999 and 2016. This is notable because more waste in a landfill entails a bigger fire, and probably a bigger chance of catching fire in the first place depending on the composition of the trash. Landfill fires are also becoming more common in cities where waste generation is accelerating, like Chennai.
Landfill fires are one of the more visible consequences of poor waste management; there are many others, with consequences for society, ecology and environmental justice.
Consider the Mandur landfill near Bengaluru, which caught media attention in 2014 when people protested demanding a ban on waste dumping. I was 12 years old at the time and lived in an environmentally conscious community in the city. In solidarity with the people affected by the waste at the landfill, we began segregating our waste at source and reduced the use of single-use plastics. The city municipal corporation also launched awareness campaigns for all residents to adopt similar measures, and soon after made it policy. The authorities stopped dumping waste at the Mandur landfill in December 2014, while the city banned single-use plastics and mandated waste segregation at the source in Bengaluru in 2017.
As a result, the Mandur problem didn’t get any worse – but there is more.
The waste pile-up at the landfill had degraded the health, finances and social lives of the residents of Mandur village. The landfill here is close to water bodies that were reservoirs for the people, and leachate from the dump had contaminated them. In 2020, the water was highly basic, had a high concentration of dissolved ions and of total dissolved solids. The site has also become a breeding ground for flies that then sit on food and spread disease. Many of the people in Mandur had no option but to eat such food and drink such water, leading to frequent disease outbreaks. Fumes from the dump also pollute the air, causing respiratory ailments
When the people get sick, they can’t work. When their income drops, they have less – if anything – to spend on clinic visits and bottled water. Farming has been one of the least affected livelihoods in Mandur, but local farmers have reported a dip in harvest coinciding with the landfill’s use.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, parents and their children in Mandur were wary of sending the latter to school, for fear of exposing them to some ailment or other. This obviously bodes more social and financial challenges in future.
In effect, the dumping of waste in Mandur has led to damages that the people will experience for several years to come.
I moved to Ahmedabad in 2016, where I noted many similarities to people’s habits in Bengaluru before 2014. This city has sent a lot of its municipal and industrial waste to the Pirana landfill for 35 years. In 2002, political parties and civic groups resettled people displaced by the riots to areas around Pirana. One of them is Citizen Nagar. Today, its residents suffer through poor health thanks to their proximity to the landfill, have little access to basic essentials, including potable water, and have low incomes.
But for all these similarities, there are two ways in which Mandur and Pirana differ. First, the land rights of the people of Citizen Nagar are uncertain. None of the people here own any part of the land; it belongs to the relief committee of the Kerala Muslim League. Even their status as ‘permanent residents’ is unclear. Second, the site of the settlement is a wetland. Between 2003 and 2020, the population rose from 40 families to 120, which in turn increased the pressure on local ecosystems.
Such long-term fallouts from landfills, like an octopus sprouting new and longer tentacles, have a national consequence as well: they could compromise India’s ability to achieve some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Achieving the SDGs is an important component of inter- and intra-generational equity. The stories of the people of Mandur and Pirana in particular ask important questions about India’s progress towards SDGs 11 and 15. SDG 11 is to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”; SDG 15 is to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. It’s important that we act quickly and effectively, with minimal negative impact, so that fallouts like those in Mandur do not become frequent occurrences we see in the headlines on a regular basis.
The author thanks Dr. John Matthew and Dr. Kalpita Bhar Paul for their feedback and comments.