{"id":73,"date":"2016-03-24T23:03:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T23:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=73"},"modified":"2016-03-24T23:03:44","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T23:03:44","slug":"we-didnt-start-the-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=73","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cM<\/span>y colleagues have been arrested. I really can\u2019t talk to you, I\u2019m still in a meeting,\u201d Shalini tells me, finally answering her phone the third time I ring her.\n\nI\u2019d met Shalini Kamble and her group of recycle workers in Deonar\u2019s Shivaji Nagar a few days earlier, when news of them being banned from the dumping ground had surfaced. After\u00a0<\/p>multiple fires<\/a> broke out in the area earlier this year, much of the Indian and international media\u2019s coverage, barring a few\u00a0exceptions<\/a>, had tended to skew toward Mumbai\u2019s middle- and upper-middle-class residents and how they were\u00a0affected<\/a>\u00a0by the poor air quality, even though they lived nowhere close to the site of the fire. There was barely any information on the people who reside in this dense, interlinking grid of shanties that are bisected from the Deonar dumping ground by a low, broken wall, and for whom this 326-acre festering mess of Mumbai\u2019s refuse was the only source of livelihood.\n\nNow, a thin, reedy voice from the other side of the phone tells me about the desperate workers, who were rendered jobless, and entered the dump yard, only to be arrested on charges of negligence and destruction of public property. The police will now let them go only if their families deposit a fine of \u20b915,000. Where will they find 15,000 rupees, they barely make 150 rupees a day and there has been no work for the last two months, Shalini asks, the hysteria slowly building in her voice.\n\nThe foothills of Deonar are the fulcrum of life and livelihood in Shivaji Nagar and its neighbouring colonies. Although it is difficult to pin down an exact number, roughly 1,500 people here are recycle workers. When it was time to affix the blame for the fires, the authorities went for the softest targets. They first accused some ragpickers of starting the blaze, and over the last few days,\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a013 scrap dealers who have been remanded to a fortnight of judicial custody at the Arthur Road Jail.\n\nIn reality, spontaneous fires are incredibly common at the dumping ground, a combination of methane build-up and heat \u2013 but they have always been controlled by the\u00a0agencies contracted by the BMC\u00a0to administer the landfill. Somehow, the absurdity of charging Shalini and her crew for setting the fire has gone unnoticed by the world. The only way the recycle workers could have benefited from setting their livelihood ablaze, would be if they could have claimed insurance for it.\n

***<\/p>\nShalini Kamble is the president and founder of the Kachra Vechak Seva Sangh. A tiny little dynamite stick, the 38-year-old looks closer to 50. She instructed me to meet her at a local leader\u2019s office, the sole landmark in an anarchic network of streets that form the south-eastern periphery of the dumping ground. Chickens and goats scurry about, looking much busier than the people they belong to. It has been like this for the last two months, Shalini explains, since the workers\u2019 entry to the dumping ground was barred.\n\n\u201cMaine aisa angaar kabhi nahi dekha,\u201d she says \u2013 the first one in January cost us a month of work and smelled like thousands of mirchi packets burning together. We are sitting on rusted iron chairs that might once have had cushions, outside the modest recycling shop of Ismail Ansari, who hasn\u2019t seen fresh stock in days.\n\nOn a routine day, Shalini and her co-workers would have broken for lunch around this hour, after a half-day\u2019s work of sifting through the contents of every BMC trash truck that made its way to Deonar. They would have helped unload it in a corner of the dumping ground, divvied it up into four or five piles, and scrutinised each of them carefully.\n\n

In the hierarchy of waste collectors, people like Shalini and Javed are at the absolute bottom of the pyramid. They are sub-contracted by the BMC, which means that they get no salaries for their efforts,\u00a0no\u00a0insurance or other linked benefits that come with it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nThey would have split it into heaps of polythene, glass, paper, and the most coveted of the lot, plastic. It is the hardest to come by \u2013 Shalini is able to collect only about 10-15 kilos a day \u2013 but it goes for about Rs 10 a kilo. That\u2019s nearly ten times the price that polythene bags and glass fetch, even though she is able to collect over 40 kilos of each during a good workday. She and her husband Javed Sheikh would each have made about\u00a0\u20b9150 a day \u2013 just about enough to support their family of six and continue paying rent for the tin-roofed pucca house they have on road number 14. At the end of the month, Shalini would have deposited \u20b950 in her bachat gat and an equal amount in her aarogya khata.\n\nAs we speak, the sun beats down mercilessly upon us but Shalini doesn\u2019t mind the heat. It is the monsoon she hates. That\u2019s when the area fills up with water to about waist level, the city\u2019s refuse floating around her. Shalini doesn\u2019t mind the trash \u2013 it is work after all \u2013 but it is the dead cats and dogs drifting around her that really freak her out. Then there is the risk of stepping on used needles or broken glass.\n\nIn the hierarchy of waste collectors, people like Shalini and Javed are at the absolute bottom of the pyramid. They are sub-contracted by the BMC, which means that they get no salaries for their efforts,\u00a0no\u00a0insurance or other linked benefits that come with it. Not even low-rent safety gear that could really come in handy during the monsoon. Unsurprisingly, the BMC workers who appear to have these marginal benefits and who Shalini and her group routinely interact with,\u00a0are enemy number 1. I strain to listen to her accuse them of corruption and laziness, over a jumma khutbah emanating from the mosque next door.

<\/a>

The foothills of Deonar are the fulcrum of life and livelihood in Shivaji Nagar and its neighbouring colonies.<\/p>

STRDEL \/ Stringer via Getty Images<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>Then the trucks stopped coming. Shalini and her co-workers were informed that the lorries were being diverted to the dumping grounds at Mulund and Kanjurmarg. Today, they sit around, restless and desperate to return to the wretched work that helps them get by, one day at a time \u2013 but also ensures that they consistently rake up the bottom of any\u00a0human development index<\/a>.\n\nOf Mumbai\u2019s 24 wards, the M-East Ward where the Deonar landfill is located, is ranked last, no doubt because of its proximity to the mountain of biomedical and hazardous waste. Life expectancy in the ward, for instance, stands at an appalling 39.30 years, according to\u00a0this<\/a> exhaustive BMC Human Development Report compiled in 2009. The corresponding figure for D Ward, which encompasses tony South Mumbai\u2019s Grant Road area, is over 60 years. The distance between the two wards is much greater than the 20 kilometres that separate them. Most of the 150 patients that present themselves at Rafique Nagar\u2019s primary health centre are either suffering from tuberculosis or \u201cdouble\u201d typhoid. But Shalini doesn\u2019t care. All she wants to do is, go back to doing the work that might one day claim her life.\n

***<\/p>\nI walk with Shalini to a small meeting room run by Apnalaya, a not-for-profit organisation in Shivaji Nagar, where about 30 members of the Kachra Vechak Seva Sangh have gathered to discuss their desperate situation. I immediately sense a quiet riot brewing, when the amiable Raju Chavan, an Apnalaya employee, suggests that they ought to look for alternative employment. \u201cYahan se baahar niklo,\u201d he urges. \u201cHumein kachre se upar bhi toh uthna hai na?\u201d This dump yard can\u2019t be your life, he appeals to the workers. It feels like the tense few moments before a pressure-cooker whistle goes off \u2013 and then it erupts.\n\nThe crowd violently disagrees and everyone speaks at once. Nobody wants to leave Deonar. Nobody has any intention of \u201crising above the garbage\u201d. Rajuji tries, and fails, to get his point across over the clamour. Eventually he gives up trying to make them see the light. \u201cBut what if you\u2019re never allowed back inside the dumping ground,\u201d he asks, leaving a whiff of resentment and dread in the air.\n\nThe thought is unbearable. As twilight gathers outside the small meeting room in Shivaji Nagar, the mood turns black. Everyone is quieter with realisation that every day away from work is a step closer to utter penury.\n\nThey have no idea how long they can hold out.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mumbai\u2019s mountain of waste, the Deonar dumping ground, is a source of livelihood for ragpickers and scrap dealers. Why then, would they start a blaze that scorches their homes?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cWe Didn\u2019t Start the Fire\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mumbai\u2019s mountain of waste, the Deonar dumping ground, is a source of livelihood for ragpickers and scrap dealers. 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