This field report has been produced in collaboration with the Visual Storyboards initiative of the Centre for New Economics Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University.
On October 2, 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission was launched with much fanfare, aiming to transform India into a “clean India” by 2019. While the campaign promised a revolutionary approach to waste management, ten years later, the capital city thrives while its waste is systematically pushed to its peripheries – where it wreaks havoc on marginalised communities – exposing the deep contradictions of urban development.
The stories of landfills like Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Bandhwari reveal the state’s deliberate choice to regulate waste management in ways that sustain social inequalities and deepen marginalisation. These landfills, far from the city’s polished landscapes, reflect how the state actively produces and sustains informal spaces of neglect, where law and regulation are absent, leaving vulnerable communities to grapple with toxic environments.
The Bandhwari landfill, situated along the Gurugram-Faridabad highway, is emblematic of this broader governance failure. Intended to hold only processed waste – waste that is segregated waste that is sent for energy recovery, treatment or composting – Bandhwari has instead turned into a colossal dump of unsegregated trash.
Joginder, a resident of the nearby Mangar village and a supervisor at the landfill, points to the growing environmental disaster unfolding just 35 kilometres away from Delhi. “Yes, this landfill helps us earn, but should that be put above our health?” he asks.
Joginder, a supervisor at the Bandhwari landfill and a resident of Mangar village. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.
The stench of decay clings to the air, symbolising the long-standing negligence that characterises the state’s approach to waste management.
The Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0, launched in 2021 with the ambitious promise to make India’s cities garbage-free, is yet another example of the gap between political rhetoric and ground realities. The mission aimed to process legacy waste and eradicate the “mountains of garbage” that blight cities like Delhi. The government even promised a dashboard to track progress across 2,200 landfill sites.
Yet, the data on the Mission’s website reveals a glaring gap: of the 2,421 dumpsites identified with over 1,000 tonnes of legacy waste, remediation is complete at only 475 sites and ongoing at 1,235, while a staggering 711 sites remain untouched.
At the heart of the Bandhwari crisis is the failure to implement waste segregation at source. Since 2010, Bandhwari has received over 1,600 tonnes of mixed waste daily, but only a small portion of this is processed.
A 2017 tripartite agreement between the Haryana government, the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) and Eco Green Recycling Pvt Ltd was meant to improve waste management, but the company’s failure to fulfil its obligations has led to the continued dumping of unprocessed waste.
Leachate is collected from the bottom of the Bandhwari landfill. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.
By September 2024, the MCG revealed to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that 85% of Gurugram’s waste remained unsegregated, while Faridabad’s municipal corporation said 80% of Faridabad’s waste remained unsegregated, overwhelming the landfill’s capacity.
This state of neglect mirrors what is happening in Bhalswa, where the informal labour of waste-pickers keeps the city’s waste problem at bay, but at a tremendous human cost.
Migrants from rural West Bengal, the waste-pickers live in makeshift homes made from scrap materials, with their children often forced to work alongside them due to a lack of alternatives. These workers are invisible to the state, despite the essential role they play in managing the city’s waste. There are no formal contracts, no rights, no protections and no fixed incomes.
As scholar Barbara Harris-White aptly describes, such informal spaces are “persistently embedded in social institutions such as caste, ethnicity, religion, space and locality”. In Bhalswa, this informality is not a natural consequence of the nature of waste-picking work, but a deliberate choice by the state to keep these workers at the margins.
The state’s selective application of regulation is most evident in its handling of Eco Green, the company responsible for waste management and segregation at Bandhwari. Despite Eco Green’s repeated failures, it continued to operate for years without accountability, leading to an environmental and public health disaster.
Leachate from the Bandhwari landfill flows directly into the Aravalli jungle. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.
The MCG finally terminated Eco Green’s contract in June 2024, but the damage has already been done. The unchecked dumping of unsegregated waste has contaminated the soil and water, with toxic leachate seeping into the Aravalli hills. This pollution, which has been occurring for years, is poisoning the land and water that local communities depend on for survival.
In Bandhwari, villagers like Joginder are technically part of the formal waste management network, but their position is precarious. Their proximity to government officials and promises of interventions, such as RO systems to mitigate groundwater contamination, offers a veneer of state involvement. However, these solutions only increase the financial burden on the workers.
The Haryana State Pollution Control Board revealed in May 2024 to the NGT that nearly all locations around Bandhwari showed groundwater contamination levels exceeding safety parameters. Yet just two months prior, the MCG declared the water ‘safe’ for consumption, dismissing the concerns of villagers, who reported a “faint rotten smell” in the water near the sacred Bani forest.
The Jal Jeevan Mission, which declared 100% water connectivity in rural Haryana, has failed to address the actual quality of water in these areas. Villagers are forced to rely on RO systems, which frequently break down, or purchase 20-litre water cans, adding to their already mounting expenses.
The environmental impact assessments (EIAs) meant to assess such impacts have proven to be little more than bureaucratic formalities. The MCG filed the EIA for Bandhwari’s proposed solid waste processing unit in 2018, but villagers were not properly informed of the public hearing where the EIA was to be discussed, a crucial part of the process.
Despite the MCG’s assurances during the public hearing that leachate treatment would be prioritised, a plan remained unfinalised as of December 2023. Additionally, the air pollution control devices promised by the MCG were never introduced.
Segregation can mitigate the load of waste that is dumped in legacy landfills; however, waste-pickers are marginalised by a system that refuses to formalise their labour. They are denied the protections and rights that would come with the formal recognition of their work, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by private contractors and intermediaries. The state’s refusal to regulate waste-picking as an industry has ensured that these workers remain trapped in a cycle of poverty and precariousness, even as they perform the essential task of waste segregation.
Therefore, within waste management, mountains of waste are not just collateral damage from urban development; they are the direct result of the state’s mismanagement and deliberate creation of informality. This informality is not simply the absence of state regulation but a condition actively produced by the state.
Shredded waste dumped near Dhauj village. Photo: Shubhangi Derhgawen.
In both Bhalswa and Bandhwari, we see how the state creates informal spaces, enabling certain actors – such as Eco Green in Bandhwari – to operate with impunity, while leaving vulnerable communities to fend for themselves, even as they play a critical role in managing the city’s waste in places like Bhalswa. The state’s fixation on controlling certain sectors while allowing others to remain informal reveals a broader political choice – one that prioritises urban aesthetics and the interests of the powerful over human lives and environmental sustainability.
For communities living near landfills, the consequences of this neglect are devastating. In Bandhwari, residents report a sharp rise in illnesses, with healthcare costs tripling in recent years. Some families say every visit to the doctor costs Rs 1,000, a significant burden for families already struggling to make ends meet. The toxic environment created by the landfill has turned their homes into hazardous spaces, where the air they breathe and the water they drink pose constant threats to their health.
The NGT levied a Rs 100 crore fine on the Haryana government in 2023 for its failure to address legacy waste at Bandhwari, but little progress has been made since. The Bandhwari landfill stands as a stark reminder of the widening gap between government promises and ground realities. The deadline to clear the site has been set for December 2024, but for the residents of Mangar and Dhauj near the landfill, who have witnessed decades of broken promises, such deadlines carry little weight.
In recent months, villagers have reported that shredded waste from the landfill is being quietly diverted and illegally dumped on the outskirts of their villages, worsening their living conditions.
Until the state recognises the humanity of those living on the margins – those who bear the brunt of urban neglect – the mountains of garbage that define our cities will continue to grow, both in physical and metaphorical terms.
Shubhangi Derhgawen is a freelance journalist and a researcher with the Visual Storyboard Team of the Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES), O.P. Jindal Global University. Deepanshu Mohan is a professor of economics, Dean, IDEAS, and Director, CNES. He is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and an academic visiting fellow to AMES, University of Oxford.