Thousands of people live on and around the Dhapa landfill in India, where 4,000 tonnes of waste are dumped each day. Many make a living processing the city’s rubbish amid severe pollution, fires – and even dead bodies. So what is life like for its residents?
From Kartik Dhara’s home, the trucks at the top of the garbage mountain look like the toys he sees city children playing with on his rounds of Kolkata. A garbage truck driver in the eastern Indian city, Dhara can’t afford to buy toys for his own children, but he often finds discarded ones where he unloads rubbish every day. “You can find everything there,” he says.
“There are dead babies, there are truckloads of smuggled chocolates or medicines that the excise department finds. I’ve even found money and gold – a lot of gold. What do I do with it? I keep it in my house. When I’m in a time of need, when there’s a big difficulty in my life, I’ll sell it and I’ll use the money.”
Many trucks have been overturned on the mountain. People have died there
This is the place where all of society’s rejects end up, the people that nobody wants
I support the government. They’ve made our Kolkata look like London. So what if they haven’t done anything for us?
Related: 'Hell on earth': the great urban scandal of family life lived on a rubbish dump
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