Childhood lost in garbage dump

A little resident of the Uchupota settlement on her way down from the Dhapa dumping ground. The area had undergone a sudden subsidence a few years back because of methane emanating from the waste. Picture by Samhita

“My life stinks!” If you are in the habit of exclaiming thus when the boss growls or the maid fails to turn up, drive down the road opposite Silver Spring on the EM Bypass and you will be cured of that quip forever.

For just five minutes from the swanky dining destination and towering apartment blocks is a place where lifereally stinks — every minute of every day of every year. This is the Dhapa dumping ground, where Calcutta discards its waste.

To nine-year-old Munni Mondal, this 450 acres of rubbish is home, playground and workplace. She gets up at 4am every day. After helping her sister collect the day’s ration of water from the municipal tanker, the girl in pigtails runs to work. Summer means some extra income, thanks to all the mangoes Calcutta consumes. Nursery owners pay up to Rs 50 for a basket of mango kernel.

At 8am, Munni is supposed to be in the primary school nearby. But on most days, she keeps on working, chewing tobacco to keep the stench at bay.

Munni is one of the hundreds of children who scavenge the waste instead of learning to spell or do math. They don’t see the point of sitting in a class when they can collect scraps of plastic or metal and sell them for Rs 20 or 30 a day. Sometimes they find a coin or a packet of food. Oblivious of the expiry date, they dig in.

According to Sukannya Roy, a field supervisor with the NGO Development Action Society (DAS), children as young as five years work in the dump. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, prohibits the employment of children below 14 in hazardous work, but questions on “child labour” are met with bewildered stares by the elders here. “Everyone goes up to work,” declares Latika Ghosh, her eyes cloudy with cataract. “Up” means up the mountain of waste.

But the children are smart. “Do you go up to work?” Metro asks a bunch of naked boys playing in the mud, near a sow suckling her litter. The boys squeal “No”. The pigs squeal too.

Bordering the dumping ground, numerous settlements peopled by scavenger families have cropped up over the past 30 years. Most stand illegally on land belonging to the irrigation and fisheries departments. Over time, some have became registered slums, like Mathpukur, Dhapa Durgapur, Anantabadal and Khanaberia. The settlement Metrovisited is called Uchupota, which is unregistered.

The settlements are in ward 58 of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, barring Chainavi, which is in ward 17 of Bidhannagar Municipality.

Uchupota, adjacent to a boundary wall of the dumping ground, is easy to describe: no roads, no water, no drainage, no electricity, no health centre. Around 510 people live here. Dhapa Durgapur and Khanaberia are larger, with over 1,000 people in each settlement.

There is no anganwadi in these areas, despite the Integrated Child Development Scheme stipulating a centre for every 300 children. According to Sadananda Chhatui, the development project officer of the scheme in Calcutta, the government didn’t even know that this patch of land off the Bypass was a part of the CMC area till three-four months back. Now they know and are planning to shift a centre from an area that has two to these parts.

DAS has been carrying out child protection, health and education awareness campaigns in the settlements with funds from Save The Children. “This is the worst kind of atmosphere for children to grow up in,” says Purabi Roy, the president of DAS.

While ward 58 has five primary schools and ward 17 another two, according to NGO workers, only two primary schools are easily accessible for the children of the six areas where DAS operates. And one of biggest reasons for children dropping out after Class V is that the nearest high schools — Janakalyan, Bamonghata and Chowbaga — are at least 3km away. The children find difficult it to cover this distance on foot and have to either take a bus or cycle van, which means a daily expense.

Another problem is alcohol and tobacco addiction. Since these children earn their own livelihood, they start handling money young. “Boys as young as eight are addicted to alcohol. We feel scared to scold them,” says a woman in the area. Her children live with their grandparents in Barasat. “My daughter hates coming here, she can’t stand the stench,” says the mother of three.

Working in filth, the children frequently fall ill. Skin diseases and gastrointestinal ailments are common, even among elders. The nearest doctor is at Chowbaga, more than 3km away. The nearest government hospital is National Medical College and Hospital, several kilometres away.

These parts of Tiljala are a hotbed of crime, say social workers. “Every day, there’s trouble brewing in one cluster or another,” says Purabi Roy. Young men roam around openly with firearms. A 21-year-old told Metro how he had been first invited, then cajoled and finally forced to join a gang. “They thrust a revolver in my hand,” said the young man, his eyes darting around to see if he was being watched. “But I didn’t want to get mixed up in all that. I wanted to go to college,” he said. He managed to fob off the local gangster. Not everyone can.

The areas around the dumping ground seem to be the land of the forgotten people. The residents don’t have birth certificates, BPL cards, SC/ST certificates or property papers. Which means they cannot avail themselves of government welfare schemes for the urban poor like Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana, Janani Suraksha Yojna or Swarna Jayanti Sahari Rojgar Yojna. But all the adults boast of Voter ID cards. In Bengal, you may not have access to the benefits of citizenship, but you are always a voter.