Breathing toxic air is not a seasonal but a daily reality for residents of a sprawling slum in a Mumbai suburb located next to a massive dumping yard, recycling units and a medical waste incinerator
Hepzi Anthony
Umar Shaikh, a social worker who runs a community health clinic for residents in Janta Nagar, poses for a picture outside the clinic in Mankhurd, Mumbai. Hepzi Anthony/The Migration Story
MUMBAI, Maharashtra: As Mumbai’s deteriorating air quality grabs headlines in newspapers and on television channels for its adverse impact on citizens’ health, residents of a central Mumbai slum located near Asia’s largest dumping ground, breathing polluted air is a daily reality.
The slum cluster of Janta Nagar in the central suburb of Mankhurd — home to migrants from across the country for its cheap rentals — is located adjacent to the fume-spewing Deonar dumping ground, also oil refineries, fertiliser plants, an abattoir and a biomedical waste incinerator.
Mumbai’s dipping Air Quality Index (AQI) has led to a rise in respiratory ailments, but for Mankhurd’s slum dwellers, the air quality is never really breathable.
“We breathe polluted air all through the year, and fever, coughs and colds are a regular part of our lives here,” said Sona Rameshwar Gaur, 44, a resident of Janta Nagar.
Doctors such as Mumbai-based pulmonologist Dr Parthiv Shah, who practices in a western suburb, confirm that there has been a sharp rise in people, particularly senior citizens, complaining of respiratory ailments like asthma and bronchitis in the winter months, triggered by pollution and the dip in temperature.
In Mankhurd, however, local physicians say that ailments such as a fever, cough and cold are considered so normal that people don't even bother to consult a doctor.
INHALING DISEASES
The suburb has a population of about 807,720 residents, 84.90% of whom reside in slums as per the 2011 census. A 2015 survey of M East ward — Mankhurd comes under this ward — by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences recorded many instances of tuberculosis and respiratory ailments in the slum pocket. Another survey called Revisiting the Margins, M East Ward, Mumbai, conducted by the NGO Apnalaya in 2020, found that residents suffered from chronic afflictions such as blood pressure, diabetes and heart ailments.
Children and seniors bear the brunt, the survey noted. “Even children as young as two years have asthma,” said Dr Nuzhat Mohammed Anis, who consults at a local charitable clinic run by social worker Mohammed Umar Shaikh.
Children play around garbage strewn govt land that also doubles up as parking space for residents in Janta Nagar, Mumbai. Hepzi Anthony/The Migration Story
The Apnalaya report cites the Mumbai Human Development Report, 2009, according to which M East ward scores poorly on several parameters: it has the largest number of out-of-school children, the lowest overall level of literacy, the highest percentage of women out of the workforce, the highest infant mortality rate and the lowest average age at death amongst all the city’s wards—39 years as compared to 52 years for Mumbai.
Even today, the stench and air pollution emanating from the Deonar dumping ground, Asia's largest site of collected waste which receives 600 to 700 metric tonnes of garbage per day, impacts the health of residents surrounding it. The problem is further compounded by the presence of several industries in the area—a thriving recycling industry involving materials from oil, chemical and cloth waste to incineration of bio-medical waste. The furniture-making units in the area also generate huge amounts of dust.
“The stink emanating from the incineration of bio-medical waste is the worst,” said social worker Shaikh who runs the Kamgar Saurakshan Samman Sangh charitable clinic where consultation and basic medicines are provided for just Rs 20. “It can get so bad that you lose your appetite. Our relatives hesitate to visit us, not just because of the distance from the main city but also because of the stench.”
Mankhurd’s residents hold the BMC incinerator in neighbouring Govandi, which handles the entire city’s biomedical waste, responsible for tuberculosis cases and other lung- and heart-related diseases in the locality.
India’s environment, forest and climate change ministry told the Parliament this August that various steps have been undertaken to check the air quality and impact of waste disposal on public health in and around Deonar dumping ground. These include covering of municipal solid waste with soil cover, regular fogging for pest control, regular ambient air quality monitoring, the ministry said.
“As per BMC, at present, there is no rise in diseases around dumping grounds,” the ministry told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.
POLLUTION DEBT
Ateeq Shaikh, 38, is a forklift operator and earns about 25,000 rupees a month. But he is barely able to save anything, the pollution eating into his income.
“I spend almost half my earnings on the health issues of my family, particularly those of my children,” Ateeq told The Migration Story.
“My eight-year-old daughter has been asthmatic since she was two and regularly needs to be hospitalised. We spend roughly Rs 10,000 to 12,000 on health-related expenses,” he said.
People in Mankhurd said they had run into debts due to regular health issues and even hospitalisations recommended by local doctors.
Forklift operator Ateeq Shaikh spends a sizeable portion of his earnings on his family's health expenses. Hers he shows his children’s health file at his home in Janta Nagar, Mankhurd, Mumbai. Hepzi Anthony/The Migration Story
This is corroborated by the Apnalaya survey, which found that a whopping 71% of local residents here had borrowed money to meet health expenses while 50% reported spending over Rs 5,000 per annum on treating chronic illnesses.
Doctors in the area said they saw a large number of patients with skin infections, an offshoot of the unhygienic surroundings.
Local factors further exacerbate their health condition. Most of the homes lack windows or basic ventilation outlets and are situated in small bylanes with little or no open space near them.
Ateeq’s problem is compounded by neighbouring houses being converted into furniture wood-cutting and polishing units, which result in a lot of dust accumulating in his house. His door, the house’s only access to light and sunshine, now has curtains pulled up throughout the day to prevent the dust from entering and settling inside. But even that does not help, he said.
Despite the mountain of health woes, most residents do not have access to proper healthcare facilities.
Social worker Shaikh runs a 9x22-square-foot community charitable clinic, which is divided into three sections. One is for the consulting doctor, the second for storing medicines while the third section, in the front of the clinic, has a bed with an intravenous saline facility. A curtain is pulled over this section to give patients privacy from the people on the street.
It’s a rare health facility in this pocket, but not quite sufficient to tackle all health concerns.
Shaikh organises buses to ferry local residents with chronic ailments to the local public hospital since the distance discourages residents from visiting a doctor there.
“Local people are too poor to afford follow-up tests and medications or the rickshaw fare to the public hospital which is located six kilometres away in Chembur,” Shaikh said. “We rent a bus to take them to a private hospital in Navi Mumbai that gives us free medical check-ups.”
Campaigners active in the locality said there was a critical need to strengthen healthcare facilities.
“Despite such serious health concerns here, the public healthcare infrastructure is weak,” said Bilal Khan, a social activist who was appointed by the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission as an amicus curiae and tasked with identifying measures to address the health concerns of M-East ward.
The community health clinic at Mankhurd records a steady stream of patients due to polluted air from the neighbouring Deonar dumping ground. Hepzi Anthony/The Migration Story
“The network of public health clinics is very inadequate and there is no public hospital in the entire ward," he added. “People have to go all the way to Chembur to access public healthcare. This leaves them at the mercy of quacks and ill-qualified medical professionals.”
Migrants and recyclers
A large number of the area’s residents are migrants, who have moved to the slum pocket over the years, attracted by the cheap houses and the possibility to find work at the recycling units around. The Apnalaya report found that over 54% of the locals here traced their origin to Uttar Pradesh, 17% were from Maharashtra and about 14% were from Bihar.
“Most of the residents are either daily wagers, informal labourers or people working in the neighbourhood recycling units,” said social worker Shaikh, who runs a clinic.
Most residents of Janta Nagar slum are unskilled and uneducated and are dependent on informal and irregular work for a living: from painting to plumbing. They stand at busy road crossings every morning from where they are picked up by labour contractors, or those looking for workers for odd jobs. Work is irregular even for those in the recycling units, as they are paid on a daily basis and can be abruptly dropped when the workflow is less, locals said.
This means locals fear skipping work, and simply buy medicines over the counter to tackle recurring health concerns.
Sona Rameshwar Gaur, 44, said she was feeling feverish but would have to report for duty at the housekeeping firm in neighbouring Kurla where she works. “I’ll just get some medicines from the medical store and keep going,” she said.
“Most of us here cannot afford to skip work, as that could put us in danger of losing even whatever work we have,” she added. Sona also gives her 17-year-old son medicines she buys at local pharmacies.
“Who has the time to whip up homemade remedies?” she said, explaining why she needs these quick-fix solutions.
Dr Nuzhat said that most often patients come to the clinic only if their household medications fail to provide relief or heal them. “Which means that they visit doctors almost a week after their health deteriorates, and hence stronger doses are needed for treatment,” she said.
THE AIR FIX
The BMC claims that the air over the Deonar dumping ground is monitored every month by the Air Quality Monitoring and Research Laboratory in Khar, which keeps a check on ambient air quality by measuring gases like sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and methane.
The civic body said once the waste-to-energy project commenced - a 504 crore rupees project “to scientifically treat waste for generating electricity”, which is set to be commissioned in October, 2025 - the health of people living on the periphery of Deonar would improve.
While the air quality in Mankhurd is far poorer than the rest of the city, polluted air has most of Mumbai coughing and wheezing.
Deputy municipal commissioner (environment and climate change) Sudhir Parkale said major contributors to pollution in the city included construction dust, vehicular emissions and bakeries. He said these were being addressed with measures like spraying of water and covering of construction sites with green scaffolding nets.
“The BMC monitors air quality twice daily, and if a drastic deterioration in the AQI is observed, resources are mobilised to find the shortcomings,” he said.
“The BMC has also set up teams at the ward level to identify errant pollutants and act against those violating its 28-point pollution control guidelines with show-cause notices and even stop-work orders,” Parkale told The Migration Story.
Meanwhile, forklift operator Ateeq Shaikh has asked his asthmatic child to avoid stepping out of home after school hours to avoid getting affected by the insalubrious surroundings.
"Doctors treating my children have asked me to shift from here, for the sake of their health. But, this is not possible since I cannot afford to live elsewhere,” said Ateeq Shaikh.
Additional reporting by Mansi Bhaktwani
Edited by Radha Rajadhyaksha
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