The air around the Bandhwari landfill in Gurugram is thick with the stench of decay. “We earn our living here, but at what cost to our health?” asks Joginder, a supervisor at the site, as he watches sludge and filth spill onto the Gurugram-Faridabad highway. Just a stone’s throw away lies Mangar village, less than 35 km from Delhi.
Landfills in India were meant to hold only processed waste, but sites like Bandhwari, with their towering trash heaps, have become ticking time bombs as a result of years of neglected waste segregation and management. Any garbage left for over three months is labelled “legacy waste”, a tag that now defines most of Bandhwari. The Haryana government has set December 31, 2024, as the deadline to clear the site, but it is turning out to be another in a series of unfulfilled promises.
Bandhwari is just one piece of a bigger problem. Since the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 in 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to eliminate India’s “mountains of garbage”, promising to clear legacy waste and make cities garbage-free. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs even vowed to create a dashboard to track progress across landfill sites in India.
As per the data displayed on the mission’s website, of the 2,424 dumpsites identified across the country with over 1,000 tonnes of legacy waste, remediation has been completed at 470 sites and is in progress at 1,224 sites whereas it remains unaddressed at 730 sites.
Joginder, a supervisor at the Bandhwari Landfill and a resident of Mangar village. | Photo Credit: Shubhangi Derhgawen.
Bandhwari serves as a stark reminder of unfulfilled government promises. Under the Swachh Bharat Mission Urban (SBM-U) phases 1.0 and 2.0, the Central government allocated significant funds to Haryana, specifically for solid waste management. As much as Rs.181.8 crore was set aside under SBM 1.0, and Rs.226.9 crore under SBM 2.0—funds intended to tackle issues such as legacy landfills, including Bandhwari. However, according to data revealed in Parliament, not a single rupee was utilised by the Haryana government between 2019 and 2021.
Leachate spewing into the forest
The road to Mangar village once served as a lifeline, linking the community to the outside world, with signs pointing to Bani, the sacred forest local residents have revered for generations. The lush Mangarbani in the Aravalli is home to 30 unique tree species and is a vital refuge for wildlife. In 2017, the Wildlife Institute of India declared this area ecologically sensitive, underscoring its importance in preserving the region’s biodiversity. But today, the sacred land is under siege.
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“We had a 22-foot-wide road connecting our village to the Gurugram-Faridabad highway. Now, it’s buried under mountains of garbage,” Joginder said. He pointed to where the road once lay—now consumed by the landfill’s unrelenting spread over the past two years.
Along this path, a makeshift drain stretches for 500 metres, built with high-density polyethylene (HDPE) liner to divert leachate away from the forest. But Joginder calls it futile. “Every time it rains, the drain overflows, and all the contaminated water spills into the jungle,” he explained.
The old road that connected the Mangar village to the Gurugram-Faridabad highway. | Photo Credit: Shubhangi Derhgawen
As we ventured deeper into the landfill, Joginder revealed the truth: the drain is a mere façade. A pipe funnels toxic leachate directly into the forest, with no real infrastructure to stop the pollution. Pointing to a black pool of stagnant water, he described the damage. “This leachate has been seeping into the soil for years, poisoning everything it touches. Look at the trees, the soil: they’re dead,” he said, as brown water poured from the pipe.
Loopholes in Jal Jeevan Mission
In a May 15, 2024 report to the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the Haryana Pollution Control Board revealed alarming groundwater contamination around the Bandhwari landfill, far exceeding safety limits. The monsoon threatens to worsen this with more leachate run-off. Just two months earlier, Gurugram Municipal Commissioner Narhari Singh Banger had claimed that groundwater near Bandhwari was free of carcinogens and heavy metals, with the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) declaring it “safe” despite concerns. Meanwhile, villagers in Mangar, reliant on a government-installed water pipeline since 2021, remain fearful of contamination due to the landfill’s proximity. In 2022, the Central government proudly touted the success of the Jal Jeevan Mission in Haryana, declaring 100 per cent water connectivity in all rural households.
Highlights
- In September 2022, the NGT slapped a Rs.100 crore fine on the Haryana government for failing to address legacy waste at the Bandhwari landfill.
- In a May 15, 2024 report to the NGT, the Haryana Pollution Control Board revealed alarming groundwater contamination around the Bandhwari landfill.
- The Haryana government has set December 31, 2024, as the deadline to clear the site, but it is turning out to be another in a series of unfulfilled promises.
Twenty-four-year-old Namit, who lives near the sacred Bani, voiced his growing worry: “The closer you get to the Bani, the worse the stench and water quality. For the past year, our water has had a faint rotten smell. The bore well is 200 metres deep, but everyone near the Bani faces the same problem. We can’t afford an RO [reverse osmosis] system, so we have no choice.”
Raj, a 45-year-old farmer from Bandhwari, echoed these frustrations. “Even with an RO, it didn’t last more than six months. When it broke down, the company blamed the water quality and refused to fix it. We can’t afford another system, so we’re forced to live with it.”
Make-shift drain collecting leachate in a High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) liner. | Photo Credit: Shubhangi Derhgawen
In Bandhwari and Mangar, most households now purchase 20 litre water cans, costing Rs.2,000-3,000 a month, just to drink clean water. The government’s promise of safe tap water rings hollow for villagers who cannot afford RO systems and are left to fend for themselves. While the mission may boast about access, the reality of water quality remains ignored.
No segregation of waste
Since 2010, the Bandhwari landfill has become an unchecked dumping ground, receiving over 1,600 tonnes of waste daily from Gurugram and Faridabad. Only a fraction of this is processed, the majority left to rot. This failure can be traced to a 2017 agreement with Eco Green Recycling Pvt. Ltd, tasked with managing waste from collection to processing and even building a waste-to-energy plant. Eco Green failed miserably: segregation dropped, collection slowed, and critical waste facilities were never built. The result: Over 85 per cent of waste from Gurugram and Faridabad remains unsegregated, with mountains of mixed trash filling up the landfill. Despite the MCG’s 16,000 tonne biomining capacity, fresh waste is dumped daily, thanks to weak segregation and dismal collection rates. The MCG finally cancelled Eco Green’s contract in June 2024 after residents of the area repeatedly complained about the company’s failures, but the damage was already done, and the landfill remains a symbol of failed governance and broken promises.
In a September 2024 NGT order, it was revealed that 85 per cent of Gurugram’s and 80 per cent of Faridabad’s waste remains unsegregated. Mixed waste continues to flood the landfill, overwhelming its capacity.
Torn between livelihood and health
The MCG received a no objection certificate to set up a legacy landfill site in the middle of the forest on the condition that both the civic body and Eco Green deposit Rs.2 crore combined as environmental compensation with the wildlife department. They were also tasked with ensuring that the waste processing plant did not harm the nearby Aravalli forest. Despite these agreements, the Aravalli habitat has suffered extensive damage.
On the basis of the polluter pays principle, the NGT Act of 2010 grants the tribunal the power to penalise environmental offenders. In September 2022, the NGT slapped a Rs.100 crore fine on the Haryana government for failing to address legacy waste at the Bandhwari landfill. The fine to be collected was intended to be used for environmental restoration. In February 2023, the NGT again voiced its frustration over the State’s lack of real progress despite these penalties.
Leachate from the Bandhwari landfill going directly into the Aravalli West Thorn Scrub Forest. | Photo Credit: Shubhangi Derhgawen
According to Satish Sinha, associate director at Toxics Link, an NGO involved in environmental research and advocacy, while penalties and compensation are crucial to ensuring accountability, there is limited transparency in how the fines are utilised. “It’s an unproductive process,” he said. “When a fine is levied on a government department, the money typically shifts from one department to another [MCG pays the fine from its budget but borrows funds from another state department for its operations, creating an endless cycle], but rarely results in corrective action.” Sinha also emphasised that the individuals directly responsible for the damage are seldom held accountable or penalised for their decisions, which undermines the overall impact of such fines.
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The environmental impact assessment (EIA) report submitted by the MCG in 2018 for the proposed solid waste processing unit at Bandhwari exposes critical shortcomings. A public hearing, mandatory for engaging local stakeholders, was conducted without adequately informing the villagers. Despite the MCG’s assurances that leachate treatment would be prioritised, no plan was finalised until December 2023, the last time any official notification came regarding the leachate plan. How can a project rely on an EIA conducted by the very party implementing it? The EIA report notes all these concerns but asserts that the residents’ concerns were adequately addressed.
While the State grapples with mounting environmental fines, the local residents are the ones who bear the real cost. Joginder was a school bus driver who lost his job during the 2020 lockdown and started working at the Bandhwari landfill. It was one of the few employment options left. “Every day, I’m terrified of breathing this toxic air and drinking our contaminated water,” he said. Health problems in his village have snowballed. “Our healthcare costs have tripled. Every doctor visit sets us back by Rs.1,000, and my family is going at least twice a month.”
His eyes scan the horizon, waiting for an official—anyone—to come and address the chaos, to provide some answers: “When will this landfill, this mountain of neglect, finally be cleared?”
Deepanshu Mohan is Professor of Economics and Dean, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), Sonipat, Haryana. He is Director of JGU’s Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES), a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and a Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford.
Shubhangi Derhgawen is a freelance journalist and a researcher with the Visual Storyboards team of the CNES.
This field report was produced in collaboration with the Visual Storyboards initiative of the CNES.
