Dumping ground

India is a key importer of hazardous waste

The unregulated nature of the waste management industry in India has turned the country into a vast dumping ground for the world’s garbage with damaging consequences for public health and the environment. Much of this is powered by lax controls and monitoring, outright corruption, and, most importantly, the availability of a vast labour pool of unemployed Indians living in extreme poverty in different parts of the country. This much is clear from a recent investigative report by Bloomberg, which revealed that Muzaffarnagar, just 128 km north of Delhi, is a major dumping ground for plastic waste from the US. Most