THANKS to the physical, geographical location of the garbage dump-yard at Bhandewadi, the people of the surrounding areas in East Nagpur have been suffering from the territorial ill-effects of the arrangement. They may have made a reluctant peace with the system, though, but it would be their most cherished wish to have the garbage dump-yard moved away to another site so that they could breathe safe and clean. For reasons never properly explained to the people, the civic authority has not been able to implement the idea of shifting this massive garbage dump-yard elsewhere -- that is further and farther east -- for quite a long time.

Meanwhile, the Bhandewadi garbage dump-yard continues with its regular eco-system -- of bringing in the garbage collected through an elaborate system from all over the ever-expanding city, and disposing of the huge mountains of the material on a regular basis. In the process, a lot of good work, too, is being done -- though not without its negative dimensions. The story and history of Bhandewadi, however, is long and chequered. Until more than 60 years ago, the city of Nagpur, then certainly a small entity, had a garbage dump-yard on Amravati Road after Maharajbagh -- that is right at the place where there is the hockey ground and Patrakar Sahanivas and the football ground and the volleyball arena (both of which having been encroached upon by ever-growing slums). Those many decades ago, that garbage dump was outside the city’s western fringe. There was only a rarified sprinkling of residential areas beyond that point, and the arrangement seemed to be working well. As the city kept growing westward, the civic authority closed the garbage dump there and moved it to Bhandewadi.

For all these years, Bhandewadi has been accommodating the garbage dump-yard whose area has kept expanding all the time. True, in the past some years, that dump-yard has been kept restricted to the present area in the larger interest of urban planning. But this has not been without problems. For, the residential and institutional areas around the garbage dump-yard have been bearing the brunt of terribly foul smell all round the year, plus the risks of spread of infections and diseases. That was the reason why the thought came up of shifting the yard further and farther eastward possibly beyond the municipal limits. This idea has not been implemented so far for reasons never shared by the civic administration with the people. Meanwhile, the solid-waste collection, transport and handling continues at Bhandewadi in a mix of professional as well as unprofessional method and manner. A few years ago, the idea of utilising the solid waste as a raw material for electricity generation came up and that task was handed over to a local agency. The project never really took off, but the people got to know that lots of funds got siphoned out in the process, benefitting some, and leaving the city askance.

A few years ago, the actual management and handling of the solid-waste assumed a professional dimension when the concept of wind-rows was adopted. And when that seemed to work fairly well, somehow, its implementation went slack to quite some extent. The wind-rows concept helped in keeping the dump-yard far better-managed than before, and ensured that the foul smell reduced over time since the garbage was arranged in neat heaps in rows and regularly turned up-and-down so as to avoid the wet material rot under the heaps. Now also one does see rows of garbage heaps at Bhandewadi yard, but there is no surety that the handling is done in a correct manner. The risk of infection and disease, thus, continues to affect people’s health in the areas surrounding the Bhandewadi garbage dump-yard -- with no early solution in sight, thanks to the lax civic administration, and an obvious absence of political will