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.

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