A week after a fire broke out in the Deonar dumping ground in Mumbai, fires in smaller pockets continue to blaze. But toxic smoke is only an addition to a long list of problems in Deonar. The oldest and largest dumping ground of India receives over 5,500 metric tonnes of waste, 600 metric tonnes of silt, and 25 tonnes of biomedical waste daily. Between March and June every year, the daily amount of silt rises to more than 9,000 metric tonnes because of drain cleaning before the monsoon season. As of December 2014, the waste had reached a height of around 164 ft, equivalent to the height of an 18-storey tower. The high mounds of trash in which children and stray dogs loiter around, and around which the air smells of burnt plastic and putrefying garbage makes Deonar most certainly unfit for human habitation.

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