GREEN LIVING - SECOND OF THE SERIES - Dark underbelly of digital age......Avishek G Dastidar   New Delhi

 

S EVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD CHHOTU cannot read or write but knows the complex insides of computers like the back of his hand. "The ICs are burnt, so is the board. The processor does not have any gold, but will do. The hard disk looks fine. In all, this one won't fetch much," he says with the air of an expert after ripping apart a Central Processing Unit (CPU) with a screwdriver and a hammer in less than five minutes at a recycling yard in Old Seelampur in north-east Delhi.

Chhotu is one of the hundreds working at electronic goods recycling yards in and around Delhi, earning between Rs 75 and Rs 150 per day Here, . discarded computers,  monitors, keyboards etc are taken apart to gain virtually anything recyclable and keep the unorganised sector of managing tonnes of electronic waste running like a well-oiled machinery . Thank the IT boom If it weren't for Chhotu and his ilk, we would have been sitting on a pile of electronic trash. "This work will always bring money because the number of computers is increasing. You need us to clean up after the computers are discarded," says Khetra Pal, ewaste dealer, who employs labourers from nearby slums for "extraction and recovery" jobs at his 30 sq yard plot.

Khetra Pal's projection of his business is spot on. According to the Central Pollution Control Board, India was sitting on a pile of 1,46,180 tonnes of e-waste in 2005. In other words, thousands of owners did not know how to dispose their old computers. The CPCB estimates that number to grow by 800,000 tonnes by 2012. Delhi alone produces 15,000 tonnes per year.

In fact, Delhi has emerged as the second largest carrier and producer of electronic waste in the country after Maharashtra.

Like several of his contemporaries in the business, Khetra Pal sensed big money in computer waste back around 2003. "Very few people were into extraction and recovery business those days. They were mostly operating out of slums near the the Uttar Pradesh borders. Now the business has grown and become more organised," he informs.

So much that recyclers in various parts of the Capital have now become specialists in different kinds of jobs. "Yards in Turkman Gate and Shastri Park specialise in dismantling of  CPUs and monitors. They also carry out what is called regunning of monitors. Units in Loni and Mandoli, on the other hand spe cialise in open burning and acid bath for extraction of metals and so on," reported a study by the green NGO Toxics Link called Scrapping the High - Tech Myth: Electronic Waste in India. Some dust and fumes The extracting processes in these recycling yards, however, fly in the face of sound environmental management. "Our survey has shown that the extraction and recovery processes leave the workers constantly exposed to toxic dust and fumes," says occupational health expert Dr T. K. Joshi, who is a member of Delhi government's expert panel on e-waste (see box).

Chhotu, for one, shrugs of the health risks. "I'v been working here for three years and have never fallen sick except for some cuts and bruises. There's danger in all sorts of work," he shrugs.

What's more, unorganised recyclers in Maharashtra, the country's biggest generator of e-waste are now sending their more harmful, poisonous extraction processes to Delhi, reported the International Resources Group on behalf of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board.

Khetra Pal takes pride in the fact. "We specialise in the work of acid bathing of circuit boards. The consignments come from Bombay and Bangalore. We have agents who strike the deal and transport it to Delhi," he informs. A better tomorrow The Delhi government has recently invited recyclers to apply for the licence. "This is the first step towards mainstreaming this unorganised sector. Once the government steps in, health standards and labour practices in these yards can be monitored. As of now, we are in the dark about the gray world of ewaste recycling," says a senior official of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee.

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