In pictures: India's e-waste village

4 August 2014 Last updated at 16:13 ET
In pictures: India's e-waste village


In the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, thousands of tonnes of e-waste or electronic waste is collected annually by neighbourhood waste dealers, who go around with sacks on their shoulders. (Photos: Swastik Pal)


The discarded electronics are dismantled and parts of it are extracted and sold at roadside shops in Calcutta. At the city's Chandni Chowk area, a hugely popular second-hand market, people can buy wires to wi-fi routers, or even a discarded video camera.


It is also a common practice to use the discarded picture tubes from computer monitors to make low-cost, locally assembled television sets which are then sold in Chandni Chowk.


Indians generate 270,000 tonnes of e-waste annually as people upgrade to latest models of television, computer and smartphone, discarding their old products.


Once the e-waste is sorted in Chandni Chowk, a large part of it is sent off to Sangrampur village, 45km (28 miles) south of Calcutta.


Sangrampur is a leading hub for dismantling e-waste. Practically every home in the village is involved in breaking down discarded television sets, computers and mobile phones.


Huge piles of e-waste dumped inside the courtyards of village homes are a common sight in Sangrampur and many here say that life in this village revolves around e-waste.


Kochimuni, 15, sits in front of his mud house sorting e-waste. Campaigners say the waste is often toxic and hazardous and poses serious health damages to those involved in sorting it. But low levels of awareness and high profits from almost negligible investments have ensured that more people are constantly joining the work.

BBC News - In pictures: India's e-waste village

 

Sad and necessitous. Million Dollar Arm film is quite good which is based on true story and shows the true face of India. (not mars, nukes and carriers, but the real daily lives of average Indian people).

 

Yeah you are right an average Indian who's ancestors were looted by some mother f*cker country populated by some gr8 son of b*tches....

 

@layman @Gessler
this guy is worst than AA.... you do know who am i pointing to

 

Poor boy can't even spell the word correctly. It must be a manifestation of excellent education system there.

Oh, my Germanic ancestors came from Germany and i have an American born dad and a beautiful Hungarian girlfriend anyway.

 

British was the best thing that ever happen to India, least its civilized now.

British rule was justified, in part, by the claims that the Indians required to be civilized, and that British rule would introduce in place of Oriental despotism and anarchy a reliable system of justice, the rule of law, and the notion of 'fair play'. Certain Indian social or religious practices that the British found to be abhorrent were outlawed, such as sati in 1829, and an ethic of 'improvement' was said to dictate British social policies. In the 1840s and 1850s, under the governal-generalship of Dalhousie and then Canning, more territories were absorbed into British India, either on the grounds that the native rulers were corrupt, inept, and notoriously indifferent about the welfare of their subjects,

One has to wonder where India would be with out the regimes of law and order installed by the British, the bringing of the railways, roads, and telegraph to the natives, the institutionalisation of formal education, the introduction of British political traditions and institutions—not only parliamentary democracy, but law courts, an adversarial judicial system, and so on.

 

BTW who bring these railways, roads and telegraph other wtf things to US of A$$, Russia, China, Japan or any other country. Don't give me a BS reason that British came to India thats why we are civilized.

There is an Indian proverb - chor chor mosere bhai... You two fit in the same category...

I can also say Americans are unwanted European Ba$tard$ who were sent away...

 

Dude 1st decide your nationality.... We don't have A$$hole in the nationality list of IDF....

 

E-waste management is either almost non existent or highly unorganized.Every challenge comes up with an opportunity and with 2nd most populous nation in the world and rising usage of gadgets with a limited shelf life.............E - Waste management can not only help clean up the environment but also could make a budding start up company to go onto become one of the biggest E-Waste management organization in the world.

Just need an effective policy from the government along with educating the people as well e-waste collectors like the ones pictured above about the harmful effects as well as hazards that it brings with it when one comes in contact with all the circuitry without adequate protection.