Nagpur: As thick plumes of black smoke curled into the sky, Prabha Netam stood helplessly, watching her entire world go up in flames. She was among several ragpickers who lost their only source of livelihood. The April 19 inferno didn't just raze heaps of garbage — it reduced the lives of hundreds of waste pickers to ashes.
"I could only watch. My hands were trembling. Everything I had was inside — my shop, my food, my clothes," said Netam, 55, who had worked at the landfill for 35 years. By the morning of April 20, nothing remained but smouldering debris.
For Nagpur's waste pickers, Bhandewadi is more than a dumping ground — it is their lifeline. Every sack of plastic, every strip of metal, every discarded bottle means food on the table.
On an average day, each worker collects 70 to 80 kilograms of recyclable material, earning around ₹500. Collectively, about 300 waste pickers recycle nearly 24,000 kilograms of waste daily — an invisible but vital contribution to the city's waste management, quietly salvaging what the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) merely discards.
Now, with the fire devouring the mountain of recyclables, hundreds of families have been pushed to the brink.
"I had just gathered bottles for the whole week," said Suman Pawar, 28, her eyes welling up. "It was going to bring me ₹700 — enough to pay my son's school fees. Now, even that is gone."
The fire has robbed waste pickers not only of income but of dignity and security. Some lived in flimsy shelters near the landfill, and the blaze forced them to flee with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Leena Buddhe, an activist who has worked closely with Bhandewadi's waste pickers, dismissed speculation that the fire started because of the waste pickers' fault.
"No waste picker would ever harm the dump," she said firmly. "This is their livelihood. They don't even carry bidis or cigarettes inside the site. To suggest otherwise is cruel and false."
The cause of the fire remains uncertain, but for the waste pickers, the damage is already done, and the path to recovery is unclear. Even after the smoke clears, the landfill will take months to stabilise. Toxic residues left behind could pose long-term health risks.
Forty-year-old Sunil Morya coughed heavily as he spoke. "I breathe smoke all day anyway," he said. "But this fire—it was different. The chest pain hasn't gone away. I can barely stand for long."
Sitting on a charred scrap of cloth, Netam sighed deeply. "I don't know how long I'll sit at home. A month, two months — maybe more. How will we survive without work?" she whispered.
In the ruins of Bhandewadi, survival now demands a resilience few can imagine — the strength to sift through ashes and somehow begin again.
Meanwhile, after the inferno was controlled on one side, a few waste pickers resumed work on Tuesday evening, trying to salvage what little remained.