Making money out of rubbish mountains

Brandname multinationals such as IBM and Vodafone have offices nearby, and a five-star Marriott hotel is going up on the main airport road in eastern Calcutta, not far from pricey pastel apartment blocks looking like Legoland in the hazy sun-baked distance.

Half-built condos encased in scaffolding are shooting up all over this part of town, to be serviced by a new metro line linking to the airport. But a mile or so away from the Marriott site is Dhapa rubbish dump — a vast, decades-old hill of plastic, rubber, tin and old clothes — perhaps 10-12 acres in area and 60ft-70ft high.

Beside the dump, several hundred low-caste migrant villagers live in shacks, squeezed between the towering mound of rubbish on one side and a mosquito-spawning lake on the other.