IT's UNDERBELLY

India produces about 400,000 tonnes of electronic waste each year, growing exponentially. The country is one of the lead importers of all kinds of waste. Almost all of this is recycled or scrapped by the unorganised sector 

- RUHI KANDHARI & JYOTIKA SOOD

NAVEED, ALONG with his wife Khalida and their three daughters, wakes up every morning to extract gold and copper from circuit boards of dismantled computers. He can tell without difficulty which motherboard is from China, and which one from Japan. The Japanese circuit boards are better, he says, because they fetch him more copper and gold than the ones from China. As he burns the computer parts the plastic melts, emitting a red, toxic fume. The remains from the burnt heap the metals-fetch him up to Rs 300 per day.

Outside his house, in the Nawabpura colony, the locality is full of such one-room houses with dismantled parts of circuit boards strewn all over. Every family here specializes in one of the processes to extract metals from circuit boards.