Bitter Ash

It was about a year and a half ago that 30-year-old Nayimuddin Ansari last looked at his three children without any problem in his vision. On a sunny afternoon in March last year, while Ansari was going home, something got into his eyes. He stopped on the side of the highway, next to the Triveni sugar mill—the largest in Asia—in the Uttar Pradesh town of Khatauli. He rubbed his eyes to try to get rid of the irritant. A few days later, he had pain, and then an infection, in his eyes. “The local doctor advised me to go to AIIMS, Delhi for free-of-cost operation,” Ansari told me.

After five surgeries, for which he spent money on transportation, food and medicines, Ansari’s sight has not returned. He cannot travel and cannot continue his job of repairing pressure cookers. Ansari sits in his rented home these days, unemployed. Next to his house also sits a huge pile of ash, dumped by the nearest sugar mill.

The pile of ash next to Ansari’s house is no exception. All across Khatauli, sights like this are quite common.

Khatauli is located in Muzaffarnagar district—considered the “sugar capital of India”—where the economy is primarily dependent on sugarcane. The environmental cost of sugar production can be generally gauged in water consumed in the production process. It takes over a thousand litres of water to produce a kilogram of sugar. According to the Central Pollution Control Board, “Sugar mills consume around 1,500-2,000 litres of water and generate about 1,000 litres of waste water for per tonne of cane crushed.” The untreated effluent is discharged in water sources and threatens aquatic life as well as humans. Moreover, the sugar mills are also a source of immense air pollution, not only from the use of diesel machines but also from the carbon ash that ends up in the air due to combustion of sugarcane waste, leading to respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis.