Okhla, the biggest bastardized and neglected Muslim ghetto in Delhi, is a place built for inevitable systematic failure. One of the direct ill-effects of its marginalization is sanitation.
People can be blamed only up to an extent when they do not even have proper places to dispose garbage at. A little bit down the road (a kilometer from Jamia University) and places like Sukhdev Vihar and New Friends Colony, although occupying a tenth of the land, and perhaps housing a thousandth of the population compared to Jamia Nagar and Shaheen Bagh, have far more garbage disposal and pickup spots, that are well maintained and cleaned.
The Okhla Waste Treatment Plant, seems to do anything but that. It looks like it comes straight out of a post apocalyptical film, and unlike Wall-E this is no animated film with a happy ending. The plant looks more like an Okhla Waste Storage and Distribution Plant. The water around it is not filthy. It is not water. It must be more waste ppm than water. People live around and in it, and children play. Women wash their utensils and clothes. They have no choice.
This plant is hell for people living kilometers away too thanks to the awful smell it emanates all year round.
Apart from this, construction, most notable of the Delhi Metro, has further transformed this place into a wasteland. Dug up dirt. Metal. You name it. No apparent regulation on where waste goes, or where to be used material and equipment is to be stored. I am pretty certain that "in the water" is not a permitted place to store those huge yellow metal frames.
