the Delhi government is planning to develop the reserved Bhatti mines area of the city into a garbage landfill site. For this purpose, it will soon seek the permission of both the Supreme Court and the Union government. Government officials say that the plan has been introduced due to an acute shortage of land to dispose of the 6,500 metric tonnes of waste generated in the city daily Read: No site in sight, Down To Earth, February 28, 2001).

However, such reasoning has failed to convince the environmentalists. "There are better alternatives to dispose the city's waste. Sixty per cent of the waste produced in Delhi is organic. It can be turned into compost and then used for agriculture and horticulture. The rest of the waste can also be easily managed,' says Ravi Agarwal, chief coordinator of Srishti, a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation. Even the city government's environment ministry officials have raised concerns about the plan.