The yard's popularity as a backdrop sits awkwardly beside the evidence of contamination, and the question of who bears the cost of Kishangarh's marble trade is one the visitors photographing its white hills are unlikely to ask.
A landfill in Rajasthan's Ajmer district has become one of India's more improbable tourist attractions. The 300-acre marble slurry dumping yard near Kishangarh, roughly 6km from the town, resembles a snow-covered landscape, with white hills and water-filled pits drawing hundreds of visitors a day to a state better known for desert, according to Al Jazeera. Entry is free. Newlyweds pose against the white slopes, couples arrange pre-wedding shoots, influencers film reels, and film and music crews use the site as a set. One visitor from Uttar Pradesh told the outlet that his family's first impression was that the place looked like Kashmir.
The same site is the largest facility of its kind in Asia and sits at the centre of a marble and granite industry. Kishangarh is home to nearly 1,200 processing units, with daily business estimated at more than 160 million rupees ($1.7m) and about 25,000 jobs, according to the Federation of Indian Granite and Stone Industry. Each day, roughly 1,000 tankers empty about 5,500 tonnes of slurry onto the government-allotted dump. For the villages around it, that traffic is the source of the problem rather than a curiosity.
Residents of Bhogiyawas and neighbouring villages describe a landscape and a livelihood under strain. Bagharam Gurjar, a 53-year-old farmer, told Al Jazeera that dust settling on his maize field ruins the soil, and that he and his wife take regular medicine for chest infections and skin problems. He said the yard affects at least six villages and that complaints range from respiratory illness to dental decay and allergies. Another resident, 65-year-old Ugam Singh, said groundwater is no longer fit to drink, with fluoride levels so high the water tastes salty, and that his teeth have decayed and his bones weakened. He said residents had raised their concerns with the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board without result.
Scientific work cited by the outlet lends weight to those accounts. A study led by Laxmi Kant Sharma of the Central University of Rajasthan found lead silicate concentrations in Kishangarh's soil several times above normal, and PM2.5 levels above ambient air quality standards. Because the waste particles are smaller than 75 micrometres, the study said, they spread widely and leave soil infertile; it warned that several people may be suffering from silicosis and urged immediate government action. A physician at a hospital in Ajmer told Al Jazeera that respiratory cases have risen significantly in recent years and advised residents to wear masks. Sharma said the surrounding area is unfit for human settlement and questioned why visitors are allowed on site without masks, and even to eat there.
The regulatory picture is contested. Last year the environmentalist Drupad Malik brought a case before the National Green Tribunal, which observed that unregulated dumping was contaminating groundwater and air and directed the pollution control board to enforce monitoring, inspect samples and penalise units breaching environmental norms. A senior official at the board's Kishangarh regional office declined to speak to Al Jazeera. Sharma said his research was shared with state authorities without effect.
What the reporting does not establish is the scale of the health damage: no survey figures are given for respiratory or dental illness among residents, and the claim that almost every household has someone affected is attributed to a villager, not to clinical data. Nor is it clear what enforcement has followed the tribunal's directions, or whether the site will be relocated. The yard's popularity as a backdrop sits awkwardly beside the evidence of contamination, and the question of who bears the cost of Kishangarh's marble trade is one the visitors photographing its white hills are unlikely to ask.
