Delhi’s poor migrants cook on scraps of wood

“Nobody sells the wood scraps they collect anymore,” says Rubina Bibi. “They keep it to fuel their own chulhas [stoves].” She is sitting outside her jhuggi (makeshift home), breaking up a plank that was once a door.

“Yeh do lag jayenge [It will take two such planks],” says Rubina, to feed her family of five. The price of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) has shot up since the US-Israel war on Iran began in February 2026. And a two-kilogram cylinder now costs Rs. 440 to 500 – more than double what they used to pay on the black market before the war.

For this family of waste pickers, wood scraps are now vital for cooking. In a week they may manage to collect five kilos, or “we buy wood for five rupees a kg,” says Rubina.

She lives in Bhalswa, northwest Delhi, in a community of waste pickers, almost all first and second-generation migrants from West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district. They live next to a towering landfill rising three-four stories high. The men collect waste from streets, residences and municipal dump sites. Women segregate plastic bottles, sachets, rubber, glass, thermocol and more, later sold to scrap dealers.

Delhi’s summer showers have caused waterlogging in this settlement of makeshift huts, surrounded by unloaded waste releasing a strong, foul stench. Narrow lanes between homes are lined with sacks of recyclable waste stacked on top of each other. They end in cramped passages where residents can only move in single file.

Zubeda Bibi shows PARI a stack of wood scraps stored in a corner. “Residents of big houses tell us to throw these away,” says this migrant from Banpura village in Paschim Medinipur.

In the last few months, while collecting garbage from residential societies, Zubeda’s husband, Shah Jahan Khan has been keeping an eye out for discarded wood like broken furniture which can be used as fuel.

LPG is now used sparingly – a two-kilo refill lasts Zubeda’s family about a week – and is only used for cooking rice, warming food or heating milk. The bulk of cooking is dependent on the scraps Khan can gather.

“When we don’t get scrap to burn, we find it hard to cook,” say the couple in their thirties. Then they resort to dismantling parts of their own makeshift homes held together by ropes and pole-like supports called ballis.

“We cut the ropes and release some ballis. We cook a little rice with those [as fuel],” says Zubeda. They are careful to cut only some of the supports.

In the neighbouring hut, her sister-in-law Rukhsana Bibi is making a lunch of maachh bhat (fish and rice) by feeding her cooking fire with old ballis saved from a few years ago when they replaced newer ones.

“We stored them to fuel the chulha,” says her husband, Muzimar Mir. The 30-year-old spends his mornings picking through waste at a dump site in Burari, about five kilometres away. “Broken chairs, cots and doors come in with the garbage carried by municipal trucks,” he tells PARI, speaking over the sound of Bangla music blaring from the adjacent hut.

Starting a wood fire is not easy in the absence of expensive kerosene, and women use discarded plastic sachets and chip packets. “I first burn two or three plastic wrappers and then feed the wood into the chulha,” says Sufia Bibi, 55, from Brajalal Chak village in Purba Medinipur district.

The toxic fumes from burning plastic are all around – the landfill, just metres away, has many small fires burning and releasing toxic and harmful chemicals and fine particulate matter.

The hot summers see a drop in waste collection and time spent sorting. Families that could earn between Rs. 10,000 to 15,000 a month, say their incomes halve during this time.

“How can we spend 500 rupees every week on gas refills when our earnings are so little in this heat? There are school fees, tuition fees and so many other expenses as well,” says Zubeda, wiping off her sweat with her dupatta.

“We Bengalis put potatoes in the same pot as the rice. The rice cooks and the potatoes cook too. Then we take the potatoes out and make a bharta,” she adds.

“We cook only once a day so that the wood scraps we have last longer.”