Marble stones at Kishangarh, Rajasthan. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The marble slurry dumping yard at Kishangarh, Rajasthan, where bulldozers clear parts of it to send to Morbi in Gujarat. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Amit Parmar, 35, his wife, and five-year-old daughter are travelling from Mumbai in Maharashtra to Bhiwani, their home town in Haryana. On their way, they stop over at Kishangarh, a city in Ajmer district, known equally for its Rajasthan school of miniature painting and marble.
Here, unexpectedly, is a sprawling white landscape spread across 200 acres that appears to be snow-covered. Little mounds glint almost blue, and tourists and social media influencers come here to shoot videos. Except, the temperatures in Kishangarh climbs to well over 40 degrees Celsius in summer, never dipping below freezing point in winter.
The white ‘snow’ is waste generated during the cutting and processing of marble blocks and rocks, and the vast landscape against the backdrop of the Aravali mountain range is the dumping yard for marble slurry. Promoted as a snow yard, the site attracts thousands of tourists every month, especially in spring, the best season to visit Rajasthan.
“We came to know of this place through Instagram reels. Some friends confirmed that it offered a sight to behold,” Parmar, an entrepreneur, says. The family strolls through the solidified marble slurry. As his daughter rides a red toy car for children operated by a team of local youth, Parmar cannot get over the beauty of the place. “If we post our pictures and videos on Instagram, will anyone believe that this is not a snowfield?” Parmar says. The family travelled by car from Mumbai and visited the Statue of Unity near Kevadia in Gujarat and the Lake City of Udaipur before reaching Kishangarh.
Once a princely State in the central Rajputana territory of British India known for its temples, Kishangarh today has Asia’s biggest marble and granite mandi (market), says Sampat Sharma, chief executive officer of the Kishangarh Marble Association. The abundant availability of marble, granite, and other stones in Rajasthan has led to the establishment of about 1,200 marble cutting and processing units in the region.
However, the tourist hotspot, which has now become a business for locals, has emerged as a source of air, water, and soil pollution. It has begun to affect the health of the people who live in the vicinity, and agriculture in the area. A study released earlier this year, conducted in a 15-km radius of the marble waste dumping yard, by the Central University of Rajasthan, situated 20 km away at Bandar Sindri, has found the ways in which this happens.
Stone stories
Most marble units function under an industrial area established by the Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation (RIICO), which began operations in the area in the 1980s. The marble mandi has an annual turnover of ₹6,000 crore and employs about 25,000 workers drawn from different parts of the country. Units are of different sizes, employing between 10 and 200 men. Thousands of others get indirect employment, benefiting from livelihood opportunities created by the industry such as transportation and loading. The slurry is transported in tankers to the dumping ground.
Sampat says the marble units in Kishangarh send 20,000 tonnes of material every day to places such as Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal. The marble is procured from quarries in Rajsamand, Chittorgarh, Banswara, Andhi, and Jhiri — all in Rajasthan. Supply from mines in Makrana, from which Agra’s Taj Mahal was built in the 17th century by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, has dwindled because the reserves are almost over.
“The market share of marble is gradually being taken over by granite because of the changing preferences of customers. In the collective daily net sale of ₹16 crore, some units send out up to 80% granite,” he says.
While Rajasthan accounts for about 63% of the country’s marble resources, granite is procured from Jalore and Sirohi and even imported from Vietnam and Italy for finishing and supply here.
Sampat says RIICO had allotted the association two plots for a dumping yard in 2003, one of which is full. Marble slurry is the calcium carbonate waste generated during marble cutting and processing. The process of shining a marble or granite piece produces 30-35% of the waste. “The slurry comprises 60% water, which helps it settle into the land where it is dumped,” Sampat says. It is carried to the dumping ground, about a kilometre away, every day in lorries.
Health of people and planet
Laxmi Kant Sharma, head of the Department of Environmental Science at the Central University of Rajasthan, who headed the study, says the toxic contamination of water sources in the vicinity is reflected in total dissolved solid escalating 10 times above safe limits in a six-km radius of the dumping site. This has had a severe impact on crop yield. Besides, 25% of the surveyed population of 100 has lung-related ailments, and a significant number of marble industry workers have reported throat problems.
Research scholar Basant Bijarniya says since the waste particles are smaller than 75 micrometres, they could spread far and wide, making the soil infertile. “The environmental impact will be felt in the long-term. Several people may be suffering from silicosis, which is not confirmed yet. The government needs to take immediate action to prevent the situation from getting out of hand,” he says.
A previous research study by the university in 2022 had found that cropland in Kishangarh tehsil decreased by 2.58% and built-up area increased by 3.5% because of the expansion of the marble industry. Environmental parameters, including agricultural soil, air, and groundwater, were found to be affected.
Some workers at the marble units say, on condition of anonymity, that they have “constant cough” while operating the machines to cut marble blocks. “We don’t get masks from our employers. We just wrap a towel around our faces, but it seems inadequate,” a factory worker says.
Farmers in the nearby villages, including Tokra, Bhojiyawas, Rahimpura, Phaloda, Mohanpura, and Kali Dungri, point out that the marble dust often settles on their agricultural land and mixes with irrigation water, affecting crop production. Janglaram Chandeliya, from Tokra village, says the yield in his field has dropped by 60% ever since the dumping yard’s use was started two decades ago.
Rajesh Gujjar, a farmer from Mandawariya village, says the groundwater is not fit for drinking or irrigation as it contains fine particles of marble, which spread in the field. “We were mainly growing bajra and wheat, but due to the sharp decline in agricultural output, several farmers are considering selling their land. They will have no option but to work in the marble units to make a living,” Gujjar says.
While the owners of privately-owned hospitals in the region admit that diseases related to environmental pollution have increased, Dr. Parsa Ram Chaudhary, who is in charge of the government-run Community Health Centre in Kishangarh, says such cases are not reported at the facility because of the town’s distance from the villages, though it is only about 15 km away.
Snow tourism
Despite one of the dumping yards being full, the administration has no plans to shift the site elsewhere or stop the influx of marble slurry. The State government’s Tourism Department has in fact been promoting it as a “breathtaking landscape”. A social media post of the department extols people to “explore the surreal, snow-like terrain that has turned this once-ordinary site into a magical destination”.
Hari Ram Bana, sarpanch of Khatoli panchayat, in whose jurisdiction the dumping yard falls, says the land was allotted by RIICO to the marble association and the administration has no role in managing it. “There is no visible adverse impact on the environment. This place has put Kishangarh on the national tourism map. We should be proud of it,” Bana says.
When the slurry accumulated to the extent that it formed white plateaus and mountains, the Kishangarh Marble Association came up with an innovative model for revenue generation. It started charging a fee for commercial shooting in 2016 and has since been using the money for tree plantation, construction of roads and boundaries at the wasteland, deployment of security guards, and creating basic amenities for visitors.
Bhagwan Singh, a subedar in the Army, posted in Bathinda, Punjab, is at the ‘snowfield’ with his family, including his brother, who works in a cement factory in Beawar, Rajasthan. The family clicks photographs in front of a large heart-shaped structure set up by the association with a pond in the backdrop. They rest under a canopy after the photo shoot.
“It looks like Kashmir. I could never imagine that we would find such a landscape in Rajasthan. I am going to be the centre of attraction among my friends in school with these photos and videos,” says Singh’s daughter Bhumika Chauhan, 14, while shooting a reel.
The locals hang around among the tourists, offering to take their pictures with their own mobile phones with “photogenic angles” at a price. The dumping yard has become a hub for fashion shoots, music videos, pre-wedding photography, and advertisement films. People fly drones with mounted cameras; men pose like Bollywood actors, flexing muscles or staring deep into the camera; women and children wear dark glasses and take selfies.
For those taking a stroll and selfies, there is no entry fee, but they do need to obtain a free pass from the office of the Kishangarh Marble Association, about a kilometre away. A visitor entering with a single digital camera must pay ₹500. A pre-wedding shoot costs ₹5,100 a day, while a commercial shoot costs up to ₹21,000 a day.
The dumping yard became popular after comedian Kapil Sharma came to shoot a song for his debut film, Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon, in 2015. Wedding photographers from Ajmer and Jaipur then started bringing couples here for pre-wedding shoots. Some Rajasthani and Punjabi music companies also started using the white hills and blue ponds for their song sequences. According to locals, these ponds are filled by the authorities, who, in turn, claim that this is accumulated rainwater. Among the celebrities who have turned up here are Tiger Shroff for a song in Baaghi 3, Nora Fatehi for Chhor Denge, Sonakshi Sinha for Dabangg 3, Yo Yo Honey Singh for Saiyaan Ji, and Arijit Singh for Dhokha.
The association issues yearly tenders for slurry deposits to be transported to Morbi in Gujarat for reuse in tiles and construction material in low-cost houses. While trucks arrive every day at the dumping yard to offload slurry from the marble units, bulldozers operate regularly to dig into the waste mountains.
mohammed.iqbal@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew
Published - April 12, 2025 08:23 pm IST
