Mayapuri: Asia's Largest Auto Scrap Yard

Mayapuri in India’s capital city of New Delhi is Asia’s largest auto scrap yard.

Here in Mayapuri area, in the filthy, run down sheds, old, discarded and accidental vehicles are either stripped to their bones and sold as scrap or their innards or working parts are salvaged and sold in the resale market.

Believe it or not, India does not have a single automated shredding facility in the country. As for a scrappage policy, despite the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) desperately wanting the government to introduce one, there is none in place.

So who are these people at Mayapuri and what do they do for a living? People working here claim that it is Asia’s largest scrap yard for old vehicles and other metal and plastic products. “There are close to 1,500 to 1,600 spare parts dealers here who have thousands of employees and hundreds of thousands of daily wage labourers here,” says Narender Singh Chawla, owner of ABCD, an auto, bike and car dealer.

Most of the shopkeepers refrain from calling themselves scrap dealers, rather they want to be known as auto spare parts dealers. Scrap dealing in general is regarded as a menial job and hence nobody in Mayapuri wants to be known by that term. Many of the dealers have amassed considerable wealth trading in scrap and auto parts.

“I have an experience of 40 years in this industry which has been running here in this place for the past 70 years. For 30 years it was being run at Motia Khan and for 40 years it has been here in Mayapuri. The future of this business is quite uncertain. There are multinationals coming in to do this very same work which we are doing. It is not clear as to what will happen to all of us who have been toiling here. The government has not made any clear policy for us,” says a worried Chawla.