TWhen a recent Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) report revealed that the number of polluted rivers in India has gone up from 121 to 275 in the last five years, there were the customary knee-jerk reactions from the civil society groups and eco activists. The startling survey was quoted in a series of environmental forums and green campaigns to jolt the policy makers. It did create a lot of furore, but things were back to square one once the dust settled. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is obsessed with his Ganga clean-up rhetoric, the pollution load in rivers like Narmada, Krishna, Sabarmati, Cauvery, Gaggar, Sone, Godavari and Yamuna – to name a few – is shooting up as is the fallout from their gross neglect. Every river is reeling under a host of problems and at the root of these is political as well as public apathy and sheer mismanagement of resources.
A cocktail of sewage, industrial waste and pesticides
What can you expect if most of the sewage treatment plants lie like white elephants and the ones that work don’t have the capacity to treat the human waste fully; if untreated industrial effluents are dumped into the water bodies with rank impunity; if agricultural run offs – that are laced with obnoxious chemical fertilisers – find their way into the rivers. No wonder then that this toxic cocktail makes an ideal recipe for the aquatic creatures’ slow and painful death. As the population of our cities grows rapidly, so will the generation of waste. To tackle this waste, we need to have efficient treatment plants that can work round-the-clock. Two years back, the CPCB found out that not even 50% of the installed capacity of the existing sewage treatment plants across the country was being used, and over 30% of the machinery was non-operational. In Delhi alone, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) found that 15 out of 32 sewage
treatment plants were working below their capacities. Delhi Jal Board is collecting and treating only 54% of the total sewage generated in the city. Therefore, it is the inefficiency, not insufficiency, of the treatment plants that is deteriorating the river quality. Similar is the case with effluent treatment plants (ETPs). Take for instance the tanneries in Kanpur. Even though ETPs are in place, they are unable to function properly due to frequent power outages. Many of them are ill-maintained. As a result, the waste leaches into the soil and makes the groundwater unhealthy too.
The sewage generated from 650 cities and towns situated along the 302 polluted river stretches have increased from 38,000 million litres per day (MLD) in 2009 to 62,000 MLD today, the recent CPCB assessment pointed out. In 2013, PCB surveyed 51 of the 64 existing sewage treatment plants along the Ganga. Only 60% of the installed capacity was being used. Until and unless sewage and effluent treatment plants are properly managed and used to their optimum, the revival of our rivers will remain a dream. A fortune has gone down the drain in Ganga Action Plan (GAP) and Yamuna Action Plan (YAP). Now is the time to hand over the management of treatment plants to private players. They will be able to do the job fficiently by cutting through corruption and ineptness. These enterprises should apply modern technologies and take a futuristic view with their eye on cost-effectiveness of their investments. It is also imperative that the union budgets allocate a large chunk for toilets and sanitation facilities so that the river pollution is checked at the source.
Pumping in money in clean technologies is good, but it is more important to take steps that ensure that the problems are prevented and nipped in the bud. The enormous toxicity of our rivers came to the fore when a few years back, many gharials (alligators) died in the Chambal river basin in Madhya Pradesh as the dissolved oxygen plummeted alarmingly. Such deaths can be stopped if there is regular monitoring of water samples. Bacterial contamination in most of India’s rivers is getting higher and higher. As the coliform levels of our rivers increase, we have to bring in legislations that make it mandatory for the departments and stakeholders concerned to analyse the water samples scientifically on a weekly basis. The polluting industries can then be tracked and nailed. This will also help us stem the outbreak of water-borne diseases. While the industrial discharge is the second biggest contributor to contamination after sewage, pesticides come in a close third. Farmers continue to use chemical fertilisers like DDT that are globally banned. As a result, rivers are choking and gasping for breath. In 2008, a study by PGIMER and Punjab Pollution Control Board found that in villages, fluoride, mercury, endosulphan and heptachlor pesticide were beyond the permissible limit in ground and tap waters. The water was also high in ammonia, phosphate, chloride, arsenic, chromium and chlorpyrifos pesticide. In Narmada, the use of nitrogen fertilisers is rampant in the basin area. By some estimates, its annual use is 140,000 tons. Whether it is the Vidharbha farmers or their counterparts in Punjab, the farming fraternity has to realise the old wisdom that earth is our mother and it has to be taken care of. If organic farming is given impetus by the government, water pollution can be reduced to a large extent.
Damn the dams
When big dams are made, they reduce the environmental flow of the river. River experts aver that every river has a quality to purify itself, but if the quantity of its water is decreased, it hampers the natural process. Deforestation in the catchment areas causes sedimentation, further aggravating the situation. Dams upstream on the Alakananda, Bhagirathi and Mandakini rivers have affected Ganga’s flow downstream. Tehri dam has reduced the flow of the river. It’s alarming but true that the Damodar river catchment areas are havens for coal mining. The resultant pollutants have turned the river into a chemical cesspool. There are attempts to build a number of big and small dams to harness Narmada waters. Tawa dam has already cleared 24,000 hectares of forest cover. As forests are felled, the water level of Narmada gets reduced and poses danger during floods.
In many places, water is channelised for agricultural purposes, which causes the river to go dry. Irrigation and electricity are important, however, the price that we are paying for it far outweighs its benefits. It is a terrible tragedy that most of the development taking place today is marginalising the poor and wreaking havoc on their livelihoods. The challenge for India is that it has to stride ahead on the progress path, but at the same time not become oblivious to the long-term impact of plans that entail lopsided development and give short shrift to ecological concerns, while also fuelling inequities.
Coordinated effort – the need of the hour
Today, almost all river cleaning projects in India suffer from lack of coordination among the different departments that are involved in it. All are working on the same thing, but in isolation. The multiple agencies need to work in tandem. While the ministry of urban development can stop encroachment near the rivers, the water department can devise a strategy that prevents drains falling into the rivers directly. Coordination between various state governments is also necessary. If Haryana doesn’t release enough water into Yamuna, the pollution in the river in Delhi will continue. India has less than two percent of the world’s freshwater resources and it sustains five percent of the world’s population. The more we pollute water, the more we limit its availability for consumption and agriculture. If the current trend continues and laws are flouted with impunity, a time will come when most of our rivers will be consigned to the pages of history. The few that flow like gutters will unleash health hazards. We need to think about the unhealthy legacy that we are leaving behind, while there is still time to reflect and redress. The vicious cycle of pollution can only be broken only when we shed our myopia and become enlightened from within.