Rajat Banerji | February, 2002

All the great rivers in India have something in common. They're filthy.

The vast river system of India is totally polluted, except for pristine stretches here and there.

Life-providers when they enter urban areas, our rivers are no better than drains by the time they flow past downstream colonies and shanties. In the process, heavy loads of biological and chemical pollutants usually enter waterways like the Ganga and Yamuna, to be consumed in some manner by the downstream user.

In a word, we have slowly but surely strangled our rivers.

Since 80 per cent of the population depend on 14 major rivers, there is dire need to examine the roles of Indian citizens and our government in this tragedy, and what we all need to do.

The government has been rambling along with ambitious river cleaning initiatives such as the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) and the National River Conservation Plan (NRCP) in the vain hope of improving water quality.

And the facts are all in place. The government knows, for instance, which town and industrial area generates exactly how much sewage and effluent. It knows which technologies are available to treat this waste.

Yet, all efforts have failed to improve water quality.

There are several reasons for this.

Urban dwellers identify only vaguely with rivers, when compared to agrarian and fishing communities. Miles of froth on the surface of the Yamuna River in New Delhi fail to evoke sympathy from the capital's citizens. On the other hand, the fishing community in the Chaliyar basin in Kerala were on the forefront of agitation against pollution. As were farmers in the Bhavani basin in neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Pride of place
It is a strange paradox that rivers have been given the pride of place in the Indian way of life. There is scarcely a ritual in a Hindu household where an offering isn't made to the gods; albeit by heaving a plastic bag filled with flowers and the like into the closest river or body of water. Several holy shrines are on the banks of a river, and indeed, rivers such as the Ganga (Ganges) and Yamuna are sacred to millions.

And yet inexplicable and environmentally threatening practices, such as the jal-samadhi of holy men; and infants and persons suffering from infectious diseases, have stood the test of time. This is regardless of the fact that these are aesthetically repulsive and unhealthy practices. All attempts at bringing the sadhus (religious sages) into the fold of the GAP failed.

One river policy
Because water issues assigned to provincial governments in India, each one of them treats a river as its own, with little or no regard to the downstream (user) effects. Ecologists and conservationists have long demanded that rivers need to be treated as one entity, and not the property of seven states in seven different regions in the nation.

Once severely polluted, the Rhine in Europe flows sweet and clear.

The benefits of treating a river system as one entity came to the fore in the case of the River Rhine, when the Netherlands, Germany, France, Austria, Luxembourg and Switzerland got involved in cleaning it up. The problem arose, ironically, when silt dredged at Rotterdam port was found to contain high levels of persistent pollutants. Working upstream, different pollution sources were identified. A public relations firm was employed to assess as well as instil public opinion and confidence.

Today, the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine holds international conferences to discuss and implement plans to improve water quality.

Indian rivers are filthy. Here is litter piled up alongside a ghat in Varanasi.

This river clean-up has often been described as the 'most impressive environmental achievement in the world'. And not needlessly so, either. This river flows through the industrial heartland of Europe. And now the Commission aims at ensuring that salmon reach the streams of the Swiss Alps (which hadn't taken place for over 50 years, due to pollution), in their annual migration from the sea! By doing so, they have fixed a goal that the average citizen can identify with-a goal that is tangible.

Every cloud has a ….
India is confronting a number of crucial issues. In its study on Asian glaciers, the International

Grassroots action is the sure way to break through bureaucratic apathy blocking cleanup of Indian rivers.

Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) says "the likelihood of Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 is very high." As of 1991, there were 3,768 urban agglomerations in India, accounting for around 25 per cent of the country's population. Studies carried out by the FAO and WHO indicate that the urban population may even double by 2025. With existing sources of water under threat, water protection is imperative.

There have been a few positive developments in the recent past that could point the way forward. There are plans to open up the Yamuna waterfront for recreational and commercial purposes. By creating parks and water-related recreational activities, the average citizen will undoubtedly come closer in contact with the river. Perhaps the concept of "river keepers"-followed in some river basins in the United States-could then be explored. Replicating this in other basins (there is a plan for the Sabarmati, at Ahmedabad) would multiply this advantage.)

Water harvesting is fast gaining currency across the country. This activity needs to be undertaken on a war footing. Monsoon waters could thus be retained in a river basin. Five rivers were actually "born", after water harvesting structures were built in Alwar district in Rajasthan. There is also a need for river basin authorities, along the lines of the Rhine Commission, which would view a river as a single entity.

And with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) regarded as an alternative to petrol and diesel in the battle against air pollution, there should be efforts to look at alternative sanitation technologies, too. Sewage accounts for 70 per cent pollution loads in Indian rivers. At the international level, dry sanitation is being considered as an alternative to water-based sanitation. While spending hundreds of crores (millions) in constructing sewage treatment plants, the government surely can throw down the gauntlet, along with a few crores, either to government bodies such as the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), or even the private sector, to develop a workable alternative technology to sewage disposal.

River warfare
Population-induced pressure on water is bound to grow in coming years. In fact, water scarcity has often been sited as a possible cause of wars between riparian states (states sharing a water body). At some point, the clean water guzzling flush technologies, which magnify the entire problem of sewage, will have to be replaced by alternatives. And the sooner these alternatives are examined, the better.

GAP and NRCP aim at improving water quality to a level where the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) reaches "acceptable" levels. This is something the man on the streets would have no idea about. If something concrete, such as the salmon in the Rhine, were to be the goal, the results would be there for all to see.

A determined, time-specific combination of such efforts could lead to an improvement of water quality in the rivers. But this is a difficult task, and requires a certain degree of maturity and clarity of where things stand now, and where we are headed. And unless some serious steps are taken soon, Indian rivers will remain sewers.

Rajat Banerji is an independent environmental journalist and researcher based in New Delhi.