OVER 120 nations have agreed to have legally binding measures to control the pollution by mercury, a neurotoxin. Formal negotiations for the treaty will begin in 2010.

The agreement, reached at the 25th session of the Governing Council of the UN Environment Programme (unep) in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is a change from previous years, when major powers, including the US, China and India, sought voluntary reductions. On February 18, they agreed to consider the binding treaty.

Some countries, including India, had earlier said a legally binding agreement is not necessary for unintentional mercury emissions. It was supported by China and Indonesia.

“Switzerland agreed that different mechanisms were necessary for unintentional and intentional emissions, but stressed that all mercury emissions must be addressed under the legally binding measures,”

said Prashant Pastore of Toxic Link, Delhi-based non-profit, who attended the meeting.

A consensus was reached after the US supported the call to ban mercy use worldwide. Changing its stand, the new US administration under President Barack Obama wanted a legally binding international treaty to reduce the toxic pollutant’s content in the environment. Till now, the US had supported only voluntary and partnership measures.

“This came as a surprise,” said Pastore. “Several non-profits said they were floored during the US announcement,” said a press release of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (enb), a news service for environment and development negotiations. “The US said the measures should address all significant sources of mercury, especially sectors with the greatest global impact including coal combustion,” said the press release.

The treaty would mandate signatory countries to follow measures to phase out the toxic pollutant.

An Inter-governmental Negotiating Committee will begin formal negotiations on the treaty in 2010, which will be wrapped up by 2013. The committe will devise modalities for phasing out mercury in terms of addressing the anthropogenic sources of the chemical, capacity building and technical and financial assistance to countries.

On behalf of developing countries, India called for a committed financial assistance to introduce mercury-free technologies. The EU rejected the proposal initially, but after consultations delegates agreed that developing countries and transition economies should be provided with technical and adequate financial assistance to help them implement the legally binding obligations effectively.

Widely used in chemical production and small-scale mining, mercury is also known to affect the cardio-vascular system. It persists in the environment once released and can travel long distances. Thus even countries which release little or no mercury and areas far away from industrial activities are at the risk of being contaminated. The Arctic, for instance, has high mercury levels, although it is far from major release sites. Its toxic forms such as methylmercury can cross the placental and blood-brain barrier affecting foetuses and children.

Sahil yaduvanshi, 4, loves airplanes. He does not have to go far to look at one. He just has to peer out of his play school window and look up every few minutes to see one. “This is Cattie…,” he shouts out to his friend Pushpesh as he looks out. Sahil enjoys the sight of the planes, and wants to become a pilot when he grows up. His only complaint is to do with the roar of the planes. “I cannot hear my teacher and my friends because of the noise,” Sahil said. He studies in Aadyant pre-school in Vasant Kunj in Delhi. Most of his friends find it difficult to concentrate after a third runway—Runway 29—became operational at the Indira Gandhi airport in September 2008. “The children get disoriented as there is an airplane flying by every few minutes. We have to repeat lessons and even raise our voices to be heard,” said Bhavina Bembi, a school counsellor.

In flight path The problem of noise disturbance is not restricted to the school but the entire residential area from Andheria Modh, east of the airport, to Bijwasan to its west. These localities are in the airport flight path. “We got the noise levels in Vasant Kunj area checked privately and found it varies between 75 and 100 decibels,” said Anil Sood, president of the non-profit Chetna.

This is much more than the limit of 55 dB during the day and 45 dB at night set by the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) for residential areas. Before the runway was built, the noise level varied from 59-65 dB, according to studies carried out by the cpcb in areas around the airport in 2004 and 2007. Environmental clearances were also given a go by. Sood said he had filed an RTI application and found no environment impact assessment was carried out before constructing the third runway. The Delhi International Airport (Private) Ltd (dial), the company that manages the airport, has now agreed to undertake noise abatement measures. This was after a meeting with the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (epca) on January 10 to discuss noise abatement measures.

Measure noise “We are interacting with resident welfare associations of Vasant Kunj and other localities. We will take corrective measures,” a dial spokesperson said. dial has promised to install six aircraft noise monitoring systems (anms) by June this year. This conforms with cpcb guidelines for monitoring noise pollution around airports, issued in June 2008. “Right now airports hire contractors to measure noise pollution.

They use a simple sound level meter. An anms is a complete set of sound level meters along with software connected to the air traffic control room and measure the noise of each aircraft that lands or takes off,” said a cpcb official. He said this would help compare data of aircraft. These instruments cost Rs 50 lakh each and would have to be imported. “Class 1 sound level meters, made as per international specifications, cost about Rs 10 lakh and come with their own software. An anms will have three or four of these devices, said Piyush Kumar a sales engineer with Josts Engineering Company Ltd, an importer. As per the minutes of the epca meeting, the airport managers have proposed closing Runway 29 during the night and switching off one or two engines at the time of landing to lower noise levels. Phasing out old noisy aircraft and using only one runway during off-peak hours have also been proposed. Once that happens Sahil has better chances to work towards his desire to fly.

A cpcb official said it is difficult to maintain the noise standards in residential areas near airports at par with other localities. New standards are being worked out, he said. In most countries, noise limits in the airport vicinity vary from 57 dB to 90 dB with a night curfew in many of them. Residents around the airport want a ban on flights at night with immediate effect.

A fire at Ankleshwar forced India to rethink how it handles hazardous waste. Drums carrying dangerous industrial sludge flew amid leaping flames and burst in the air at a waste storage at the industrial complex in Bharuch district of Gujarat on April 3 last year. Ash fell all around. People in nearby villages were told to evacuate; many suffered coughing, headache, nausea and burning sensation in the nose and throat.

It could have turned into a disaster worse than the Bhopal gas tragedy but for the change in the wind direction away from other factories (see ‘Bhopal to Bharuch’, Down To Earth, April 30, 2008).

Fire at Ankleshwar exposed careless handling of waste
Photographer:Ravleen Kaur

The fire burnt 250 tonnes of toxic industrial waste at the treatment, storage and disposal facility or tsdf in Ankleshwar. This waste had been sent there for incineration at 1,100°C because it was too dangerous to reuse or dump in a landfill. And burning it under ordinary conditions could release pollutants like cancer-causing dioxins and furans.

Waste oil and sludge—all paid for by industries—were leaking from barrels at Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure Ltd (BEIL), the tsdf that caught fire. Though BEIL —of which pesticide giant United Phosphorous is a major equity holder—cannot incinerate more than 50 tonnes of waste a day, it had crammed over 12,800 tonnes in sheds with narrow passage in between.

Prompted by the accident, the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) in April 2008 set up a committee under its former adviser R K Garg to stipulate detailed and explicit guidelines for storage of incinerable hazardous waste at captive incinerators and tsdfs, which are landfills with or without incinerators. In November, the board announced new guidelines (see Storage guidelines). Till then tsdfs were not bound by any time limit for storing hazardous incinerable waste, though being reactive and inflammable, the waste is risky to store— BEIL and the factory inspector in Ankleshwar believe the April fire occurred due to a reaction between the waste and the steel drum in which it was stored. Only industries were told not to store such waste for more than 90 days on their premises.

The committee decided that a tsdf should not store hazardous waste for more than six months. It noted sampling, analysis and mixing of the right kind of waste before incineration could take three months, but considering the time an incinerator requires for repairs, which is an annual affair, six months’ storage time is appropriate.

BEIL had waste lying there for up to two years, even though the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb) had allowed it 90 days’ storage time.

Industries in India produce hundreds of tonnes of waste every day that cpcb classifies harmful to our health and the environment. It can be toxic, flammable, corrosive, radioactive or reactive. Of this inflammable organic waste produced by industries like pesticide, pharmaceutical and refinery has to be incinerated. These are mostly synthetic chemicals that, scientists say, do not easily break down in the environment and deposit in human bodies through the food chain. They interfere with our biochemistry that affects our intelligence, immunity, behaviour and reproduction. Benzene used in bulk drug factories, for example, is a carcinogen. Exposure to it for a long time can be fatal.

Ten months after the fire—and despite orders to do so—neither gpcb nor the factory inspector of the area nor BEIL itself knows the nature of the waste burnt and the company it came from. On July 8, cpcb issued directions to BEIL regarding safety—like installing smoke and fire detectors, water sprinklers, providing ventilation, labelling drums to identify waste—under the Environment Protection Act 1986. The facility was asked to submit an action plan for incinerating the 12,800 tonnes of waste lying on its premises, and not to accept fresh waste till it had done so.

BEIL was given three months to act upon the directions. It trimmed the size of some sheds to create a wider passage between them, laid the storage areas with concrete flooring, installed fire hydrants and smoke detectors and labelled the drums.

“We have spent over Rs 7 crore on upgrading. Each drum has been painted and labelled as per the categories in hazardous waste rules,” said P N Parmeswaran, vice-president (environment) of United Phosphorus.

However, 4,000 tonnes of waste was still lying at the facility in December end. According to cpcb, 7,000 tonnes remained to be treated on October 13. So in more than six months, the company could take care of only 5,800 tonnes. Of this 1,000 tonnes were sent to another tsdf, Gujarat Enviro Protection and Infrastructure, in Surat, according to the documents obtained from gpcb under RTI. As per BEIL’s stated capacity at least 7,500 tonnes should have been incinerated in six months.

Environmental activists in Ankleshwar are now angry over the Madhya Pradesh High Court’s order in December allowing BEIL to incinerate 350 tonnes of toxic waste from the Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical) plant in Bhopal. “When they are not able to manage the waste of this industrial area, how can they take care of the waste in the Union Carbide factory?” asked Zia Pathan, a lawyer in Ankleshwar and member of Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, a non-profit active in Gujarat.

Will BEIL be nailed? No criminal case is filed against it (see Where is the punishment?). Pollution control boards can act against the BEIL director under section 15 of the Environment Protection Act in case of loss of health or vegetation, for which the culprit can get jailed for five years. But they have not done so. Proving impact on health and vegetation is not easy. “If people have breathing disorders how can one know it is because of BEIL?” asked Pathan.

The waste has been lying at the plant since 1984 when the Bhopal gas tragedy occurred. The 350 metric tonnes of waste is at the centre of a legal wrangle between Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat governments.

The Gujarat government did not comply with similar orders passed by the high court in October 2007. A fire at the hazardous waste treatment facility (managed by Bharuch Enviro Infrastructure Ltd. or beil) and opposition from local non-profits were cited as main reasons for non-compliance.

The high court then got the beil site inspected by the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) which said that a backlog of 6,964 tonnes of waste would have to be cleared first. This finding was taken into account by the court when it said its order should be complied with in six weeks. Back of the envelop calculations however show that beil will have 2,464 tonnes excess waste to dispose and not 1,564 tonnes waste as estimated by cpcb in its affidavit. Therefore the plant will not be in a position to take in more stocks of toxic waste in January despite court deadline.

S K Nanda, state principal secretary for environment, said there was no question of

“allowing the waste to be brought to Gujarat”.

He was hopeful the issue would be resolved in the Supreme Court that is hearing an appeal of the state against contempt proceedings for not complying with earlier orders.

The apex court on November 8 had directed that chief secretaries of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and officials of the Union Ministry of Commerce should jointly decide on the modalities for disposing the waste. A joint report will be filed in the Supreme Court in January end when the case is scheduled for hearing. This will be much before the High Court deadline expires, Nanda said.

INDIA intends to increase the share of nuclear power from 3.1 per cent of its total energy generation to 25 per cent by 2050. Six nuclear power reactors are under construction and eight are in the pipeline. While the country plans to expand mining of uranium to feed the reactors, a yet-to-be-released study by the environmental group “Toxics Link” pointed out that it lacked knowledge about handling nuclear waste; the existing uranium mines do not follow requisite safety methods.

Most uranium is mined in Jadugoda in East Singhbum district and three other places in Jharkhand. The ore in Indian mines contains a low percentage (0.042-0.051 per cent) of the mineral, except in Meghalaya. The problem with low-grade ore is that extracting a small amount of concentrated uranium generates a large amount of waste. The ore grade is high in Meghalaya but an onslaught of rains makes the terrain almost inaccessible for six months in a year.

The Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) plans to invest about Rs 31 billion to set up new mines and processing plants in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya as part of the eleventh plan. “The proposed mine at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh involves extraction of 3,000 tonnes of uranium per day from underground mines spread over 879 hectares,” said the study done from August to November. Quoting members of the non-profit Mines, Minerals and People, the study said for a uranium concentration of 0.039 per cent, the waste to be disposed of would amount to nearly a million tonnes per year.

The waste rock generated by uranium mining contains a significant amount of radioactivity.

“No inventory seems to have been maintained on how this radioactive waste is utilized and where it has gone.”

said Upasana Choudhry, the key researcher of the study. This waste was reportedly given to people for construction of houses and roads, but that has officially stopped now.

Processing the ore generates slurry called tailings. In Jadugoda, waste ponds in which these tailings are dumped as well as tailing pipes that occasionally burst are occupational hazards. A tailing pipe burst on August 16, 2008, near the Dugridih village in Jadugoda, spewing it with uranium waste.

Nuclear waste management practices in India are governed by the Atomic Energy Act 1962, which states that there should be no human settlement within five kilometres of a waste site or uranium tailing pond. “Even though Jadugoda has been in operation for more than 30 years, seven villages are within one-and-a-half kilometres of the danger zone. Dugridih begins just 40 metres away,” it added.

“UCIL mines at Jadugoda makes use of a ‘revolving door’ contractor arrangement, whereby workers are dismissed as soon as they show signs of increased radiation doses,” the study said, quoting the non-profit Jharkhandi Organisation Against Radiation. The organization works with tribals in the seven villages near the tailing pipes.

According to a survey conducted in 1999 by the organization in the seven villages, 47 per cent of the women respondents reported disruptions in menstrual cycle, 18 per cent said they had suffered miscarriages or given birth to stillborn babies in the past five years, 30 per cent reported fertility problems and nearly all women complained of fatigue, weakness and depression. “The most visible impact of the mine has been deformed children,” the survey said.

Of the three substances listed for PIC at the fourth meeting of the Conference of Parties (cop-4) to the Rotterdam Convention, only tributyltin was listed at the meeting held from October 27 to 31 in Rome. While seven countries opposed asbestos from being blacklisted, in case of endosulfan only India was responsible for its exclusion.

“India was put in a spot when country after country joined in accusing it for its entrenched position of not allowing the listing of endosulfan, a highly toxic pesticide,”

said Madhumita Dutta of Chennai-based advocacy group The Other Media.
Kerala, where endosulfan killed hundreds of people before being banned in 2002, passed a resolution on November 5 demanding that India retract its statement at Rotterdam Convention. Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said India should ban the use of the pesticide. State agriculture minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran said he was surprised the Centre did not find evidence to ban it. “We have given them enough social and statistical evidence and data provided by the Kerala Agricultural Univerisity,” Ratnakaran said.

Sruthi, a young girl of Padre village in Kerala’s Kasargod district, was born with stag-horn limbs, an ugly result of 25 years of spraying endosulfan on cashew plantations. Sixty-something Mangabhai Patel was exposed to asbestos for over 25 years at the Ahmedabad Electricity Authority in Gandhinagar before being diagnosed with asbestosis, a chronic respiratory disease. Both are unaware of the meeting that took place miles away to discuss the hazardous substances they and thousands like them are victims of.

“In case of chrysotile asbestos, not a single country which opposed the inclusion has any objection to the scientific process or document. They all opposed it politically,”

said Datta. The countries that opposed the inclusion of asbestos were India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan Republic, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Ukraine and the Philippines. The Indian delegation, led by environment and forests ministry officials, said it was tough to decide on asbestos because the study on it by the

National Institute of Occupational Health was still under way. “The Indian delegation acted under pressure from representatives of the chrysotile asbestos and the chemical industry,” said Gopal Krishna of Ban As-bestos Network of India, a group of health, environment and labour activists.

It’s official. The Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb), the nodal body for regulating environmental norms in India, is being “reduced to a near-defunct body”. The parliamentary standing committee on science and technology, environment and forests for the first time took note of the problems ailing cpcb in a report tabled in Parliament on October 21.

Issues like unqualified members and lack of enforcement power have long plagued the central and state pollution control boards (spcbs), a fact acknowledged by the board heads. The committee also noticed that the scarcity of technical staff was affecting the functioning of the boards.

“The key posts in cpcb and spcbs are being manned by officers of the Indian Administrative Service or bureaucrats who neither possess the necessary capabilities and expertise in properly managing and planning pollution control activities nor have enough time to pay attention to these activities,”

the report said.

In 2004-05, of the total cpcb and spcb staff, only 48 per cent were technical. An earlier report by a Supreme Court monitoring committee had stated that 77 per cent of the chairpersons and 55 per cent of the member secretaries of spcbs were not qualified to hold the post. The parliamentary committee report also criticized having part-time chairpersons by many state boards and said that only a full-time chairperson with adequate knowledge, background and experience in environment management could do justice to the post.

Dilip Biswas, former chairperson of cpcb, said during his tenure he had quite a few members on the board who were unqualified for the post.

“Meetings were more like a ritual than platforms for discussing important issues because many members were illiterate as far as environment was concerned. Many a times they would not even turn up for meetings.”

The law was to be faulted, said Biswas not the people as it did not define the exact qualifications of the board members. “Also, there is drastic shortage of general staff,” he said.

Though cpcb is an autonomous body, it is controlled by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Most of its members are ministry representatives. The acting chairperson of the board is the joint secretary of the ministry. The Water Act, under which the board was formed, allows the Central government to supersede cpcb in certain cases. “Such a provision renders cpcb to act as mere puppet in the hands of the Centre and does not allow any space for independent and autonomous functioning,” the report said. Citing the ministry’s 2002 decision to delegate punitive powers to cpcb with the condition that if need be the Centre may revoke the decision, the report said, “If all the powers and functions were to be concentrated in the hands of the ministry …such an apex body is untenable.”

The report has raised concerns about the cpcb data on air and water monitoring. It said hazardous pollutants like volatile organic compounds, ozone and aromatic hydrocarbons were not being monitored. Of the 332 monitoring stations in the country, several are not working and the data is not updated regularly. There is no central agency to set standards for emissions.
Even if the standards are finalized by a technical body, the ministry takes a long time to notify them, as has happened in the case of the sponge iron industry.

Low salaries to the technical personnel and lack of training also contributed to cpcb’s failure, it stated.

“It is you people who have polluted the river. All the muck that comes down here is from Delhi. Even if 30 crores out of the 400 crores spent on the Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) was properly utilized, Yamuna would have been much cleaner today. Everybody just shouts about cleaning, even in the evening Aarti, they shout about Yamuna Maiya and how it needs to be cleaned but nobody takes a single step,” said Hero Hiralal, summarizing my entire journey “to explore the river” which was the motive we started with.

I was amused at the awareness of this boatman who claimed to haven’t even stepped out of Braj region all his life but not at all surprised for him blaming Delhi for polluting the river. This had been the refrain throughout our eight days’ journey from Delhi to Agra in the villages along the banks of the River.

On June 5, the world Environment day, a group of professionals, farmers, activists and journalists headed off for a bike rally in the villages along the Yamuna. Flagged off from the site of Yamuna Satyagraha, where a group of people has been protesting against construction of Commonwealth Games Village for more than 300 days now, the aim of the rally was to check out the situation in villages downstream of Delhi till Agra.

Almost every village we visited as part of this Yatra- Qutub se Taaj-Ek hi Awaz, Jiye Jamuna, Jiye Jan Jan- accused Delhi for sending down polluted water to their villages. “There was a time when one dropped a coin and it could be seen clearly at the floor of the river. Now, even a human body will not be visible, the water is so dark,” said Sukhbeer Mistry of Kushak village in Haryana. The instance of the coin was another refrain that we heard throughout this journey. But as we saw later in Mathura, a coin diver had to struggle through tones of grime to get a ‘mouthful’ of coins.

Till 30 years ago, Kushak village used to have a three-day fair of Peer Sidh Baba on the banks of the river. “In the month of Baisakh, people of all villages from Hodal to Palwal in Haryana would come to have a dip in the river and sell their wares near her. That used to be the time of water-melons and jalebis. Then the water in the river receded and the pollution went up. Now, the fair has practically died down with nobody wanting a dip in the dirty water,” said Gajraj Bainsla, sarpanch of Kushak.

“Even the mother does not feed the child unless he cries of hunger. Now it seems the time has come to shout to make the government listen to us,” chipped in Bainsla. By now, everytime we left a village, we got used to giving a loud call of “Yamuna mata ki Jai” and that continued throughout the journey, even though now it was more a show of religion and politics than the conservation spirit which we were meant to start with.

The joke of the trip, as we called it, was the condition of sewage treatment plants, all built with the biggest chunk of money under the YAP. In not even one place we visited, the STPs were functional, for whatever reasons. In the first one we visited in Dhadhasiya in Faridabad, the 20 MLD STP that occupies an area of 17 acres only obstructed plastic in the first phase and desilted sewage in the second. No aeration was being done. But even these two functions were shut down for the last one month because the capacity was being enhanced to 65 MLD. Till then, raw sewage will continue to be bypassed into drains which merge with the river. “The water is treated upto 50% when the STP is operational and then discharged into Bhudhiya Nala from where people also draw it for irrigation. I have been into the business of environment much before all this activism came in. But till date, no general public except for the Japenese students once in a while have visited this STP. Who is interested to know where their daily muck is going?” said the contractor of this STP.

The first night halt of the yatra was in a temple of Tigaon village in Faridabad. Heavy rainfall brought with it stench and mosquitoes which were effective enough in keeping everybody up and ready by 4 am in the morning. A little more exploration in the morning light revealed that there was a huge Johad behind the temple that was filled up with garbage and water hyacinth and rainfall meant more stench from the stagnant water. The only source of inspiration throughout the night was the songs of Kishorilal Tanwar, one of the farmers who participated in the Yatra. Kishori’s land on the Yamuna flood plain in Delhi was acquired when Akshardham temple came up. Since then, he has been tilling other’s land. The campaign against the Commonwealth Games village turned this 50-year-old man into a poet, composer and singer. Armed with an earthen pot, Kishori launched a fierce singing battle in all the villages we went, besides inspiring us in mosquito-ridden nights.

The next day took us to Manjhawli village. Dogs and cows crossing the river easily gave testimony to the fact that the river here was no deeper than five feet. The sarpanch of Majhawli village explained very distinctly the relation between social ills and dying agriculture and how the move towards urbanization has completely left the river out of the social phenomenon. A little ahead of Manjhawli in Amirpur village, an embankment over Bhudiya Nala was being constructed. “You would think it’s a project of national importance that they are bunding the land for. 100 acres of land has been bought on the flood plain for making a golf course. And thatswhy the embankment,” said Ram Chandra of Manjhawli, who daughter-in-law is the Sarpanch of the village. In order to calm villagers, SRS Constructions, the company developing the golf course, is making roads in nearby Manjhawali and Akbarpur villages. “People are also happy that the rates of land will go up near the roads and it will be easy for them to sell and leave or use the easy money in drinking. Government is anyway encouraging that by giving easy license for alcohol outlets. Who wants to do farming anyway, there is no incentive in it. Industry has so much overwhelmed us that agriculture has become completely a thankless job. Once farming goes, river will no more be a part of the social structure as it is now,” he said.

“Kastkar ke bina desh ka udhhar nahi hota, vyapari aur bhikhmange ko des se pyar nahi hota,” reminisced Kishori. (no country can prosper without farmers. Businessmen and beggars do not love the country)

A young chap sitting there proposed the solution for cleansing of the river: concretise the flood plain. “If the flood plain is concretized, nothing bad will go into it,” said Shyambir. He was immediately refurbished by another oldman for talking out of his head. “How will your tube-well work if you concretise the Khadar. Where will the ground water come from?” he said.

Given all this, farmers are happy with the river water which as of now acts as a fertilizer. “When we use this water, we need to put in fewer fertilizers, but when we use the borewell water, we need much more fertilizer. This is because this water comes from the industries,” said Satwant Kumar of Beduki village on Haryana-UP border. “People spend lakhs and take pipelines from here to Hodal which is ten kilometers away. We grow everything in it but for vegetables because they perish very soon if we use this water. We know that our land might be destroyed in the long-run, but who will wait till then. We will sell our land to industries and go like people in Delhi are doing now,” said his friend Mange Ram. At Beduki Nala we also saw a dead cow floating and another skeleton lying on the bank.

Till now, the only beings who treated the river close to their heart were children who dived into it with gay abandon, cows that bathed and dogs that relaxed in the cold water. It was overwhelming to see their association with the river, despite the smelly water, diseases and allergies apart. The next day embarked our entry into the religious sphere of the journey. Having entered Uttar Pradesh, now it was the land of Krishna that we were traversing. An ISCON follower who participated in the Yatra removed his footwear here for the rest of the journey. “It is only agriculture that can solve all problems of unemployment and social evils” he declared.

It was already June 8 and we were very close to Ganga Dushehra, the day when lakhs of devotees in these parts go to the river to take a dip. So the religious fervour associated with the river was already at the hightened pitch, but only in few places did it transform into cleaning of the river, like in Mathura, where a river-cleaning drive was already underway at Vishram Ghat.

Master Nain singh, whom we met on the highway near Chata, said that people come to Braj for an 84-mile ‘Parikrama’ but now one would find dead animals on the Parikrama route along the river. Standing on the pontoon bridge of Shergarh was a different feeling from all previous days’ experience near the river. For the first time, the river did not stink, what else could one ask for. People considered it the benevolence of Krishna that the water quality here, as tested by experts accompanying us, was also better than any other hand-pump that they tested on the way. “The river has the capacity of self-cleansing and rejuvenation. From Faridabad till here, there is no major town, so very little sewage has been thrown into the river, which is the reason for it becoming clean again,” said Manoj Mishra, who led our team.

The next destination was Ova village, popularly known as Dauji’s village as Krishna’s elder brother Balram is said to have stretched the river till here from Barsana. For this small stretch, the river water quality just bettered with each passing village, as our water testing team suggested. But this was to last only till Vrindavan where we halted for the night. Jaisingh Ghera, the earstwhile Haveli of Maharaja Jai Singh of Jaipur, was no less than luxury after suffering mosquitoes all this while. In Mat, a little before Vrindavan, though 150 cusecs of water is especially released from Gang Nahar into the Yamuna, Kosi Nala also joins the river here. The difference between the water before and after the point where Kosi Nala joins it, is stark even on the look of it. There are hardly any devotees taking a dip on the left bank near the ghats as the garbage from Kosi Nala flows on this side.

Robyn Beeche, an Australian whom we met here, conducted a cycle rally from Yamunotri to Vrindavan in 1996. “There was a Buddhist monk with us who carried seeds in his pockets and kept spreading them as we went down. The morning prayer in schools of villages here invoked the river and we saw how they wrap the river in long sarees on her birthday in May. All this was enthralling,” she recalled her experiences.

And she had the other side too. Beeche, who came to Vrindavan in 1984, shows photographs of how plastic waste is entrenched in the river bed in Vrindavan. “The river has been pushed away from the Ghats by more than 500 metres due to silting, dumping of garbage and debris. The aquifers near the river have died due to this,” she said.

“The thick concrete layer of sand and plastic under water also does not let it penetrate down. The water level has gone down from 30-40 feet eight years ago to below 150 feet now. Earlier, water used to cut the silt, but less flow in the river has prevented that also now. At the same time, most of the funds given by MoEF are for awareness. Somebody please tell them that there is already enough awareness but people do not have options. A common man knows that garbage should not be thrown in the river but what are his options, similarly, what should be done about flush toilets in cities? said Neeraj Saigal of Food for Life Vrindavan, a local NGO.

The Mahant of Jaisingh Ghera, Shrivatsa Goswami, threw a different light on the issue. “You will hardly find any Ashrams in Vrindavan that still use Yamuna water for all their activities. Even here, we do bring Yamuna Jal, but use it only ceremoniously, not for all our activities because we know it is polluted. We treat it as polluted but still sing praises of the river, isn’t it paradoxical?” he said.

Goswami tells about instances how the road was build in flood plain as the access to the Ashram of a prominent Dharam Guru was bad and how a 400 crore project of Ring road is being planned around Vrindavan which would involve erecting pillars of the river bed in an attempt to make it a tourist destination.

“A river is the image of society. If it is polluted, the society is polluted. River is dying in urban areas as it has no role to play in urban lifestyle like it has in rural activities like agriculture, bathing, etc. If religion can be used for all corrupt purposes, why can’t it be used for positive results. 95% of the population in our country and all politicians are ruled by religion, so if the attention of religious gurus is turned towards the cause, it is bound to make an impact,” said Goswami.

In Mathura, damming of the river was the main issue. The problem of less current due to Gokul Barrage in Mathura has led to even wells along the ghat drying up. “The barrage was mean to increase water level in Mathura and Agra, but it has just gone down. All sewerage is stopped at the barrage, turning the borewell water yellow and stinky. This is due to huge amount of silt in the river. We protested against the barrage from day-1 and still it came up. The results are there for all to see,” said Gopeshwarnath Chaturvedi of Shrikrishan Janmasthan Sewa Sansthan, Mathura. As Chaturvedi talked, his men cleared the muck from the river outside for the approaching Ganga Dushehra. “When textile shops mushroomed suddenly in every nook and corner of Mathura, the colour of the river water temporarily became the colour of dye used, it is not that much now,” said Chaterjee.

“Nadi ki aviral dhara ko rokne se nadi khatam ho jayegi. 150 cusecs are released to the river from Ganga at Mat before Vrindavan, 120 cusecs is released at Okhla barrage, there is plan to get 100 cusecs more, but now even Tehri dam is running dry, where will we get more from,” he said.

As we moved towards Agra, the short respite of stench-free clean river got over. Though we were welcomed by local activists with great fervour who led us into the town surrounded by a procession, river conservation as a motive was lost somewhere along the way. Everything drinkable served to us in the next two days was in plastic glasses, which sadly were thrown on the river bed in front of our eyes, as did the used dry leave plates and plastic bowls in which we ate. Despite the guilt factor, nothing much could be done by the guests as we had to appreciate the hospitality. The journey which had taken a very religious turn from Shergarh onwards now went into the politics of an urbanized town.

And the image of the city, as Goswami said, showed on the river too. Mantola nala, the drain that passed through the world heritage corridor between the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, presented the ugliest sight of the trip as it fell into the river. Having eked out time in between public meetings and Sabhas organised in welcome of the “team from Delhi” and several of speeches by local leaders and garlanding events, we went to see Mantola nala. Unfortunately or fortunately, we went in the morning, the time when it turned out that the nala is the dirtiest with city dwellers cleaning themselves. The foam was accompanied by waste from leather factories which turned various hues. And we were there at a time, when the sewage from the Nala had just started going back to the STP after a gap of 15 days. Reason: the iron mesh from where the sewage is diverted to the pumping station was broken due to excess rust. “If we keep diverting the sewage when the mesh is broken, it will lead to blockage of the pumping station with plastics, so the gates of the nala towards the river were opened,” said Deepchand, a sanitation worker at the point in Ramlila ground of Agra where the water is diverted to the Dhandhupura STP. Local news reports show that it is not a once in a while phenomenon. The gates are opened every once in a while. “This is due to old and worn out pumping stations and STPs which do not work half the time or there is no electricity,” said Ravi Singh, environmentalist.

Officially 78 MLD water is discharged into Mantola nala everyday, though unofficial estimates show more than 100 MLD. And all this sewage is discharged into the river in blatant violation of the Supreme Court order as well as the Water Act. Meanwhile, the city administration is contemplating getting drinking water supply from the Ganga via a 130 km long pipeline as the city has no other drinking water supply except for the Yamuna as of now. There goes the YAP!!

Near the school where we stayed on the Ghat of Yamuna in Agra, there was another sewage pumping station, which looked more like an abandoned well till one morning when I saw somebody cleaning the premises from the school building. I rushed down to talk to him and found that Rajwaha sewage pumping station has been out of order for some days now. No new story this time too!!

“Historians in the city tell us that Taj was built right on the edge of the river. People would get down from their boats and into the Taj Mahal. Will you ever believe that as you see the Taj at a distant height from the river now,” said Ravi.

From Delhi to Agra, its about 300 kilometres of the river as it meanders and it goes 400 kilometres more from here before finally merging in the Sangam, how it even flows after this is a big question. Perhaps, that’s the divinity attached to it, that it is just flowing, either as a sewer or the river, that’s for individuals to decide.

These days, there are a lot of problems that the humans are facing with regards to air pollution. The more the vehicles are used everyday all around the world, the bigger the problem gets. And the number one blame goes to the emission of diesel engines from automobiles and industrial equipments that use fuel.

Aside from performing well just as ordinary diesel fuels do, biodiesel is more economic to use and has been proven to have same performance as regular fuel engines. It also does not only last longer but also have higher rate of lubrication with lover concentration levels, which makes it blend better and emitting less pollution than other fuel engines, especially diesel.

With these advantages that make biodiesel more useful than other regular and diesel fuel, the environment will be saved from getting destroyed that usually start from factories that refines fuel engines. Biodiesel industries are have complicated process and is always environment friendly, competing greatly with other fuel prices, since it is more affordable and popular nowadays.

Also, biodiesel is also non-flammable, making the workers in a factory or refinery that uses these are at low risk from workplace accidents and possible fire. With the fast rising of oil prices, more and more individuals and company owners prefer to use biodiesel, allowing them to save more money on gas and making their machines and vehicles last longer with wear and tear, which also gives them lesser chances of having frequent trips to the auto shop or machine repair.

High inorganic arsenic exposure to diabetes has been established earlier by studies in Bangladesh, Taiwan and Mexico. But the effect of low and moderate levels of arsenic was unknown. A study in the US has found that inorganic arsenic, even at low levels, may cause diabetes. Found in mineral deposits in rocks and soil, arsenic leaches into groundwater, which when supplied for drinking, can be harmful, say researchers of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA.

The researchers studied data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2003-04 for 788 adults. They found that individuals with diabetes had higher levels of inorganic arsenic compared to those without diabetes. Apart from contaminated drinking water, flour and rice can also contain small quantities of inorganic arsenic, if grown or cooked in areas with arsenic contaminated soil or water.

The study says that 8 per cent of the public water supply system in the US may exceed arsenic levels of 10 micrograms per litre, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for arsenic concentration in drinking water.

“Estimated daily dietary intake of inorganic arsenic in the US ranges from 8.4-14 micrograms per day for various age groups,”

said the study published in the August 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This study predicts a grim future for India where arsenic poisoning is spreading to new areas. India is also called the diabetes capital of the world. However, one problem with the study is that the direct linkage between arsenic exposure and diabetes has not been explored.

“This is a cross-sectional study. Two observations have been made on the basis of data available. Only the association can be claimed, not the causality. The two things may happen together, but it’s not necessary that one causes the other. Further studies need to be carried out,”

said Nikhil Tandon, professor in the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism, AIIMS, Delhi.

Shashank R Joshi, endocrinologist at Lilawati Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai, says,

“Arsenic related diabetes would form a very small percentage of the total diabetes in the country which is high, due to susceptible genes, bad diet and lack of exercise.”