Hemkund, a glacial lake, is situated in the Nanda Devi Biospehere Reserve in Uttaranchal. The tenth Guru of the Sikhs is known to have meditated near the lake before assuming the human avatar. The pilgrimage includes a 19-kms trek after reaching the base camp at Gobind Ghat. But my problem started from Delhi itself as we left with a 150 people strong ‘religious troupe.’ They distributed ice-creams as soon as we started the wrappers of which everybody threw happily out of the bus even as they sang religious hymns. I managed to procure a polythene (for all my hate for the thing!) in which I collected the wrappers that I took from my parents and aunt and brother.

On the way from Shrinagar to Govind Ghat in the third day of journey from where we were supposed to start the trek, the group decided to stop near the banks of the river Alaknanda and prepare lunch. As some elders cooked, all others went down to the river bank to cool their heels; and also took along their soft drink bottles and tin cans. “Such is nature’s paradox. Even as the sun is lashing down on us, there is ice-cold water that provides relief. You do not get to see this ever in Delhi,” said a young man in the group as he sipped from his can of Pepsi. The next moment brought exactly what I dreaded. The can was flowing with the ‘ice-cold water.’ We went up to the road side for lunch. The site was chosen not just because of proximity to the river but also for a hand-pump that was much needed for cooking and washing. An old ascetic lived in a shack near the hand-pump who I am sure was used to the ‘loud’ Punjabis by now. The food tasted good but not the after-affects. The disposable plates were thrown in a pile near the ascetic’s shack along with the leftover food and other vegetable waste. This I could not collect in my polythene and my brother jeered at my obvious misery.

“Oye Environment! if you think too much, you will not be able to enjoy your vacation,” he said.

That is how my family has come to address me as in the last few years.

While talking about the role of religion in Environment conservation, Shrivatsa Goswami, a Mahant in Vrindavan told us last year that the quality of river water in a region talks a lot about the character of people in that region. If the river is pristine, people are still honest and sincere while its vice-versa in places where the river is dirty. I recalled this as we approached Govind Ghat. Parallel to the river, just a little higher, one could see a stream of vehicles, in all hues and sizes. There were more than a lakh pilgrims at Govind Ghat that day. The hoardings stating the presence of an eco-development committee were re-assuring but only for a short time. The claims that garbage is sent down to the plains for processing was trashed soon when I saw the sweepers off-loading their trolleys on the hill side, straight down into the river. I don’t know how long will the river remain pristine there.

Having reached the Gurudwara before my family, I was waiting outside when the organizer of our group came by. Trying my best not to sound like an ‘activist’ I asked him if it was possible that the pilgrims brought their own steel utensils for the food served on the way. “We tried doing this, but people are not admitting at all. They think it is extra luggage. We even tried carrying it for them but they are not happy even washing them,” said Bubble, as he was called by all of them. I wondered how people managed before “disposable plates” were invented.

Soon, I saw my mother and aunt who proudly showed me their shopping for the next day’s trek: five wooden sticks and five raincoats, costing Rs 10 each and made of polythene. “They are so cheap, one can even throw them after use,” said my aunt. Yeah! I glared at her. The next day, I was to see a lot of them covering bushes as we climbed the mountain.

19 kms of trek might not be an easy feat for all age groups. But more than the strength, I realized it was the religious drive that was edging most people when I looked back at the stream of humanity climbing up. Apart from the mules and piggy backs and ‘Palkis’ carrying those who could afford them, there were also people as old as 80 and kids as young as 4-5 who climbed uncomplainingly, with a prayer on their lips. I made some friends amongst these fellow Moksha seekers who were surprised like a child at every glacier, stream and unusual looking bushes and fruits. I also made a few friends who wondered why can’t there be a road from Govind Ghat to Hemkund. “Afterall, lakhs of people go up every year. The government should think on these lines,” said a professor from Punjab. “Moksha is not so easy, Prof,” I said to myself but dreaded the idea of blasting the mountains for the road.

Well, the trek did not turn out to be as difficult with the Dhabas at every turn selling all sorts of things, from raincoats to Glucon-D to packaged drinking water. Infact, I received a piece of advice as I filled my bottle from a stream on the way. “This water might be polluted, you will fall sick,” said one elderly lady. I recalled the ads of Himalaya and Ganga bottled water that claim the water to be especially “packaged from the mountain streams.” I wondered if that was safer because it was sold for Rs 15 a litre and not free like this stream. Here, I had another tussle with my family as they bought bottles of Limca. “They have sweepers all along the way to take the garbage down and recycle it,” my father said. One such sweeper was lighting a pile of garbage with his ‘beedi’ on my way back. I had become an old-fashioned cynic; I slapped myself on the head.

My mother, whose last trip to Hemkund was 30 years ago, said that things used to be very different back then. “There were not so many shops. Very few people went up because we had to walk on the glacier after the first 4-5 kms of the trek. The Hemkund ‘sarovar’ itself had little water as the rest was frozen and it was a challenge to take even a single dip in the ice-cold water, a ritual around which the pilgrimage is based,” she said. Well, we did not get a chance to walk on the snow but I was amazed to see the blue lake. The water was chilly but felt calming after the long trek.

As the atheist me sat there wondering how the Guru managed to find such a beautiful place to meditate, I heard the statutory announcements from the Gurudwara behind the lake.

“This is the Guru’s abode, all the pilgrims coming up should take care that they do not soil the surroundings. Please do not eat and throw chips packets and bottles around,” said the Granthi.

I wondered if anybody was listening.

The 10-year-old tiger – they usually life for 14-15 years in the wild-in Corbett National Park killed Bhagwati Devi of Dhikuli village in the buffer zone of the park on February 6 when she went into the forest to collect firewood. The villagers said the tiger attacked the 50-year-old from behind as she sat collecting wood. Following protests by people, the chief wildlife warden of Uttarakhand issued orders to kill or catch the “man-eater”. The forest department trapped the animal and sent it to a zoo in Nainital on February 10.

Bhagwati Devi’s husband B C Nainwal, however, does not blame the tiger. “It is the policies of the government that made the tiger a victim of public ire,” he said. “The tiger was roaming near Dhikuli for four-five months. The main reason was elephant safaris by resorts here. They are known to throw meat in front of the tiger to increase the sighting of the big cat.”

A forest official admitted the resort operators’ role was suspicious. “They conducted elephant safaris in the area though it is not a tourist zone,” he said. Thirty-six resorts line the state highway in Dhikuli, on the other side of which is the park boundary. The department has now banned elephant safaris in the buffer zone. The forest department says the tiger was observed in the area for more than a year. “We warned the villagers not to go inside the forest but they did not heed the warning,” said Umesh Tiwari, the Bijrani range officer.

It is believed to have been lured out of Deoria forest range in Pilibhit district of Uttar Pradesh in November 2008 while chasing a wild boar, which ran into adjacent sugarcane fields that mimicked the tiger’s natural habitat, grassland. On November 9, it attacked a farm labourer in the sugarcane field in Pareba village when he was cutting sugarcane. The next day it attacked Kishan Pal Gangwal in nearby Dammupura village but the teenager survived. “The first victim was in a hunched position, so probably the tiger mistook it for an animal,” said Pradeep Tyagi, a forest guard in Deoria.

The first incident happened 3 km from the forest and the second one about 5 km. The forest is continuous with sugarcane fields. The tiger was around three years old and was probably trying to set up its territory and found the adjoining sugarcane field a good habitat, said P K Gupta, divisional forest officer, Pilibhit.

The tiger was next spotted in Shahjahanpur, some 60 km from Pilibhit. On December 21, a teenager’s flesh-eaten body was found 150 km away in Barabanki district. This was when the chief wildlife warden of Uttar Pradesh B K Patnaik declared the tiger a man-eater. “The boy had been missing for three days, so it is difficult to say if he was a victim of the tiger,” said an official in the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA). The chief wildlife warden countered this, saying a tiger’s pugmarks were found near the body.

The district magistrate announced an award for shooting the tiger, but the decision was soon reverted because it was against the NTCA guidelines. By now a frenzied mob was chasing the tiger. Four elephants, trackers, forest guards, tranquillising experts from the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun and wildlife NGOs from Delhi, were on the hunt. Some NGOs even set dogs on the trail of the big cat. Scared, the dogs hung close to the elephants’ legs.

The tiger wandered around human habitations in Lakhimpur, Sitapur, Barabanki and Lucknow before reaching Rudauli forest range of Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh. It covered about 300 km. On January 10 and 14, it killed two more people in Kumarganj range of Faizabad. Except for the first kill in Pilibhit, the three other victims were killed inside forest. This shows the tiger did not come to the village to make a kill-a characteristic of a man-eater.

On February 24, it was shot between the eyes by Nawab Shafath Ali Khan, a shooter who came from Hyderabad. NTCA guidelines do not permit a non-forest services official to shoot a man-eater unless the forest department is not equipped to do so. To forest officials’ embarrassment it turned out to be a tigress though all the while they inferred from the pugmarks it was male.

A tiger, not more than two years old, killed its first human prey on January 4 outside the Kishanpur sanctuary in Dudhwa National Park close to the border with Nepal. Since then it has killed four more people and injured one. It claimed its last victim on February 19. The chief wildlife warden issued orders to shoot it.

“It did not eat the first two victims but only the third kill. It had lost the fear of humans. The last time we saw it, the tiger refused to move away when he saw a crowd,” said Mudit Gupta, senior project officer of WWF at a camp set up by the forest department near Kishanpur.

“The tiger was getting used to feeding on cattle carcasses thrown outside villages in the critical tiger habitat. Only once in the past two months it tried killing a wild animal in a wheat field. But the marks of struggle – badly damaged crop – show it was very young not trained in killing a wild prey,” said Anil Kumar Singh, coordinator, Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), a non-profit.

Here also sugarcane fields served as a good habitat for the tiger, where it got enough prey too. “The tiger was weaned early from its mother. When the sugarcane crop was cut, it took to killing humans,” said Anjan Talukdar, a veterinary doctor with the trust who tranquillised the tiger on March 1. The tiger was sent to the Lucknow zoo.

The Uttar Pradesh forest department is still on its toes. A tiger is roaming around Basti in eastern Uttar Pradesh. It probably wandered out of Valmiki sanctuary in Bihar and entered Ghazipur across the Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border.

“It doesn’t seem to be a man-eater. One person it killed was in self-defence. It is a 10-year-old tiger who is probably dislodged from its territory. It may reach Sohelwa Wildlife Sanctuary in Balrampur district,”

said Patnaik. These incidents have provoked a debate among wildlife managers and experts on whether the tigers were man-eaters and what compelled them to kill human beings. “Most of these tigers killed their first human prey in an accidental meeting. None of them considered humans their sole prey and in that sense they could be called problem tigers, but the term man-eater is for a tiger that learns to kill and subsist on humans in an efficient manner. The tiger then almost exclusively subsists on humans and actively seeks them out as prey,” said Y V Jhala, scientist at the Wildlife Institute of India. “None of these tigers fit into this category.”

In the three cases, the first victim was in a hunched position. “If surprised or cornered, a tiger can mistake human beings as a prey species and kill them. This is not man-eating,” Jhala added.

In two of the cases, tigers entered sugarcane fields. According to NTCA guidelines, tigers killing humans in sugarcane fields can be declared man-eaters only when they start living in the fields and attack people regularly. “All big cats venture into fields. This happened in the 1980s too, but then there was no 24×7 television,” said Vidya Athreya, a research associate with the Pune-based Kaati Trust that works on leopard rescue.

The Corbett tiger was captured in a hurry after what seemed like an accidental attack and the Faizabad tiger was chased around, pushed to make attacks, said Jay Mazoomdaar, journalist and filmmaker who broke the news about the absence of tigers in Sariska in 2005.

Hunter-turned-conservationist Billy Arjan Singh said tigers now have to live close to humans because there is no prey left in Dudhwa and forest mafia have destroyed the forest. More herbivores are now found in the buffer area of Corbett than in the core, added Iqbal Hussain, former sarpanch of Dhikuli.

It is not always out of compulsion that tigers move out of the forest. Experts say young tigers are expected to go out. “Usually they come back to the forest but sometimes they go too far and lose track,” said conservation biologist Raghunandan Singh Chundawat. Search for territory is a major reason for tigers moving out of forests. “Most tiger reserves are too small to contain a viable population of tiger for a long period. The prime habitats are occupied by dominant tigers. Sub-adult and old tigers are forced to use marginal habitats or disperse to other forests,” said Jhala.

However, today there are no connecting forests between tiger populations and when tigers disperse, they have to move through human habitats searching for a forest patch to settle in. Not finding any forest, they are forced to kill livestock and humans, said Jhala. “Till the 1960s, there were grasslands between the forest and agricultural fields in Pilibhit. Now the fields have extended up to the forest,” said P K Gupta.

The authorities in Corbett said they were forced by public ire to shoot the tiger or send it to a zoo. Chundawat questions the logic of sending tigers to zoos when there are very few tigers in the wild. “They need to trap the animal and take it back to a suitable habitat. When this can be done in Sariska, why can’t it be done in terai?”

Tiwari of Corbett said it is not easy to rehabilitate every tiger in the wild, especially a male who is not readily accepted by tigers in their territories. But there are forests like Rajaji National Park, which can accommodate tigers.

Wildlife experts also point out it is crucial to take quick action in case of a wandering tiger because if it adapts to eating humans, rehabilitating it in the wild becomes difficult. The authorities are then forced to take extreme steps like shooting. “We need a special team to deal with such situations.

The forest department should start monitoring tigers as soon as villagers report their straying. They do not have to wait for a kill to happen and then people to get angry and the politicians to pressure on them to act,” said Chundawat.

Athreya suggests tracking through GPS collars, though it is expensive-one collar costs Rs 2-3 lakh-and will require capturing tigers. The long-term solution to avoid such conflicts, point out wildlife experts, is better training of forest officials in pugmark identification and arms handling, and better habitat management, like ensuring a gradual, not abrupt, decrease of forest cover.

ENVIRONMENTALIST G D Agarwal has managed to stall the controversial Loharinag Pala power project coming up speedily on the Bhagirathi, a tributary of the Ganga. On February 20, the Ministry of Power assured him work on the dam would be suspended immediately. Following this, Agarwal who was into the 37th day of his hunger strike, broke his fast.

This was the second time Agarwal, former member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, went on a hunger strike demanding a ban on hydropower projects on the crucial 125 km stretch of the Ganga between Uttarkashi and Gangotri and to allow the river to flow naturally (see ‘Myth of power’, Down To Earth, September 1-15, 2008).

In June 2008, he had called off his nine-day fast after the Uttarakhand government suspended work on two hydropower projects at Pala Maneri and Bhairon Ghati, upstream of Uttarkashi district. However, work on the Loharinag-Pala hydropower project, being executed by the National Thermal Power Corporation in Uttarakashi, did not stop. Agarwal resumed his hunger strike on January 14.

To pacify him, the Union power ministry sent him a letter on February 5 promising to keep a minimum flow of 16 cubic metre per second (cumecs) at the Loharinag-Pala dam site during the lean season in winter. The ministry assured no other project would come up on the Bhagirathi.

In his reply to power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Agarwal said he had been “duped” by the ministry. Citing a similar letter written by the ministry on June 30, Agarwal said he was led to believe the ministry was committed to conserving the Bhagirathi.

“I broke my annshan (fast). But now, I have realized where the commitments of your ministry lie,” said Agarwal. He was referring to the report of the expert committee, set up by the ministry, which said only four cumecs water flow can be maintained at the site once the dam comes up.

“I doubt the power ministry’s credibility and do not plan to enter into any contact or communication with it until all work on Loharinag Pala has been completely stopped,” the environmentalist said.

Managers for Ganga
The Centre has notified the Ganga River Basin Authority, which will be responsible for comprehensive management of the Ganga river basin. It will be headed by the prime minister. The authority will have chief ministers of the five Ganga basin states—Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal—on board. The ministers of water resources, environment and forests, finance, urban development and science and technology will also be members.

“The body will see that development requirements (such as construction of hydropower projects) are met in a sustainable manner while ensuring ecological flows,” said a press release issued by the prime minister’s office (pmo) on February 17. The body will not be a separate additional clearance mechanism. Rather, it will develop a management plan for the river basin and address pollution abatement measures by ensuring adequate ecological flow in the river. Specific interventions for sewage treatment have also been planned.

Environmentalists have been quick to criticize the notification.

“The term ‘ecological flow’ is tricky,” said Pavitra Kumar, a close associate of Agarwal. “Ecological flow means maintaining adequate water flow in the river just for its ecological health. The authority should have used the term ‘environmental flow’ which also accounts for human needs such as groundwater recharge potential of the river,”

said Kumar.

Others said the notification is just another political ploy.
“Announcement to set up a new authority ahead of the elections is merely a move to prevent the (opposition) Bharatiya Janta Party from cashing in on the Ganga controversy,” said Vimal Bhai, head of Matu People’s Organization, an environmental group active in Uttarakhand. The matter will be dragged on till the elections and then forgotten because even the Congress is not against the dams, Vimal Bhai said.

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 government has decided to declare the Ganga a national river, following campaigns from several quarters to preserve its cultural and religious significance. A High Powered Ganga River Basin Authority, to be chaired by the prime minister, will be set up as an empowered planning, implementing and monitoring authority for the river. The Ministry of Environment and Forests, or MOEF, has decided to conduct a basin-wide pilot study of the ecological impact of hydel projects coming up on the Ganga.

The events were set into motion by a letter written by Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi to Union water resources minister Saifuddin Soz in mid-August. The letter was forwarded to MOEF, which called a n inter-ministerial meeting in September. The decision to carry out the pilot study was taken at the meeting attended by representatives of water resources and power ministries, Central Water Commission, Central Electricity Authority and the National Thermal Power Corporation (ntpc).

The study will be conducted from Dharasu to Gangotri lying in the stretch of the Ganga’s tributary Bhagirathi in Uttarakhand. It will help in the planning of hydropower projects and maintaining adequate water flow in the river for its ecological health. IIT Roorkee and G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, Almora, have bee asked to submit proposals for conducting the study.

Projects coming up on the Ganga’s tributaries, the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda, are planned in such a way that the tunnel of one ends only a small distance before the reservoir of the next one. This will leave no patch of the river to flow freely (see ‘Myth of Power’, Down To Earth, September 1-15, 2008).

Another committee was set up in July by ntpc on the power ministry’s directions to look into the minimum flow required in the Bhagirathi to maintain its ecological health—this is called environmental flow—and to find out the populations of fish and other species around the Loharinag Pala dam and its impact on them. Two projects upstream of Uttarkashi, Bhairon Ghati and Pala Maneri, were stalled after G D Agarwal, former member secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board, went on hunger strike in June. But work on ntpc’s Loharinag Pala project is under way.

The study on environmental flow , done by the National Institute of Hydrology (nih), Roorkee on behalf of ntpc, concluded that a flow of at least 16 cubic metre per second (cumecs) needed to be maintained at the dam site.

“But ntpc’s proposal said only three cumecs will be maintained. We have asked the nih team for clarifications. Only then the final decision (on letting the dam function) will be take,”

said Rajendra Singh, member of the committee. moef recommends a minimum flow of a little less that one cumec, while the Bhagirathi requires 13 cumecs of flow throughout the year to maintain its Class A status. The International Water Management Institute defines a Class A river as one whose water needs little treatment for drinking.

New study, just hogwash?

Environmentalists have criticized the pilot study on grounds that moef will only be repeating what the earlier committee has undertaken. Vimal Bhai head of Matu People’s Organization, an environmental group active in Uttarakhand, said,

“The new study is hogwash. More than a year ago, the National Environment Appellate Authority had told moef to set up a monitoring committee to oversee Loharinag Pala project. The ministry has not done so. When asked it cited lack of staff as the reason. When it could not monitor one project, how can we trust it on this study, which is for the entire stretch? And the construction is not even being stopped. What will they study once the dams are already there.”

An MOEF official, who attended the inter-ministerial meeting, told Down To Earth, that the Uttarakhand government was “playing hide and seek and might restart the projects once the elections are over”.

THE state highway between Viramgam and Surendranagar towns in Gujarat presents a stark contrast. On one side is a carpet of green fields for miles, and on the other, decaying Jowar and cotton crops, at places submerged in water. The 60 km highway itself remained under water for three days in mid-September.

The contrast makes clear the nature of floods in Gujarat. There are no rivers near inundated areas. After Surat floods in 2006, this is the second time that a major flood has happened in the state due to blocking of drainage paths. Most affected areas are in the peninsular Saurashtra region. In two days, September 17-18, it rained as much in Surendranagar district as it rains in a year there. “It rained more than 40 inches in 30 hours, leading to flooding. There was no time for water to recede,” said J D Bhad, collector of Surendranagar.

The damage was heavy. Over a hundred thousand hectares of agricultural land was damaged by water-logging. About two thousand houses have collapsed completely and 13,000 others are partially damaged. Yudhveer Jadhav, an elder member of Adalsar village in Surendranagar, estimates that in his Lakhtar taluka, cotton crops worth Rs 40 crore have been damaged.

Jadhav’s family itself had sown cotton in 4 hectares (ha). “We invested whatever we could in the crop and were waiting for it to grow,” he said. But then came floods. About 70 per cent of the crops and 20 per cent land in Adalsar are ruined. Jadhav has calmly accepted his fate. “It is a natural disaster, one cannot call it the fault of the government,” he said. But he does agree that had it not been for the raised highways and canals of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Project, the damage could have been lesser.

In nearby Limbadi taluka, Kantibhai Bhatana also lost half his crops.

“Two acres (a little less than a hectare) of my land near the road is completely damaged and it will take years before anything grows on it. The sand and rocks that came with water will have to be removed manually and new soil will have to be spread,”

he said. The contrast was visible here as well. The crop in his field across the road, connecting Surendranagar town and Limbadi, was standing tall and healthy. “The rainfall did not affect that side much because the water receded quickly. On this side the water was blocked by the road,” he said.

Survey for compensation would take “some time”, said Bhad.

On the edge of Saurashtra in Little Rann of Kutch, salt workers called Agariyas were stuck in more than seven feet of water. Their newly installed machinery for salt production was submerged.

The Rann is a low-lying area that remains submerged for four months till August. In September the Agariyas migrate to the Little Rann of Kutch to produce salt. “The problem aggravated because there are no raised areas in the Rann where they could take refuge,” said Bharat Patel, who works with Agariya Hitrakshak Manch, an advocacy group for the rights of salt workers. Bodies of five fishermen were found in Little Rann of Kutch, he added. The nearby 42 sq km Nal Sarovar bird sanctuary was also under water.

Obstructive network

The damage due to the Narmada canal network in Saurashtra and to the network itself was huge. A yet-to-be-commissioned pump house in Lakhtar, the second largest in Asia, gave way under high water pressure. The canal breached at three places, aggravating the flood.

The Saurashtra branch canal of the Narmada project—that branches off from the main canal at Kadi in Mehsana district and runs across the Saurashtra region—is designed to hold a flow of about 400 cubic metres per second (cumecs), but the downpour led to a flow of over 600 cumecs. This was one of the reasons for breaches.

Asia’s second largest pump station in Lakhtar, now broken

There were also reports of villagers breaching the high embankment of the canal as water was being held in their village. “This is because at places the ground level is lower than the base of the canal,” said an official of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (ssnl) that manages the entire canal network, on the condition of anonymity.

The topography of the area is like a saucer. The first half of the Saurashtra branch canal is sloping, while the second half is flat, where water has to be pumped to keep it flowing.

“The rainfall happened in 110 sq km of the canal’s tail-end area. As the water was draining towards the slope, its movement was obstructed by the pump house, which can pump water only in one direction (away from the slope), thus it was broken,”

said an ssnl official. According to ssnl officers, more than Rs 50 crore will be required to reconstruct the pump and repair the breaches.

Rain pattern is not the same

Did the designers of the canal err in assessing its required holding capacity? Usually, engineers consider rainfall data of 50 years while deciding the design capacity, but a change in the rainfall pattern in the past few years has spoiled the calculations.

Saurashtra is a drought-prone area but rainfall pattern there is changing. The rainfall in 24 hours on September 19 was 1,123 mm in Lakhtar, almost double the average of total rainfall in a year there, 550 mm, according to the State Disaster Management Authority. The average is based on last 11 years’ data. In 2007, Lakhtar received 836 mm of rainfall. In Limbadi, rainfall in September was 622 mm in 24 hours as against an annual average of 699 mm. “I have seen floods only four-five times. The last big flood was about 35 years ago. But this year’s is the worst,” said octogenarian Megabha Mohan Samatiya of Moti Katechi village in Limbadi. In 2005, Limbadi received 1,245 mm rainfall.

But in recent years people in Surendranagar have suffered small floods almost every monsoon. “The canal breaches every year during monsoon in Halwad and Dhrangadra talukas. We have reported this to the mamlatdar, a block-level officer, several times but there is no action,” said Patel of Agariya Hitrakshak Manch.

Wherever the ground level is below the canal bed level, drainage siphons are created in the canal every one-and-a-half kilometers. But even siphons got submerged. They easily get clogged by silt and logs. “Drainage paths have got obstructed due to the canals which divide the topography into two. Whatever we do, we cannot fully compensate the requirements of nature. People will breach the dam when they see danger to their homes and crops,” admitted the ssnl official.

A study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences released in August this year shows that about 52 per cent of the command area of the Narmada canal faces very high probability of water-logging and salination, resulting in crop loss. This is even as the supply for irrigation and drinking water has not been fulfilled according to its potential.

Himanshu Upadhyaya of the Delhi-based NGO Environics Trust said rainfall was a “frivolous” excuse for what happened in Saurashtra.

“This cannot be called flooding because none of these areas is near a river basin. The phenomenon of local flooding due to water-logging was evident in 2004. Infrastructure in Gujarat overlooks the gradient of land, be it canals or the highways,”

he said. The Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway had caused similar damage during the 2006 flood.
Farmers like Jadhav, however, continue to believe that floods are God’s will, giving the government a clean chit.

“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.

The roaring of motorcycles shattered the early morning calm on the Yamuna floodplains in Delhi. On World Environment Day on June 5, a group of professionals, farmers, activists and journalists gathered for a bike rally along the river at the Yamuna Satyagraha site, where a bunch of farmers and activists have been campaigning against the construction of the Commonwealth Games Village on the riverbed for over 300 days.

As the river drifted into Faridabad its burden of sewage and industrial waste kept on increasing and the spectacular failure of the Yamuna Action Plan began to unfold. In Dhadhasiya, 40 km from Delhi, a sewage treatment plant (stp) of 20 million litre per day capacity sprawled over 7 hectares made a great showpiece of the plan, but it was shut down for upgradation. Untreated sewage was being discharged into the river. “Who is interested in knowing where their daily muck is going?” said the stp contractor with a shrug. Even when the plant functions, it treats the sewage only partially. In not even one place we visited, stps were functional.

“It is you people who have polluted the Yamuna. All the muck that comes down here is from Delhi. Everybody just shouts about cleaning it; in the evening aarti they chant prayers of Yamuna Maiya, but nobody takes a single step.” —HERO HIRALAL a boatman in Vrindavan

On the first night of the journey we slept in a temple of Tigaon village, 3 km from the river, in Faridabad. Heavy rainfall brought with it stench and mosquitoes which were effective in keeping everybody up and ready by 4 in the morning. The only source of inspiration throughout the night was the songs of fellow traveller Kishorilal Tomar. His land on the Yamuna floodplain in Delhi was acquired when Akshardham temple came up. Since then he has been tilling others’ land. The campaign against the Games Village turned this 50-year-old farmer into a poet, composer and singer. Armed with an earthen pot, Kishorilal would fling himself into high-pitched singing in all the villages we went to.

The next day took us to Manjhawli village in Ballabgarh. Dogs and cows easily crossing the river gave away its shallowness. A little ahead an embankment over Bhudiya Nala was being constructed. “You would think it’s a project of national importance. Actually, 40 hectares have been bought on the floodplain for making a golf course, hence the embankment,” said Ram Chandra of Manjhawli. To keep the villagers quiet, SRS Constructions, the company developing the golf course, was making roads in Manjhawli and nearby Akbarpur. “People are happy that the rates of land will go up and they will sell and leave. Who wants to do farming anyway? Once farming goes, the river will no more be a part of the social structure,” he said.

A cow’s body floated in Beduki Nala, 30 km from Manjhawli, and on the bank lied a skeleton. Some farmers have discovered benefits in using the polluted water. “When we use this water, we need less fertilizers because it comes from industries,” said Satwant Kumar of Beduki village on the Haryana-Uttar Pradesh border.

The river is indeed getting estranged from society. Until 30 years ago, Kushak village in Haryana used to have a three-day fair of Peer Sidh Baba on its banks. “In the month of Baisakh, people from all over Haryana would come here 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.

Village after village accused Delhi of polluting the water. “There was a time when one dropped a coin and it could be seen on the floor of the river. Now even a human body will not be visible. All because of Delhi, which takes away all the river water for drinking and releases this dark, stinking filth for us,” said Sukhbeer Mistry of Kushak. Later in Mathura we saw a coin diver struggling with grime to get a mouthful of coins—under water, coin divers find it convenient to collect coins in the mouth.

As the villagers collected around us, our leader and convenor of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, Manoj Mishra, exhorted, “It is you all, the people of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, who have to tell Delhi to stop polluting, else you will not give them any water from upstream.”
The next day our journey entered into the religious sphere. Now we were traversing the land of Krishna. An iskcon follower among us removed his footwear for the rest of the journey. It was June 8 and we were very close to Ganga Dushehra, the day when millions of devotees take a dip in the holy river. The religious fervour was at a heightened pitch, but only at few places did it transform into cleaning of the river, like at Vishram Ghat in Mathura.

From the pontoon bridge of Shergarh in the Braj region the Yamuna presented a different sight—and smell. For the first time during the journey, it did not stink. People considered it the benevolence of Krishna. Mishra said it was the river’s self-cleansing capacity. “From Faridabad till here, there is no major town, so very little sewage has been thrown into the river,” he said. The river rejuvenated with each passing village till Vrindavan, where we halted for the night. A little before Vrindavan, 50 cusecs of water from Ganga Nahar is released into the Yamuna to improve its water quality. But at Vrindavan Kosi Nala pours its muck and garbage into it.

In the morning we took a boat ride around the ghats, most of which were 500 metres from the river, divided from it by a sand beach and a concrete road.

“It is you people who have polluted the river. All the muck that comes down here is from Delhi. Even if Rs 30 crore of the Rs 400 crore spent on the Yamuna Action Plan were utilized, the Yamuna would have been much cleaner. Everybody just shouts about cleaning it; in the evening aarti, they chant prayers of Yamuna Maiya, but nobody takes a single step,”

said our boatman Hero Hiralal, who claims never to have stepped out of Braj, summarizing my entire journey. We heard this lament often during the journey.

The Yamuna was choking on silt, garbage and debris. “The thick layer of sand and plastic under water does not let it penetrate underground. The groundwater level has gone down from 30-40 feet eight years ago to below 150 feet. Most of the environment ministry funds are for awareness. What should be the next step after awareness?” asked Neeraj Saigal of ngo Food for Life, Vrindavan. Shrivatsa Goswami, the Mahant of Jaisingh Ghera, the erstwhile haveli of Maharaja Jai Singh of Jaipur in Vrindavan, told us how a road was built on the flood plain to the ashram of a prominent priest and how a ring road is being planned around Vrindavan, which will involve erecting pillars on the riverbed. “A river is the image of society. If it is polluted, the society is polluted. If religion can be used for corrupt purposes, why can’t it be used for the cause of the river?” asked Goswami.

By the time it reached Mathura, the Yamuna looked feeble and tired. Gokul Barrage considerably reduced its current. Even the wells along the ghats had dried up. “The barrage was meant to improve water level in Mathura and Agra, but the level has plunged because of silt in the river,” said Gopeshwarnath Chaturvedi of Shrikrishan Janmasthan Sewa Sansthan, Mathura.

As we approached Agra, the short respite from stench was over. And the image of the city, as Goswami said, reflected in the river. Mantola Nala, the drain that passed through the heritage corridor between the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, presented the ugliest sight of the trip as it fell into the river. The foam was accompanied by waste from leather factories. And this when the sewage from the nala had just started going back to the stp after 15 days.
In violation of the Supreme Court order and the Water Act, sewage is often diverted into the river “due to old and worn out pumping stations and stps which do not work half the time”, said Ravi Singh, an environmentalist. The city administration is now contemplating bringing drinking water to the city from the Ganga through a 130 km pipeline. There goes the Yamuna Action Plan.

Though activists led us into the city in a procession, river conservation as a motive was lost somewhere along the way. During the next two days water and beverages were served to us in plastic glasses, which were thrown away on the riverbed, as were the used dry-leaf plates and plastic bowls. There was more talk and noise. Sabhas were organized to welcome the “team from Delhi” and hundreds of leaders and politicians launched into speeches. The journey, which had taken a religious turn from Shergarh, now went into the politics of an urbanized town. The wheel had turned a full circle.

The boatman’s words came back to my mind as I looked at the river, black with filth and reduced to a trickle. How it covers the rest of its journey before finally merging into the Ganga at Sangam is difficult to comprehend. Perhaps it is the divinity attached to it.

“Had it not been for the change in wind direction within 10 minutes of the fire, it could have spread to and destroyed all the nearby factories in the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (gidc) and villages”

says Manoj Kotadia, manager, fire and safety, Disaster Prevention and Management Centre, Ankleshwar.

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Drum flying out of the fire

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 1

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 2

Burning hazardous waste at the BEIL – Part 6

The fire at BEIL was brought under control within 24 hours but people in surrounding villages are still reeling from the effects of toxic gases: a burning sensation in eyes and nose, difficulty in breathing and in some cases, as Down To Earth saw, rashes and fever. The cause of the fire is not known but preliminary investigation by the central and state pollution control boards and the local administration has exposed gross violations of environmental and safety norms at the treatment, storage and disposal facility (tsdf), which has also bid to incinerate the hazardous waste lying at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal—a lucrative contract of over a million dollars. As Down To Earth went to press, it was reported that the Industrial Health and Safety Department had registered a case against beil under the Gujarat Factories Act, 1948, for making seven sheds for storing hazardous waste when it had permission for only two. It was the seventh shed that caught fire. Inquiries into the lapses of the extremely hazardous facility are on.

Dark dusk Black smoke at one of the sheds where the barrels are stored was first noticed at 5.30 p.m. “My office people observed the smoke and informed me,’ said P N Parmeshwaran, vice-president, environment, beil. However, the Disaster Prevention and Management Centre, just 2 km away, was informed only by 6 p.m. People in Jitali village, about a kilometre from beil, saw barrels flying in the air. But the company’s alarm at the panchayat building failed to ring. Later, the villagers found out that wire connections had not been made.

“Soon it was dark, the fumes were noxious and for a long time it was difficult to breathe,’ said Nilesh Kumar Patel of Jitali as he showed Down To Earth the footage of the blaze on his cell phone. Jitali was one of the three villages put on high alert; people were told to evacuate. The other two villages are Sarangpur and Dhadhaal Inam. Huge chunks of ashy waste fell all around. “Stone-like things fell on my roof. In the morning they were still stinking and oozing fumes,’ said Momina Shoib Kazi of Jitali. The impact was worst in Jitali because it was in the wind’s direction.

“High wind velocity and a change in the direction (towards empty fields) of the wind from west to east prevented a big disaster.Wind velocity of over 20 km per hour did not let the smoke settle, otherwise the barrels lying all over the place would have caught fire and it would also have been difficult for us to wade through the smoke,’ said Kotadia.

Children at Dhadhaal Inam, a kilometre west of the facility, had just come out of the madrasa when they heard explosions. They ran in the direction of the blasts and ended up with headache and a burning sensation in the nose and throat. Asif Iqbal Panchbaya, 10, has got rashes and high fever. “I took him to Bharuch for treatment but his condition has worsened,’ said his father Iqbal Panchbaya. The Primary Health Centre sent squads to the villages the same night. It says the fire affected 89 people.

Shocking irregularities
To understand the effects of pollution one needs to know the kind of toxins released in the air. But beil officials could not explain the nature of the waste burnt. “It was a kind of tarry waste or a solvent-based waste of high calorific value. We are trying to ascertain what exactly it was,’ said Parmeshwaran. The Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989, however, lay down that all tsdfs have to keep a record of the kind of waste received and check the waste before accepting it for treatment.

RAVLEEN KAUR

Left in haze: Nature of waste unknown

“Thirty-seven kinds of waste are stored at a landfill site. Under the hazardous wastes rules a tsdf has to provide a monthly report to the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (gpcb) of how much waste it received, its classification, how much was stored and how much incinerated. The gpcb should reveal these reports. The company is at fault, but so is the pollution board for improper monitoring,’ says Yogesh Pandya, managing trustee of Safety, Health and Environment Association, a Bharuch ngo.

On the second day after the fire, gpcb installed machines at Jitali, beil and at Aventis’ factory to monitor the air quality. It also told Down To Earth that parameters were by and large under control. But gpcb did not collect samples for dioxins, furans and volatile organic compounds, which would indicate the toxicity of the air. “No lab in India is equipped to test dioxins and furans, so what can we do?’ said R G Shah, environment engineer, gpcb. Asked about heavy metals, Shah said samples were sent to the Netel India labs in Mumbai on April 4. When Down To Earth checked with the company, samples had not been received till the evening of April 8.

Since nobody knows what was burnt—as happened in the Bhopal gas tragedy—it is difficult to monitor contaminants or check for toxicity. While incinerators burn waste at very high temperatures to eliminate toxins, the fire burnt the hazardous waste at a much lower temperature. This is bound to release high levels of contaminants, which will settle on land and water.

Even the quantity of waste stored at beil raised eyebrows. According to the records it submitted to gpcb, 12,825 tonnes of oil was lying in its compound—though it cannot treat more than 50 tonnes a day. The hazardous wastes rules state an industrial unit cannot store waste in its compound for more than 90 days. In May 2007, M S H Sheikh, director of Surat-based ngo Brackish Water Research Centre, had written to gpcb about the dangers of facilities storing hazardous waste for long. But no action was reportedly taken.

beil charges factories Rs 15 per kg of hazardous waste for incineration and the money is taken in advance. That means it collected over Rs 19 crore for 12,825 tonnes of waste oil but did not treat it. Activists also point out that the fire saved the company Rs 37.50 lakh, the cost of treating 250 tonnes of waste.

What caused fire?
BEIL officials, police, district administration and even gpcb are tight-lipped about the cause.

“One of the barrels might have gone in unchecked and some reaction could have caused the explosion. However, we cannot say anything till proper investigation is done,’ said Ashok Panjwani, director, beil.

The three-member committee constituted by the district collector, who is also the head of the District Crisis Group, submitted its report on April 9. “We have been unable to find out the cause of the fire but most probably it was due to a pyrophoric reaction between steel drums and stored waste,’ Harshad Patel, sub-divisional magistrate, Ankleshwar, told Down To Earth. The report noted many safety lapses at beil: no sensor to detect gas leakage; dangerous chemicals not identified and not kept in a separate area; very few fire-fighting equipment, Patel said. “We have proposed strong action against beil under the Indian Factories Act and under environmental laws. The collector has to give directions,’ he added.

“It is beyond our power to lodge an fir against them. But we will take action under environment laws. It is obviously a case of negligence and the fire is human-induced. We will act when the actual reason is ascertained,’ said Sanjiv Tyagi, member secretary, gpcb.

Safety, what’s that?

A visit to the accident site brought more shocks. Not a single fire hydrant of the company was visible. “It took long to douse the fire because the approach road was congested and the smoke dense,’ said Kotadia. A wall in the rear of the compound had to be broken to make way for fire tenders. According to Ibrahim Patel, a medical practitioner in Jitali, the situation could have been tragic had workers been trapped inside. About 40 labourers work at the site. “There is no emergency exit in the high compound wall,’ he said.

“I came here early morning after the fire and saw people covering the oil with mud. All that will seep into the groundwater. How can they run their business in the name of safe disposal?’ asks Sheikh. Workers also complain they do not get safety masks and often feel dizzy.

At this facility where extremely toxic waste is stockpiled, instead of increased monitoring and increased safety conditions, the reverse seems to be the case. Clearly, the lessons of the Bhopal tragedy have not been learnt.