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.

The settlers were from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They grew vegetables, flowers, wheat and rice on the land rented from people who once held land lease given by the irrigation department. Pappu of Kaimur district in Bihar had rented about 6 ha at Nayabaans close to the Okhla Bird Park and DND flyway for Rs 6,000 per hectare for a year. While he farmed, his younger siblings studied in a makeshift school. He lost his month-old vegetable crop and has nowhere to go.

“They just came in the evening and trampled all over the vegetables and flooded the fields. Had they at least given us a notice we would not have sown crops. I had invested Rs 15,000-20,000 on wheat.”

said Sauraj Singh Kashyap of Hapur in Uttar Pradesh. H C Malhotra, a member of literacy organization Gyan Jyoti Vidyalaya, which set up the makeshift school in the area, said “These people have not made permanent structures on the riverbed. They were merely making a living out of agriculture.”

The irrigation department said it had cancelled all leases in 1999 but people continued to possess the land. “About seven people had pattas over this 25 ha. They filed cases in court and the hearing is on,” said a department official. “This was not a demolition exercise, so a court order was not needed. We just removed people who had encroached upon the department’s land,” added the official.

Sohanpal of Dallupura village in Noida does not agree.

“The land was given to us in 1948 when the British left, and ever since my family has been cultivating it. My case is being heard in the sub divisional magistrate’s court in Dadri,”

he said.

What development?

The Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department got some land in the National Capital Territory along the Yamuna Pushta road in 1956 for its maintenance. It is now transferring 362 ha of it in Delhi and 32.5 ha in Noida to the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority, also called Noida authority. The places where the land is being transferred are Madanpur Khadar, Sarita Vihar, Jamia Nagar and patches between Chilla Regulator and the Shahdara railway bridge. About 55.5 ha in Madanpur Khadar and 128 ha in Sarita Vihar and Jamia Nagar have been transferred.

The Noida authority said the land is being transferred for development but refused to specify the kind of development.

“The irrigation department is unable to do any development there because it does not come under its purview. We will take up development in accordance with the Masterplan of Delhi 2021. I cannot comment on the land in Noida,”

said Rajpal Kaushik, senior town planner of the authority.

Kaushik also said the Noida authority would request the Delhi Development Authority for change of land use, deepening people’s suspicion that it plans commercial development on the floodplain. Under the Delhi master plan most land near the Yamuna is for greenery and recreation.

An official of the irrigation department said the Noida authority would develop a green belt on the land. “Why can’t the department do so? By next year, I am sure there will be construction near the Okhla Bird Park,” said Anand Arya, a bird watcher who regularly visits the park.

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.

At Kingsway Camp an experiment is under way. Delhi’s Department of Social Welfare (DSW) has installed a biometric machine at its classification centre there. It records the picture, fingerprint and the height of the person brought there by the department’s raiding squads, besides his/her address, begging history and health record. The system is part of a grand plan to rid the city of beggars by the 2010 Commonwealth Games. “We have increased the pace of raids. In 2005, we caught 1,000, while the number went up by 475 in 2006. In 2007, we apprehended 2,533; target is 5,000,’ says a DSW official.

“This way we will be able to maintain a file on each beggar and monitor his/her rehabilitation in the long run,’ says Ranjan Mukherji, secretary to the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. But will it work? dsw, the Delhi police and the Lieutenant Governor affirmed their faith in it when they cleared the scheme last month, but social activists see it as criminalization of poverty.

“By recording their fingerprints, cornea and photographs, they are treating beggars like criminals. Are they trying to prove that poverty is a crime?’ asks Indu Prakash Singh, national theme leader (shelters and housing), ActionAid India. Javed says he wants to work, so that he can send money home. “I haven’t been able to do that. But that isn’t as bad as staying inside a jail like this,’ he says. Sewa Kuteer has hundreds of other inmates, young and old, picked up from temples and gurdwaras across the city. There is 60-year-old Devi Prasad who came from Kanpur in search of his son Deepak. “I am not a beggar. It does not matter even if they take my photograph. The sad part is I will not be able to come here often to see my son, who is my only family,’ he says.

A source in DSW said they caught beggars only from temples and gurdwaras and avoided traffic junctions. “Chances are we will have to run after a beggar. That can lead to accidents,’ he said. The department also avoids drug addicts. “They have suicidal tendencies. Once a beggar swallowed a blade. If they do not get anything else, they eat up soaps. If something goes wrong, the National Human Rights Commission will get after us,’ he said. This means hardened beggars remain out of the reach of the biometric system and only those who come to the capital to work can be monitored. “No work or bad working conditions leave many with no option but to beg. And then the authorities arrest them,’ says Singh. “Even vending is an offence.’

As per the Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, the definition of beggars includes anybody who receives alms at public places, even by way of selling small articles, or has no visible means of subsistence. A 2000 study by the Centre for Media Studies on beggars says the rehabilitation measures required under the act have not been taken. One would hardly find any beggar after his release from a beggars’ home taking up an income-generating activity by undergoing vocational training provided by dsw, says the study. Delhi has 11 beggars’ homes.

Even DSW officials are not sure whether the biometric system will help control begging. “What will happen with this machine? Beggars will keep coming here and we will keep recording their data,’ says the dsw official. At Kingsway Camp, though, the test run on the biometric software is on. Outside, a raiding squad has spotted another unsuspecting boy accepting a few coins from a kind stranger.

A measured amount of a solution of an unknown concentration is added to a known volume of a second solution. There is an indicator to show when the reaction is complete and then the concentration of the unknown solution is calculated. This causes problems because students trying out the experiment end up gulping in the acid.

“When it is swallowed, the mouth becomes dry and it seems that the teeth will chip off. Teachers just ask us to spit out the acid and wash the mouth. I wish there were other ways to carry out the experiment,’ says Aparajita Tiwari, a class 12 student of Delhi Public School, Noida. A student from Kerala, Bright E S, says, “When one takes 10 ml of acid in a 12 ml capacity tube, chances of swallowing it are high.’

Econoburette Well, that is how the experiment used to be. Man Singh, a reader of chemistry in Delhi University’s Deshbandhu College, has come up with an instrument called the econoburette that doesn’t require sucking in solutions.

“Titration has undergone a sea-change with the instrument. A student will now pour in chemicals in small calibrated tubes using a funnel. It was high time we thought of user-friendly alternatives,’ says Singh. The econoburette consists of four tubes which open in a common glass bulb attached below. The chemicals—acid, base and the indicator—can be released by the stopcock attached to each of the tubes. Singh claims the econoburette gives better measurement than even a pipette and burette as its diameter is smaller.

“Large amounts of chemicals are also saved by using the econoburette. Normally, 20 ml acid and 50 ml base are used in one reading. There are five readings taken. In an econoburette, students can do with only 5 ml of acid and 10 ml of base. There is also no chance of volatile gases escaping,’

he said.

Singh has applied for a patent for the product. He has also developed other instruments like a vision meter, which helps the blind study properties of liquid, and a survismeter to measure surface tension.

An engineering college in Haryana has started using the econoburette in its labs.

“The chemical fumes that the students inhale are carcinogenic, so the econoburette is a welcome instrument. Besides, it is inexpensive. The apparatus for titration costs more than Rs 3,000 while the econoburette costs around Rs 600. It also saves cost of distilled water, which is used to clean the apparatus,’

says Suman Yadav, faculty at Advanced Institute of Technology and Management, Palval, Haryana.

Scientists, however, say that a lot of demonstrations are needed to check whether the econoburette gives the same results as a normal burette and pipette.

“It will be good if such an instrument is introduced in laboratories because it will not only reduce the volume of solutions used in the process of titration but also minimize contact of body with them. But whether it gives accurate results or not will depend a lot on how instrumentation is done, whether by valves or using air pressure,’

says Basab Chaudhuri of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Calcutta University.

It is important to be precise because titration forms the basis of all chemical reactions and we need to know the concentration of chemicals in each reaction, says Rino Lali Jose, a lecturer of chemistry in Alphonsa College, Kottayam, Kerala.

“It is also used while making medicines where you need chemicals in the correct combination. A little extra or less is potentially dangerous for the patient using the medicines,’ Jose adds.