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On Narendra Modi's birthday, how not to clean up India's rivers

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Damayanti Datta
Damayanti DattaSep 17, 2017 | 14:25

On Narendra Modi's birthday, how not to clean up India's rivers

It’s September 17. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is turning 67 today. And the nation is giving him a birthday to remember.

The theme of the day (sorry, fortnight) is cleanliness.

The PM has asked citizens to donate cleanliness, not money, because his flagship initiative, “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan,” is a people’s programme: “Clean India is the responsibility of all 1.25 billion Indians.”

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A remarkable idea and initiative for sure. But there’s much in unclean India that cannot be cleaned only by people’s good habits or good will.

A case in point: the PM is inaugurating the much-disputed, "world's second biggest dam" at Kevadiya, Gujarat — the Sardar Sarovar Setu on Narmada river — on his birthday. Narmada is often called India's “cleanest” river. But does the PM know that Narmada waters have turned green between Jabalpur and Omreswar, thanks to massive deforestation and untreated sewers from cities along its banks that empty into the river?

The green colour is from the deadly azolla weeds that grow in still or slow-moving water bodies, choking watercourses and killing aquatic wildlife.

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There’s much in unclean India that cannot be cleaned only by people’s good habits or good will. Photo: PTI

Overrun by weeds, suffocated with silt and saturated with pollution, all the giant fish and turtles have vanished from the Narmada.

Not just the Periyar, the PM’s favourite river, the Ganga is spectacularly red from pollution in Kanpur, a city where tanneries dump chemical-soaked buffalo hides into the river. Although the “Clean Ganga” project has not shown much result as yet, at least, the Ganga gets talked about.

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What about the Periyar, the “big river” in God’s own country? The ancient Tamil Sangam poems paid many tributes to it: its might, its foamy blue waters, and the magnificent ships sailing on it — loaded with gold, wine and black pepper.

The river still flows. It’s still the biggest river of Kerala, the lifeline for about 40 lakh people. But with 25 per cent of Kerala’s industries along its banks, ol' man river has become red and brown in some parts and jet black in others. It has changed colour more than 10 times this year.

In Delhi’s backyard, there’s also the Hindon river that has turned red, thanks to stone-crushing units along its banks. Two rivers in Meghalaya — the Lukha and the Myntdu — have turned bright sky blue, indicating very high acid content, killing scores of fish. The Tungabhadra River in Karnataka has turned green — the colour of algal bloom that thrives in pollution caused by chemical fertilisers from farms.

The mighty Cauvery, a dumping ground for untreated sewage and industrial effluents in Karnataka, has become black in parts. India’s poetry in marble, the Taj Mahal, has been turning a sickly yellow for a while. And now it’s becoming green, all because insects are crawling up the Taj from stagnating Yamuna.

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These are just a few names. In state after state, rivers are sick, changing colours, dying or becoming dangerously poisonous. The danger they pose to the environment and human life is just too great.

The sickness of our water system is the result of unmonitored greed by industries and mining bodies, deeply entwined with our political system.

No, prime minister, none of our rivers can be cured or corrected by broom-wielding everyday Indians. Cleaning up our rivers is the government’s job. We need political will for that.

Last updated: September 17, 2017 | 14:25
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