Beißen Gedanken: Fortnightly News Bulletin (February 20, 2013)

20130223

Fortnightly News Bulletin (February 20, 2013)

Last week it was a meeting of minds on the Global Burden of Disease report (see http://cseindia.org/node/4801), and this week it's a conclave on environmental toxins and food safety. Regulators, medical professionals, communities and scientists will come together to celebrate a decade of public service by CSE's Pollution Monitoring Lab. Also in the pipeline in March is the annual Anil Agarwal Dialogue --titled this time as 'Excreta Does Matter'.

In Down To Earth, organic farming takes the center stage, while Kumbh reigns on the edit page. On DTE Web, we have fresh Specials and Reports, and a new space to interact with today's change makers.

And some of our not-so-old work is drawing results: NDTV has followed up on CSE's expose of the horrific mercury contamination that is ravaging Singhrauli in Uttar Pradesh, triggering hopes that more mainstream media would become interested in the region's plight.

Read on for more of what's happening at CSE this fortnight....

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EDITORIAL: Kumbh: time to come clean

by Sunita Narain

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Maha Kumbh in Allahabad has perhaps no parallel in terms of the sheer

size of the congregation. In less than two months over 100 million

people are expected to come to this city, which sees the confluence of

two rivers of India—the Ganga and the Yamuna. People come to worship on

the banks of the Ganga. Even as they celebrate the river it seems they

don’t see the river, but only the ritual.

The fact is that this “mela” is about how the Hindu religion—and I

believe all religions—is based on a deep understanding of and respect

for nature’s strength. But we now worship without reason. So, people can

take a dip in the polluted river but still believe that the dirt, the

filth and the plastic that swims around them, will not defile the

river’s properties. Our strength has become our weakness.

It is a fact today that the Ganga and the Yamuna are polluted beyond

acceptable levels. But why should we be surprised. We mercilessly take

clean water from our rivers and return sewage and industrial waste. In

the upper reaches, the Ganga does not even flow in many stretches

because we take water for generating hydropower. The tunnels for

run-of-the-river projects divert the rivers and as soon as they are

released, they are diverted again. The engineer-designers have no

concept of ecological flow to ensure they take water for power only

after the river has enough to fulfil its environmental, social and

livelihood needs. Then as the Ganga and the Yamuna reach the plains, we

take every drop of water for irrigation and drinking needs. We suck our

rivers dry. Then as worshippers, we put plastic into the river and

everything else that should not be there. We do all this and then still

believe we have rivers to worship. Or we pray to a dead and dying river

but pretend otherwise.

It is clear that for the occasion of Maha Kumbh the government has made

huge efforts to clean the two rivers, with a little success. These steps

tell us that it is possible to reduce pollution in the Ganga and all

other rivers of the country. We just have to learn the art of innovative

pollution management.

This is what the government has done to contain pollution, albeit

temporarily. First, more water is allowed to flow in the river. This is

critical because without dilution there will be no assimilative capacity

in the river. Rivers without water are drains. We should remember this.

It is also a fact that this “release” of additional water deprives

farmers upstream of irrigation; cities and industries of water. But it

is also a fact that we cannot continue to plan for rivers without water.

All users must be forced to plan for water needs based on what the river

can spare, not what they can snatch.

Secondly, Allahabad has built sewage treatment plants. But then it is

not as if it was desperate to clean the river. Let me explain.

In all cities of India, without exception, there is a mad rush to build

sewage treatment plants. But we forget that cities do not have

underground sewerage systems to intercept the sewage and transport it to

plants for treatment. In this way, the built plants are white

elephants—call them temples of modern India—which are built but not

used. In all cities built sewage treatment capacity is underutilised.

But engineers and planners have the uncanny ability to make us forget

these details and be happy. They assure governments that the underground

network will be built and pollution will vanish.

But the network is not built. Some sewage is treated and the bulk flows

into drains and into the Ganga and the Yamuna. Worse, the little sewage

that is treated (at considerable expense) is then released into the same

drains that carry untreated effluents. The end result is pollution. It

was in mid-1980s that the government of India launched an ambitious

programme to clean the Ganga. Under this programme, sewage treatment

plants were built. City engineers are still catching up with building

the sewerage network for the plants to work. For the Kumbh, the

government has done something smart. It intercepts the untreated sewage

from the open drain and conveys it to the treatment plant. Simple.

Thirdly, the city is trying to experiment with “affordable” ways of

treating sewage—by using bio-remediation techniques. The preliminary

reports suggest that this system is working. The key is to measure its

effectiveness carefully and deliberately.

Fourthly, the government has come down hard on the polluting

industries—mainly tanneries and distilleries—on the banks of the river.

The question is why enforcement against pollution happens only when

there is a crisis; it should be happening in ordinary times.

The end result is that there is a temporary relief against pollution.

Now the challenge is to keep the river clean. This will need more than

government’s will. This will need a collective wish. This will not

happen till Indians join the dots—faith is connected to the river not by

accident or by ritual but by reason and rationale.

To post your comments on this editorial online, please visit

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/kumbh-time-come-clean

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20130223

Fortnightly News Bulletin (February 20, 2013)

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