(WSJ) By Geeta Anand
India is swimming in its own sewage and turning its rivers into drains for its ever-expanding cities.
The Center for Science and Environment, a 22-year-old New Delhi-based advocacy and research organization, has just released its seventh report—this one entitled, “Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta.”
The two volume report, which took three and a half years to research and write, includes surveys of water and wastewater management of 71 cities in India, editor Souparno Banerjee told India Real Time.
“Every city was the same old story—it had devastated its surface water, it was depleting its ground water and it had no plan for managing its water or wastewater,” Mr. Banerjee said.
As a result of neglect and bad planning, many cities have turned their rivers into drains, and the citizens who live around them no longer remember that they were once pristine sources of water, Mr. Banerjee says. The Budha Nullah in Ludhiana was once a darya, or river, says Sunita Narain, the director general of the research and advocacy organization, in the preface to the report. “It had freshwater which flowed clean,” she writes. “One generation changed its form and its name.”
Ms. Narain notes that Mumbai’s Mithi river has been clogged by development so it no longer serves its traditional role of carrying flood waters from the city to the ocean. “It was called a river. It flowed like a river. But today even an official environmental status report only knows this living river as a storm-water drain,” she writes. “One more city has lost its river in one generation.”
But perhaps the most damning conclusion Ms. Narain’s team reaches about India’s water and wastewater management, she says, “is the complete lack of data, research and understanding on this issue in the country.”
A spokesman for the ministry of environment and forests didn’t return a call seeking comment on the report.
Ms. Narain suggests perhaps the ignorance is willful.
“Is it a reflection of the caste system of Indian society, where removing waste was someone else’s business? The business was untouchable. Certainly it was unspeakable. Or is it a reflection of the current governance systems, where water and waste are government business and, within that, it is the sole business of a lowly water and sanitation bureaucracy?”
“Or is it simply a reflection of Indian society’s extreme arrogance—our belief we can fix it all as and when we get rich?”
This is the question that advocates of anti-corruption legislation, economic reforms as well as improving India’s infrastructure and higher education are likely also asking.
India is swimming in its own sewage and turning its rivers into drains for its ever-expanding cities.
The Center for Science and Environment, a 22-year-old New Delhi-based advocacy and research organization, has just released its seventh report—this one entitled, “Excreta Matters: How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta.”
The two volume report, which took three and a half years to research and write, includes surveys of water and wastewater management of 71 cities in India, editor Souparno Banerjee told India Real Time.
“Every city was the same old story—it had devastated its surface water, it was depleting its ground water and it had no plan for managing its water or wastewater,” Mr. Banerjee said.
As a result of neglect and bad planning, many cities have turned their rivers into drains, and the citizens who live around them no longer remember that they were once pristine sources of water, Mr. Banerjee says. The Budha Nullah in Ludhiana was once a darya, or river, says Sunita Narain, the director general of the research and advocacy organization, in the preface to the report. “It had freshwater which flowed clean,” she writes. “One generation changed its form and its name.”
Ms. Narain notes that Mumbai’s Mithi river has been clogged by development so it no longer serves its traditional role of carrying flood waters from the city to the ocean. “It was called a river. It flowed like a river. But today even an official environmental status report only knows this living river as a storm-water drain,” she writes. “One more city has lost its river in one generation.”
But perhaps the most damning conclusion Ms. Narain’s team reaches about India’s water and wastewater management, she says, “is the complete lack of data, research and understanding on this issue in the country.”
A spokesman for the ministry of environment and forests didn’t return a call seeking comment on the report.
Ms. Narain suggests perhaps the ignorance is willful.
“Is it a reflection of the caste system of Indian society, where removing waste was someone else’s business? The business was untouchable. Certainly it was unspeakable. Or is it a reflection of the current governance systems, where water and waste are government business and, within that, it is the sole business of a lowly water and sanitation bureaucracy?”
“Or is it simply a reflection of Indian society’s extreme arrogance—our belief we can fix it all as and when we get rich?”
This is the question that advocates of anti-corruption legislation, economic reforms as well as improving India’s infrastructure and higher education are likely also asking.
