yamuna articles..........for Book
Environmentalist
seeks FIR for ‘attempt to murder’ Yamuna river, now a living entity
Brij Khandelwal, founder of River Connect Campaign, has blamed
officials, including
INDIA
There was a time when people in
INDIA
Yamuna Clean Up:
New
Delhi : In a bid to clean and rejuvenate the
Yamuna, River Connect Campaign, a people’s movement in Agra
is on a mission to bring the citizens of the city of Taj Mahal together for the common cause of
saving the river. The campaign has a core team of eight people, aims at
connecting the people of Agra
The Unique Evening Prayers
The daily evening prayer,
organised by the River Connect Campaign. acts as a platform for daily meetings
where people discuss the issues of Yamuna
Weekly Cleanliness Drives
River Connect Campaign is
conducting cleanliness drives every Sunday morning at various places along the
bank of Yamuna
Eco-Friendly Celebrations Near The River
The campaign encourages people who
attend the daily prayers and meetings to celebrate their birthdays,
anniversaries and other family occasions on the banks of the river in an
eco-friendly way
Demand For Accountability
As Yamuna awaits revival,
locals pray to the river to save itself
The Yamuna Action Plan, which was initially
funded by Japan decades before, has failed to bring about any positive results
even in the past five years despite the promise of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari
that very soon it'll be possible to travel from Delhi to Agra in cruise ships
plying in the Yamuna.
Agra
HIGHLIGHTS
Murder most
foul: polluted
Now rivers have the same legal status
as people, we must uphold their rights
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get the planet's most important stories
India Delhi
Ganga Yamuna Remedial Options & Strategies - ROW
Foundation!
Happy Birth Day,
Yamuna! In pics from Friends of Yamuna – SANDRP
declare Yamuna
as cultural and religious heritage - Agra ... - Patrika
Agra: Yamuna
river trash cleanup 2009 - India Water Portal
How air pollution, a
dying river and swarms of defecating insects threaten the Taj Mahal
India ’s most famous poet,
Rabindranath Tagore, once wrote that the Taj Mahal stood on the banks of the Yamuna River India
Activists Arrange Protest March For A Dying Yamuna In
HIGHLIGHTS
The protest march was arranged to
bring attention to the plight of Yamuna in Agra 
The campaign holds the Central and
state governments accountable for the condition of Yamuna
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Environmentalist
seeks FIR for ‘attempt to murder’ Yamuna river, now a living entity
Brij Khandelwal, founder of River Connect Campaign, has blamed
officials, including Agra district magistrate, Agra
Hemendra
Chaturvedi
Hindustan Times,Agra
Hindustan Times,
The
unfiltered water of dirty drains, besides the sewer, continues to flow into
Yamuna, which has resulted in drastic reduction of oxygen levels of the river
over the years.(HT File
Photo)
Motivated by Uttarakhand high court orders declaring rivers
Ganga and Yamuna living entities, an environmentalist in Agra has
asked the Agra police to register a case against those “guilty of attempt to
murder” the Yamuna.
Brij Khandelwal, the
activist, has blamed officials of various departments, including Agra district magistrate, Agra
The unfiltered water of
dirty drains, besides the sewer, continues to flow into Yamuna despite crores
received for sewage treatment from state and central governments, Khandelwal
said in his letter to Agra SSP.
“Using this amount, the
river could have been otherwise saved, but despite having a sewage treatment
plant, such untreated water is added to the river,” he said, urging the SSP to
file an FIR in this regard.
Read more
·
·
“The level of dissolved
oxygen has drastically fallen and is an outcome of negligence of these
officials... which has caused huge damage to river Yamuna resulting in loss of
aquatic life,” Khandelwal, who is also the founder of River Connect Campaign,
said.
‘For years together,
efforts are on for construction of Agra Barrage to save Yamuna but due to lack
of efforts by these erring officials, the scheme could not be completed and the
river thus lacks required water level,” he said.
Khandelwal also drew
attention to the rampant encroachment on the river banks, and blamed the Agra
Development Authority for the negligence.
First Published: Mar 26, 2017 09:16 IST
Yamuna in Agra
There was a time when people in Agra
Brij Khandelwal
IANS
IANS
There was a time when people in Agra
The river is in spate, flowing full after copious rains during
the past two months upstream and offers a fascinating spectacle against the
background of the Taj Mahal. But the number of swimmers and divers has gone
down drastically due to reports of heavy pollution caused by discharge of
effluents and sewer wastes.
People do not want to catch fish from the river any more,
fearing the pollution could hamper their health.
The Yamuna ghats vanished during the Emergency in 1975-77 when
the late Sanjay Gandhi ordered the demolition of temples and ghats to make way
for a Chowpatty (Mumbai)-like river front to attract people.
Since then the 10-km river front right in the heart of the city
has been left a huge wasteland.
To add to it, the Uttar Pradesh government had a five-foot tall
wall constructed to obscure the view from the main Yamuna Kinara road.
"Now you can't see the river. To add insult to injury the
Jal Nigam without permission has laid a five-foot diameter water pipeline along
the river bank, turning into an ugly spectacle the once beautiful river that
brought Mughals to the city," Rajiv Saxena, a senior mediaperson, said.
For the tourists however, watching the Yamuna in spate at the
rear of the Taj Mahal is an unforgettable experience. Right till the Mehtab
Bagh across the river where Shah Jahan, according to guides, planned to
construct a black replica of the Taj, there is only water and dense green cover
beyond.
"But the debris of the controversial Taj Corridor project
between the fort and the Taj is such a depressing and ugly sight that foreign
tourists avoid moving along the river front," said Surendra Sharma,
president of the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society.
"When the tourists look towards the Taj from the Agra Fort,
the ill-conceived Corridor which is turning into an unofficial graveyard with
heaps of dirt and garbage is such a put off," said Sharma.
Though the river offers a pretty sight nowadays, the people of Agra
"What should have been a protected heritage of the country
has been reduced to a river, if one can call it that, of sorrow and misery, and
unfortunately no government agency, commission, pollution board, department or
NGO has been able to arrest the rot," lamented Pandit Ashwini Mishra.
First Published: Aug 18, 2008 09:24 IST
Yamuna Clean Up: Agra
River Connect Campaign, a people’s
movement in Agra
|
Written By: Barkha Mathur
| December 25, 2018 1:58 PM |
Most
people of Agra Agra
As per Mr. Khandelwal, Agra Agra
is also one of India
Government’s
approach to the problems of Yamuna is based on considering the river a mere
water body. However, for the people of Agra it’s
a heritage entity as the best of Indian history, culture, architecture,
religion, and art happened on the banks of the River- from Agra
to Delhi
He further said that the survival of the river is integral to
the survival of the monument. Many historical architectures in Agra
If the
flow and water quality of the river is poor, all the structures built at its
bank are bound to collapse sooner than later.
The Unique Evening Prayers
Even though ‘aarti’ is a symbol of Hindu religion, this ‘aarti’,
however, has a unique feature of being a platform for daily meetings where
people discuss the issues of Yamuna, raise awareness, plan activities for
cleaning Yamuna and build strategies for advocacy with the local authorities.
The daily evening prayer,
organised by the River Connect Campaign. acts as a platform for daily meetings
where people discuss the issues of Yamuna
This Aarti is also a secular one and anyone can perform and lead
it by reciting the payer for the Yamuna. The River Connect Campaign has been
organising the ‘aarti’ every evening at the Yamuna without fail since last
three years. Mr. Khandelwal said,
Religion
is a big part of many people’s lives. So we thought of using this element in
bring people back to the Yamuna. Therefore, we started organising the ‘Aarti’
every evening like it is done at Har Ki Pauri in Haridwar but our ‘Aarti’ is
for promoting cleanliness of Yamuna. Initially people used to come only for the
prayer but eventually, people from all walks of life started coming who also
participated in post-aarti discussions.
Weekly Cleanliness Drives
Cleanliness drives are being organized every Sunday morning at
various places along the bank of Yamuna. “Usually about 30-40 people join us
during the cleanliness drives but on some days the number even crosses 100”,
said Mr. Khandelwal. On last Sunday, about 100 river activists and volunteers
joined the cleanliness drive opposite the Etmauddaula tomb to lift garbage and
idols immersed in the Yamuna.
River Connect Campaign is
conducting cleanliness drives every Sunday morning at various places along the
bank of Yamuna
Pandit Jugal Kishore said,
Regular
cleaning of Yamuna is necessary to save heritage monuments along the river
banks from Babar’s Ram Bagh, Etmauddaula, Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal.
He further said, “After the water level went down, the garbage
dumps have resurfaced and are attracting insects, mosquitoes and even bodies of
animals are piling up on the river bed spreading the stink.”
Mr. Khandelwal informed that there is no money involved in
sustaining this campaign. People bring their own cleaning gears. There are some
doctors associated with the campaign who bring masks and gloves for the
participants, a few members bring sacks, and buckets to pick up the garbage and
one of the other people arranges for transport to carry the garbage to the
nearest dumpster. The garbage collected during these drives is dumped into the
nearest garbage bin of Agra Municipal Corporation.
Eco-Friendly Celebrations Near The River
As an effort to bring people back to the Yamuna, the campaign
encourages people who attend the daily prayers and meeting to celebrate their
birthdays, anniversaries and other family occasions on the banks of the river
in an eco-friendly way. Mr. Kishore said,
We ask
people to bring their families to the Yamuna and have picnics and celebrations.
We request them not to bring any plastic item for the celebration and use only
bio-degradable items. Thankfully people are very cooperative.
The campaign encourages people who
attend the daily prayers and meetings to celebrate their birthdays,
anniversaries and other family occasions on the banks of the river in an
eco-friendly way
Along with birthdays, the campaign has orgnanised more than 150
events near the Yamuna including festival celebrations, plays, wall painting
and kite-flying to revive the river culture and promote cleanliness.
Demand For Accountability
The campaign is committed to fighting for a cleaner Yamuna with
better water flow, in Agra
Mr. Khandelwal said that the local authorities in the city are
cooperative as far as picking up the garbage collected during the cleanliness
drive is concerned. However, he notes that they lack a proactive approach
towards cleaning the Yamuna. The people associated with the campaign have
demanded accountability from the authority for the condition of Yamuna.
The people’s movement, which has often conducted dialogues with
the Agra Municipal Corporation, has asked it for better waste management in the
city and proper operation of the Sewage Treatment Plants especially on the
sewer directly emptying into the Yamuna.
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government
of India ’s Swachh Bharat
Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh
Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance
of building toilets and
making India open
defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign
has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste
management, plastic ban, manual
scavenging and menstrual
hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga
Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna,
two of India
As Yamuna awaits revival,
locals pray to the river to save itself
The Yamuna Action Plan, which was initially
funded by Japan decades before, has failed to bring about any positive results
even in the past five years despite the promise of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari
that very soon it'll be possible to travel from Delhi to Agra in cruise ships
plying in the Yamuna.
ADVERTISEMENT
Siraj
Qureshi
July 31, 2018
UPDATED:
July 31, 2018 17:36 IST
A social campaign that has gained
enormous popularity in the city, the Yamuna Aarti is held every evening and is
participated by hundreds of local residents as well as tourists, both foreign
and domestic. (Photo: Siraj Qureshi)
HIGHLIGHTS
·
Blue Yamuna Foundation holds aarti at Yamuna near Taj every
evening
·
This decision was taken after govt failed to save Yamuna
·
Every evening hundreds of locals, tourists take part in aarti at
various banks
In November
2013, when Narendra Modi came to Agra for the
first time, campaigning for the BJP, his first promise to the people of Agra
However, almost
five years later, Agra
The Yamuna
Action Plan, which was initially funded by Japan
decades before, has failed to bring about any positive results even in the past
five years despite the promise of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari that very soon
it'll be possible to travel from Delhi to Agra
Talking to
India Today, a senior administrative official said that the Yamuna Action Plan
has been limited to files only and neither the state nor the central government
paid any attention to the requests of the local residents for clean water. The
sewer lines in the city are still flowing untapped into the Yamuna despite the
expense of several crores on building sewage treatment plants on all sewer
lines.
Brij
Khandelwal, of the Blue Yamuna Foundation, has been holding a Yamuna Aarti on
the banks of the river Yamuna since the past several years in order to raise
the administration and the government from their sleep. A social campaign that
has gained enormous popularity in the city, the Yamuna Aarti is held every
evening and is participated by hundreds of local residents as well as tourists,
both foreign and domestic.
Local residents offering lighter
earthen lamps to the river, praying for good rains and prosperity in the city.
(Photo: Siraj Qureshi)
Khandelwal
told India Today that there has been no marked improvement in the state of the
Yamuna river since 2014. In fact, it has become worse as now the river is dry
yearlong, filled only with the sewage of the city and whatever flows down from Mathura
He said that
the pathetic state of the river is the primary reason why the Taj Mahal has
been facing the attack of green insects. He said that the Taj Mahal's yellowing
colour is also due to the fact that there is no water in the Yamuna that can
absorb most of the pollutants in the air and trap the suspended particulate
matter in its water. Unless the Yamuna is not refilled with clean water, there
was no hope that the beauty of the Taj Mahal could survive for another hundred
years and till the Yamuna is revived, the Yamuna Aarti will continue unabated
on its banks.
He said that
in the past few days, the water level of the Yamuna has increased a bit due to
good rainfall in almost all of its catchment area. At present, the Yamuna's
water level is above 490 feet, which is barely a meter away from the danger
level.
Agra Mayor
Naveen Jain visited the Yamuna bank today and issued a general warning to the
residents living within the floodplain of the Yamuna, requesting them to
evacuate before the water breached the danger level.
According to
the available information, the Hathini Kund Barrage has released over 6 lakh
cusec water and the Gokul Barrage has also released a lot of water into the
Yamuna, which has caused an increase in the water level of the river. The Gokul
barrage is reported to have released 45011 cusec water in the river.
With the
river filled with water, local residents are flocking to the riverside ghats to
witness the rare sight for themselves and are offering lighter earthen lamps to
the river, praying for good rains and prosperity in the city.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Safi in
London
Murder most
foul: polluted Indian river reported dead
despite 'living entity' status
After the Yamuna
river, a tributary to the Ganges , was granted
the accolade, it made sense for activists to tell police that somebody had
killed it
One morning in late March, Brij Khandelwal called the Agra
Days before, the high court in India ’s
Uttarakhand state had issued a landmark judgment declaring the Yamuna river –
and another of India ’s
holiest waterways, the Ganges – “living
entities”.
Now rivers have the same legal status
as people, we must uphold their rights
Ashish Kothari, Mari Margil,
Shrishtee Bajpai
Read more
Khandelwal, an activist, followed the logic. “Scientifically
speaking, the Yamuna is ecologically dead,” he says. His police report named a
series of government officials he wanted charged with attempted poisoning. “If
the river is dead, someone has to be responsible for killing it.”
In the 16th century, Babur, the first Mughal emperor, described
the waters of the Yamuna as “better than nectar”. One of his successors built India Himalayas ,
the river glistens blue and teems with life. And then it reaches Delhi
In India
The waterway that has sustained civilisation in Delhi for at
least 3,000 years – and the sole source of water for more than 60 million
Indians today – has in the past decades become one of the dirtiest rivers on
the planet.
Until the 1960s, the river was much better quality.
Himanshu Thakkar,
engineer
“We have water records which show that, until the 1960s, the
river was much better quality,” says Himanshu Thakkar, an engineer who
coordinates the South Asia Network on Dams,Rivers and People, a network of rights
groups. “There was much greater biodiversity. Fish were still being caught.”
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What happened next mirrors a larger Indian story, particularly
since the country’s markets were unshackled in the early 1990s: one of runaway
economic growth fuelled by vast, unchecked migration into cities; and the
metastasising of polluting industries that have soiled many of India
In Delhi
The Ganges
is seen from a tourist spot in Kolkata. Photograph: Rishabh R Jain/AP
“We decreased the freshwater supply, and increased the polluted
water supply,” says Thakkar. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to
predict what would happen.”
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Read more
The damage is most stark at Wazirabad, just inside the Delhi
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Animal life cannot survive in these conditions, but human life
on the riverbank is ceaseless: men and women immerse themselves in rituals,
bathe, and scrub hard at clothing and sheets.
Some, like Sikander Sheikh, make their living off the pollution.
The Bengali, who says he is 95, operates a tiny float on the river, lifting
refuse from the surface that he sells on the weekend for a few dozen rupees. “I
can’t do any other work,” he says. “To do agricultural work, you need eyes.
Mine are weak. In this work, I slowly float around all day looking for what I
can sell.”
He lives on the banks of the river, in a hut he built himself,
adorned with bric-a-brac fished from the water. Bouts of illness are frequent.
“I’ll go to the doctor, I’ll take medicines and then I’ll get better and again,
I’ll come back and work.”
Further up the Yamuna, near the city of Agra
A 2015 study showed towns within 2km (1.25 miles) of the Yamuna
all showed at least four times the permissible level of fluoride in the water.
Officials blame the millions of gallons of untreated sewage pumped into the
Yamuna, which they say is seeping into groundwater. “The doctor has said
to stop drinking this water and has suggested we buy bottles of filtered
water,” Singh says. “Every time, how can we buy and drink it? It’s too
expensive.”
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In Mathura
If you bathe in the Yamuna you will not go to hell.
Hindu priest
They bathe in the river and drink from it, the ecstasy obvious
on many faces. Few are dissuaded by the sight of the water. “Yes, the Yamuna is
polluted, but it has the power to liberate us,” says one priest. “If you bathe
in the Yamuna you will not go to hell.”
Jasminbhai travelled from Mumbai for the occasion. “There’s no
dirty water in the Yamuna,” he insists. “People who believe that, I would say
they are lying.”
The problem, he says, is that time and money are being invested
in a dysfunctional system. Twenty state and federal government bodies squabble
for control over different elements of the river. Ironically, for all that
official attention, basic governance structures are still inadequate.
A plan to clean India ’s
largest river, the Ganges , spearheaded by the
Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, is similarly foundering for lack of effective governance.
“If you install new sewage treatment plants, you also need a
system in place to ensure they will function,” Thakkar says.
A man looks for recyclable items on
the banks of the Yamuna, on the outskirts of New Delhi
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He wants an independent board to oversee the river, one that can
question officials and constantly review the clean-up. “At the moment, nobody
really knows how the treatment plants function. And if they don’t function,
there are no corrective measures. Nothing happens.”
The decision to grant living entity status to the river this
year was met with fanfare, but will do little to improve its state, says
Ritwick Dutta, a Delhi-based environmental lawyer.
The court granted the Yamuna certain rights, but gave legal
guardianship to senior members of the state bureaucracy. Dutta says that
represents a clear conflict of interest. “If a hydropower project comes up for
consideration, whose side will the bureaucrat take? The river’s or the
government’s?
“It’s got symbolic value,” he says of the decision. “But in
reality, it may not mean much.”
Soon, it may mean nothing at all: on Friday, India ’s supreme court suspended the decision to
grant the Yamuna and Ganges living status. The
Uttarakhand state government wants the decision scrapped altogether, arguing
that legal rights for river makes it unclear who is liable for damages from
floods, among other issues. A full hearing on the matter is pending.
The latest plan to clean the Yamuna, hatched two years ago by
the Delhi
It is the brainchild of a team lead by Pankaj Vir Gupta, a
professor of architecture at the University
of Virginia , who sees in the Yamuna’s
dark reflection a deeper malaise, originating in India
“One hundred years ago, the Yamuna was the front facade of the
Mughal city of Delhi
“Even as recently as 50 years ago, there were carts on the
river,” he says. “There was active participation by the people of Delhi
Gupta says the problem started with the British architects Edwin
Lutyens and Herbert Baker, who in the 1920s designed New Delhi
The Yamuna, a temperamental waterway that subsides in the dry
season, before swelling dramatically during the monsoon, did not fit the
British planners’ rigidly ordered worldview, he says. “Anything that was
informal, ecologically, was not really part of the imperial plan for British India.”
Unlike past iterations of the city, New Delhi
“You could argue the pollution problem is really a perception
problem. The minute you remove something, ontologically, from the centre of the
city, its meaningfulness and significance goes away.”
Thakkar suspects the river’s condition will need to worsen
before it improves. “Look at the Thames of London,” he says. “It was dirty
until the smell of the river reached parliament and the politicians couldn’t bear
the stink.
“We have not yet reached the stage
where the stink of the Yamuna has reached parliament. Possibly it never will –
it’s an air-conditioned environment. But if it manages to reach even the
parliament’s gates, then finally we might see something.”
Ganga Yamuna Remedial Options & Strategies - ROW
Foundation!
Yamuna Mathura-Agra Conference 2009 ... Yamuna River Mathura
Happy Birth Day,
Yamuna! In pics from Friends of Yamuna – SANDRP
Mar
24, 2018 - The Yamuna Mitra Mandali (YNMM) (Friends of YamunaRiver) ... Brij Khandelwal of
River Connect and Pt. Ashwini Misra, Yamunapriest.
You
visited this page on 22/12/18.
declare Yamuna
as cultural and religious heritage - Agra ... - Patrika
Apr
3, 2016 - रिवर कनेक्ट अभियान के ब्रज खंडेलवाल ने यमुना को सांस्कृतिक और धार्मिक विरासत के रूप मे मान्यता दिए ...
Agra: Yamuna
river trash cleanup 2009 - India Water Portal
Apr 23, 2009 - Brij Khandelwal,
programme convener of the YamunaFoundation and
Rivers of the World Foundation, said apart from students involved in
the ...
From
Los Angeles
How air pollution, a
dying river and swarms of defecating insects threaten the Taj Mahal
Garbage covers the
area by the Yamuna river near the Taj Mahal in Agra , India
One wonders whether
the late Nobel laureate could have found a lyrical description of the latest
threat facing the grand, white-marble monument: millions of defecating insects.
Excrement from
mosquito-like bugs breeding in the heavily polluted river has stained parts of
the 17th century mausoleum green, while the footsteps and palms of thousands of
daily visitors have darkened the stone floors and intricately patterned walls
of a structure long regarded as the pinnacle of Mughal architecture.
In this photo from
Dec. 5, 2017, scaffolding covers a marble wall of the Taj Mahal where workers
applied a clay mixture to remove discoloration caused by pollution. (Manish
Swarup / Associated Press)
But insect slime is
only one of the problems facing the monument, built by the emperor Shah Jahan
to house the remains of his favorite wife after she died while giving birth to
their 14th child in 1631. Today the Taj Mahal appears less a testament to
eternal love than a symbol of India
The once mighty Yamuna
— after being dammed upstream to provide electricity for the region surrounding
India’s capital, New Delhi — now runs low and thick with trash and untreated
waste, and blooms with insect-attracting algae.
Auto emissions,
deforestation and crop burning have contributed to heavy smog that experts say
has dimmed the tomb’s pearly exterior to a jaundiced yellow. The number of cars
registered in the city of Agra , where the Taj
Mahal is situated about 110 miles south of New Delhi
“The Taj Mahal has
never looked as fatigued, pale and sick as it does now,” said Brij Khandelwal,
a journalist and environmental activist in Agra
Since the 1970s,
Indian authorities have issued rule after rule aimed at protecting the
country’s most popular and lucrative tourist attraction, which draws more than
7 million visitors a year, 90% of them domestic tourists. They have banished
coal-powered factories from the area, banned gasoline-powered vehicles near the
monument and distributed cooking fuel to reduce poor families’ reliance on
dirtier heat sources such as wood and cow dung.
But many of the rules
are flouted. And as the area surrounding New
Delhi
Standing on the west
bank of the Yamuna about a mile upstream from the Taj Mahal, Khandelwal looked
out over a nearly dry riverbed filled with plastic bottles, potato-chip
wrappers, empty medicine packets and other detritus.
He walked over to a
derelict sewage treatment plant whose windows were broken and watched a pipe
deliver effluent directly into the riverbed, foaming with chemicals as it
cascaded down.
“Most of the problems
emanate from this dry riverbed,” Khandelwal said. “The original ambience of the
Taj Mahal was based on the river — not just for aesthetic delight but also for
its survival.”
Environmentalist Brij
Khandelwal, shown here above the dry Yamuna riverbed, says time is running out
to save the Taj Mahal. (Shashank Bengali / Los Angeles
Like a beautician
trying to smooth out wrinkles on an aging movie star, the Archaeological Survey
of India, the agency that oversees the monument, has spent the last three years
applying mudpacks to whiten the walls and minarets. But the grime simply
returns.
“It’s terrible,”
lamented Manoj Sharma, 45, who has led tours of the tomb for more than a
decade.
Pointing to a section
of the north wall overlooking the river, Sharma said that workers had recently
applied the clay mixture known as fuller’s earth, traditionally used as a
bleaching agent to absorb oil and grease from sheep’s wool.
But just weeks later,
a dark goo, believed to be from the insects, again coated the petals of flowers
carved into the marble.
A section of the north
wall of the Taj Mahal bears grime, believed to be secreted by insects, on the
petals of the marble carvings. (Shashank Bengali / Los Angeles
The Supreme Court
expressed impatience with the prolonged cleanup effort, which has shrouded
parts of the tomb in scaffolding for days and weeks at a time. With workers
preparing to begin the mudpack treatment on the cloudlike dome of the
mausoleum, its most recognizable feature, the Fodor’s travel guide suggested that
visitors avoid the Taj Mahal for a year.
“Unless your dream Taj
Mahal visit involves being photographed standing in front of a mud-caked and
be-scaffolded dome, maybe give it until 2019 at the earliest,” the guidebook
advised.
From a distance, the
Taj Mahal still enchants: On a recent weekday, throngs of selfie-snapping
visitors braved 105-degree heat to marvel at the stately crypt, flanked by
soaring minarets and wide lawns.
But up close the
monument shows signs of stress. Cracks in the marble have been patched with
off-color cement that experts say expand and contract with the heat, further
weakening the stone. The green lawns have grown patchy.
In March, pieces of
red sandstone that were being held in place by a rusty clamp fell from the corner of one of the gates to the complex,
although no one was injured. A few weeks later, two sandstone pillars
decorating the gates were toppled in high winds.
“The Taj is getting
weak, and it has been going on for some time,” said Mahatim Singh, a member of
the Tourism Guild of Agra. “We require extra manpower and extra technology to
overcome these problems.”
But the archaeological
agency has been reluctant to cede control over the monument or invite
international experts. Its director did not respond to questions from The
Times, but one official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized
to speak to the press, said the agency was being blamed for bigger
environmental problems.
A Buddhist monk
converses on the bank of the Yamuna river. From a distance, the Taj Mahal
retains its charm. (Chandan Khanna / AFP/Getty Images)
“Some of it they don’t
have much control over,” said Divay Gupta, principal director for architecture
at the nonprofit Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. “But
while what they have done has been effective to a certain degree, all of the
methods have been sort of knee-jerk, and there is no preventive action.”
The agency plans this
year to impose a three-hour limit on visitors touring the grounds in a bid to
reduce crowds. But Gupta said the 42-acre complex could take in more visitors —
and draw more revenue to pay for upkeep — if the site were better managed.
Khandelwal, the
activist, said the monument was facing an emergency.
“The Taj Mahal
represents our glorious past and our composite culture — it’s not just any tourist
site,” he said. “It must be saved at any cost.”
Activists Arrange Protest March For A Dying Yamuna In Agra
River activists in Agra
arranged for a protest march to bring to attention the plight of the Yamuna in Agra
|
Written By: Saptarshi Dutta | Edited By: Priyanka Bhattacharya
| May 30, 2017 2:36 PM |
HIGHLIGHTS
§
The protest march was
arranged for a dying Yamuna in Agra
§
Yamuna in Agra
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The campaign lays stress
on a cleaner and flowing Yamuna in Agra
A popular image that has
captured the imagination of every tourist in India Agra
In a bid to end further
pollution in two of India ’s
holiest rivers, Ganga and Yamuna, both were
recently givenrights similar to human
entities. As the pollution and lack of water in Yamuna reaches
unmanageable proportions, activists from River Connect Campaign organised a rally on
March 9 at Agra to protest against the gradual
“killing” of the river. The march was held to increase awareness among people
about the lack of water in the river, as well as demand an end to the
increasing pollution in Yamuna.
Yamuna has borne the
brunt of unprecedented levels of sewage and waste dumping, as well as people
using the river indiscriminately. Despite the Supreme Court of India monitoring the cleaning of the river
for 22 years, as well as the spending of a massive Rs. 4,439 crores, the state of the river has only gone from bad to
worse. A poisonous combination of industrial and domestic waste pouring
unmonitored into the river has resulted in its water becoming polluted and
unusable. Around 1600 million gallons of untreated sewage is dumped into the
Yamuna every day, thus pushing the river towards a gradual death.
The river has become
completely unusable for us. For years, we have heard of crores being spent on
cleaning the Yamuna but we are yet to see any results. This slow killing of the
river must be stopped right away so that there’s something left in the river,
said Naresh Paras, social activist.
The Campaign
River Connect Campaign, a campaign formed by environmental and
social activists has been vocal about the state of the river in Agra
There is barely any water
in the parts of Yamuna which flow around here. The Haryana government doesn’t
release water regularly, which results in gradual drying of the river. Nearly
97 per cent of the water is impounded at the Hathni Kund barrage in Haryana. If
released regularly, the water flow in these parts of Yamuna will increase and
be beneficial for people, said Brij Khandelwal, environmentalist and one of the
founding members of River Connect Campaign.
Drying up of the river has stolen the purpose of the historical
monuments which were built on the banks of Yamuna, in Agra
The protest march was arranged to
bring attention to the plight of Yamuna in
The pollutants in Yamuna dry up along with the river and they in
turn cause extensive environmental damage to the surroundings. We want a
pollution free Yamuna around us and water released from Haryana will ensure
that the pollutants are washed away,” said Khandelwal.
Demand for Accountability
The march also held the
Centre and the state governments of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh responsible for
the present state of theYamuna. In 2006, a plan worth Rs. 150 crores was sanctioned to divert water from the Ganga to
Yamuna in Agra
The campaign holds the Central and
state governments accountable for the condition of Yamuna
We demand to know why has
the money, which was sanctioned ten years back not been utilised yet. The
amount allocated for the project has kept increasing, but we are yet to see any
work commence. Are the authorities at all interested in initiating the project?
questioned Paras.
The Yamuna Action Plan has also failed to check the regular
dumping of waste in the river, as well as address the issue of water sharing
between states. The River Connect Campaign has also held extensive meetings
with officials from the Ministry of Water Resources to get updates on the
Yamuna Action Plan and how residents of Agra
Not just Agra ,
we are aware of the condition of Yamuna in Delhi
Plans Ahead
The River Connect Campaign plans to continue its fight for a
cleaner Yamuna with more water, in Agra
For us, Yamuna is not
just a river. It is a symbol of Agra Agra
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