YAMUNA LECTURE AT DAYALBAGH

THE  STATE  OF  YAMUNA  RIVER

A talk by Brij Khandelwal, December 9, 2017 at Dayalbagh

Respected chairman of the SPHHEHA and Eminent dignitaries,

It is an honour and a privilege to be sharing my thoughts in this international conference, on water.

I will restrict my presentation to Yamuna river in Agra, which we consider as the most precious heritage entity  and a critical component of our strategy to address the problem of water scarcity in Agra. 

I shall focus on the present sad state of river Yamuna from Delhi to Agra, a distance of roughly 250 kms.

We all know that all great civilizations in the world developed along river banks. The rivers have been sustaining life in its various manifestations and glory. The importance of rivers in India can be understood by one simple fact that almost all rivers are worshipped as goddesses.

Yamuna, the consort of Sri Krishna has played a significant role in shaping the history of India right from the days of the Mahabharat till today. An interesting fact about Yamuna is that it has a richer history and a valuable contribution to enriching culture, art, architecture and commerce, compared to river Ganga.

For a majority of people in India while Ganga is Moksh dayini, and therefore all death related rites are conducted along its banks from Haridwar to Varnasi. The ashes and bones of the dead are released into the Ganga to ensure a safe passage to the other world.

Yamuna on the other hand is Jeevan Dayini. Along its banks flourished history, politics, trade, culture and the Vaishnavite Sri Krishna- Radha bhakti movement.

Starting in Uttarkashi district in the Himalayas from Yamunotri glacier, it enters Dehradoon, flows close to Jagdhari  and Yamuna Nagar in Himachal, separates UP and Haryana, enters Saharanpur in UP, touches Kurukshetra, Karnal,Sonipat, and the famous battleground of Panipat. The epic Mahabharata was written on its bank, Saint Parasher and Satyawati gave birth to Ved Vyas, Raja Bharat  and the father of Bhisma Shantanu organized great Yagnas, and for thousands of years great saints and thinkers lived in ashrams along the Yamuna banks.

Leaving Haryana and UP the river enters Delhi which for 2000 years has been the seat of power and politics. The Mughals and later the British built dozens of monuments and forts. The river once again enters Haryana and three of its big industrial clusters, Ballabhgarh, Faridabad and Palwal depend on its water.

Once it enters UP, the river’s profile changes as a whole mythology is woven around the Yamuna. Sri Krishna lore would be incomplete without the river. From Vrindavan to Bateshwar in Agra district, it is Sri Krishna and Radha and their leelas that sustain literature, culture, faith and philosophy.

Ballabhacharya,  the blind bard of Braj Bhasha Soor Das, the mediaval Bhakti movement and the Meera tradition blossomed along the Yamuna banks. As the river leaves Mathura it enters the famous Renuka Dham. Renuka was the mother of Bhagwan Parshu Ram. A little distance away the river suddenly takes an eastern turn as it enters Agra, the capital of the Mughals. The river is now joined by half a dozen other smaller rivers like Parvati, Khari, Utangan, Gambhir. Beyond Agra  rivers Betwa and Chambal merge into Yamuna which eventually joins Ganga in Allahabad.

The purpose of this historical perspective is to make you aware of the great contribution and heritage role of river Yamuna. You should feel proud of living along its banks. No other river in the world has a richer history, culture or religious significance and as the sister of  Yamraj, the god of death, its star status in Indian mythological tradition is permanently etched.

Yamuna finds mention in Rig Veda, the founder of the Mughal dynasty Babar was lyrical about the quality of Yamuna water confirmed by medieval historians and foreign travelers. Both Abul Fazal and Lahauri have written extensively about the Yamuna water.

It was the Yamuna water that compelled Shah Jahan to build his dream monument the Taj Mahal along its bank. Pandit Jagannath, wrote the famous Ganga Lahri. But in praise of Yamuna he wrote the Amrit Lahri, such was the quality of its water.

But what of today? How do we describe Yamuna today? A sewage canal, a drain, a big gutter, a civilisational sink? From the life giving Amrit to death dispensing poison, has been the cruel tale of this river which even in its dying stages is sustaining the life of millions of people.

In the past 25 years government agencies have spent  over Rs.8 billion  to clean up many Indian rivers. But even the latest report of the Ministry of Environment and Forests candidly admits that both the great rivers of India: the Ganga and the Yamuna continue to flow dirty.

The funds have been spent on  cleaning the drains that lead to the rivers, by putting in sewage treatment plants (STPs) and the sanitation facilities. Unfortunately we do not see any improvement in the overall situation. The pollution load continues to increase.

To quote a government committee "the quality of water in the Yamuna river has not shown the desired improvement, particularly in Delhi, due to enormous increase in pollution load and lack of fresh water in the river during (the) lean period. Due to ever-increasing population, leading to increased pollution load, and gap in the availability of Plan Outlay (lack of money), there is persistent divergence between the pollution load tackled and the actual pollution load."  

No proof about the poor quality of Yamuna water, generally unfit for human consumption between Delhi and Agra was ever required but when  lakhs of fish continued to die at regular intervals both in Agra and Mathura, it is natural for alarm bells to ring.

A report of a sample tested by an American scientist  has confirmed the presence of hydrocarbons in the river water. Rivrs of the World Foundation chairman Dr Subijoy Dutta first reported presence of hydrocarbons near Sikandra water works in Agra, way back in March 2001, the local authorities had scoffed at the suggestion calling it a figment of imagination. Even the Mathura Refinery had then vehemently denied  release of untreated effluents that could have been the source of hydrocarbons which doctors say are cancer causing.

The city of the Taj is heavily dependent on Yamuna raw water, but unfortunately despite a series of ambitious schemes and the direct intervention of the Supreme Court  the government agencies have dismally failed to prevent pollution of the river.

The Yamuna as it meanders through Delhi over a 48 km stretch picks up huge quantities of chemical wastes and toxins as also more than 225 million gallons of untreated sewage every day before leaving Delhi. When it enters Agra, the river is overloaded with additional discharges from  industrial clusters in Faridabad, Ballabhgarh, Palwal and Mathura. What the people in Agra get to drink can not be called water by any stretch of imagination, according to a number of research studies including the one by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

Sadly the State Pollution Control Board and  the Central Pollution Control Board have failed to address the problem of water pollution in the river. All the directives of the Supreme Court  have been flagrantly ignored. The central air and water pollution prevention Act gives unrestricted powers to these statutory bodies to proceed against polluters but the corrupt officials have never been sensitive to the gravity of the problem.  

Indeed when the  devouts enter the Yamuna for a ritualistic dip and “achman” on festivals, they never fail to  have “sakshat darshan” of Kali Naag in the form of pollution that has reached an alarming level.

At several points the water is jet black with a thick layer of waste floating on the surface. River Yamuna, is integral to the Vaishnavaites who worship Krishna, says Pandit Hari Prasad Sharma, a renowned scholar of the sect. “Right fromVrindavan, as the river enters the Braj area, Yamuna continues to be polluted by industries and nullahs (open drains) on which there is no control. The religious sentiments of the millions have no value for the government agencies,” he adds.

Environmentalists in Agra have filed law suits against dozens of government officials, under relevant sections of the Air and Water Pollution Act of 1974. The state pollution control board officials routinely send out warnings to the polluters but have never summoned the courage to proceed against them.

 “Elsewhere, pollution of this fatal nature would have been treated as a criminal offence against humanity and those responsible for it would have had to pay a heavy price for their acts but in India people are seemingly becoming immune to pollution and their sensibilities have also been insensitised,” say the river activists.

The CPCB (Central Pollution Control Board) monitors the water quality of the Yamuna in Delhi, and it is graded in the severely polluted category, fit only for recreation, aesthetics, and industrial cooling. According to the CPCB, 70% of the pollution in rivers is from untreated sewage. The remaining 30% is from industrial source, agricultural run-off, garbage, etc.

According to an estimate 70 percent of India's total surface waters are polluted. Out of India's 3, 119 towns and cities, only 217 have even partial sewage treatment facilities. The direct discharge of the untreated sewage in the surface water course is one of the major causes of high biochemical oxygen demand in most streams of rivers of India.  

The  48- kilometre stretch of the Yamuna river that flows through Delhi contains 7,500 coliform bacteria per 100cc of water. Yamuna receives an estimated 600 million gallons of untreated sewage every day from the greater Delhi area and leaves New Delhi carrying an inconceivable 24 million coliform organisms per 100cc . The same stretch of the river picks up 5 million gallons of industrial effluents including about 125,000 gallons of DDT wastes every day.

What can be done?

As ordinary law abiding citizens we often feel helpless. River cleaning is not a priority item on the national agenda.  Although a large number of NGOs, pressure groups, eco-clubs, citizens movements, have been active and have been doing their bit to clean up the Yamuna, but given the size and dimension of the problem, these piecemeal and sporadic efforts can not yield any tangible benefits.

Some years ago, we realized that the people of Agra had completely forgotten there was a river in the city. Till the 1970s, the Yamuna banks were centres of cultural and religious activities. During the 1975 emergency, pakka ghats and temples were razed to the ground to make way for a river front like the Mumbai chowpaati. That never happened, and what we were left with was a vast stretch of waste land debris piled up. Yamuna’s degeneration in a way synchronises with the political decadence that set in after 1980.

A citizen’s initiative was launched by concerned citizens in April 2015, we called it River Connect Campaign. The idea was to bring people back to the river and sensitise them. With this objective in mind we began the daily Yamuna Arti sabha on a piece of wasteland which we cleaned up and named it Etmauddaula view point park. Now more than a thousand days old, this campaign has worked both politically as a pressure group and socially to create a higher level of awareness by involving all sections of people in river related activities.

Our primary focus was on a barrage downstream of the Taj Mahal, guarantee of minimum flow of 50 cumex of water round the year. We are now trying to get the parliament adopt a national rivers policy with a central rivers authority.

Also, some of us feel the armed forces can help us in launching one of the biggest clean up operations. They have the trained manpower and equipment. If they can lend a helping hand, groups of citizens would come forward for Kaar Sewa to clean up the river bed.

As the country’s most disciplined  and efficiently managed organization, the cooperation of the armed forces should be sought and the citizens should participate in a joint operation. They have the resources, the technology and a commitment. War against river pollution is what we need to launch immediately. At the same time the laws relating to water pollution need to be given teeth and implemented rigourously.

To you all I would only say that you should feel proud of your river heritage. Love the river, go to the ghats and spend time there. Take pride in your history and culture.