#EarthDayWithDNA: Rivers are dying. Anyone listening?

A year before the first World Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was burning for half an hour. Pollution levels and oil slicks reached unbelievable levels. In the ensuing 40 years, the river has been cleaned up and does not catch fire any longer. Does this not remind you of the Bellandur Lake in Bengaluru which has been catching fire with a monotonous regularity? Rivers are the Earth’s arteries, carrying silt, nutrients, fish and complex civilisations in their wake. Rivers connect ecosystems, but they also connect people: a dynamic, flowing ecosystem which is constantly new, and yet older than the oldest civilisations of the world. What is happening to those arteries in India? They are clogged, polluted and blocked.

The recent judgment of the Uttarakhand High court conferring ‘legal personhood’ to rivers Ganga and Yamuna forgot to mention that they are very sick and in need of intervention. Rivers are a mirror of their watershed: the vast area that they drain. They are a report card of how well we are treating our forests, our farmlands, our industries and our cities. What does the report card say to us today? The India Rivers Week held in Delhi in 2016 called for river profiles from all states in India and classified them according to river health. Not surprisingly, almost all Indian rivers are threatened: by pollution, by water abstraction, by encroachment and by constant damming.

But what does this mean to a city dweller in Mumbai or Delhi? What value do flowing, healthy rivers hold to you? Mumbai’s 2006 floods and the backbreaking water cuts are a symptom of encroached rivers like Mithi and a watershed like Tansa not being able to satiate the growing demand. Chennai’s mayhem in 2015 is a reminder that we need to respect the space of rivers like Adyar and wetlands like Pallikaranai. Delhi’s overt politicising of water, the water tanker mafia, smog and pallid environment are the gift of a sick Yamuna.

A dying river too binds us in conflicts, rasta bandhs and bad health. Unfortunately, the current government, has given us nothing but rhetoric when it comes to protecting rivers. Namami Gange is in shambles with most funds unspent. The Environment Minister, despite his self-professed love for rivers, asks his officials to just clear dam projects. The Water Resources Minister has shown spunk but is blind towards any river other than Ganga. We also have organisations like the Art of Living, arrogantly flouting the norms, and yet defending itself over flagrant violation of environment laws. We have big businesses which dumped muck from their dam project on Alaknanda so irresponsibly, that the 2013  flood wave submerged parts of Srinagar town in several feet of silt.

The Ken-Betwa River linking project, cleared by the National Board for Wildlife and the Expert Appraisal Committee of the Environment Ministry, will submerge more than 5,000 hectares of forests and home of animals including Tigers for posterity. The dams coming up around Mumbai will displace not only one lakh tribals, but submerge 6,000 hectares of forests, nearly 750 hectares of the Tansa Sanctuary, the last haven for over 50 species of animals holding on to their dwindling homes amid decades of loss.

Enough. Is the picture of India’s rivers all bleak? Are we beyond redemption? Just a few months ago, thousands of people from Mumbai marched for their rivers. They cleared whatever they could with bare hands. Arunachal’s Subansiri River is flowing today because of the sheer grit showed by a ragtag peasant’s army in Assam. They are not aberrations, they are us.

The author is associated with the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers, and People (SANDRP)