What if
Sabarmati comes to Mahanadi?
Ranjan Panda
Amid the election heat, where personal abuses have virtually
taken over real issues, some debate is still going on among a very few people
about development. And when it comes to
development, there is an aggressive marketing of the Gujarat Development
Model. The BJP party is busy selling
this model of development as a panacea to all woes of the country. This party’s PM candidate, who is busy
selling hundreds of new dreams in each of his hundreds of rallies across the
country, has just tried to sell another dream: to make a Sabarmati out of
Ganga, if he comes to power. Experience
says that common Indian people are habituated to ignore election promises,
dismissing them as gimmicks. However,
the seriousness in which this PM candidate is being projected by BJP – almost
by sacrificing the party’s identity to his image – I thought of peeping a bit
into what exactly would a Sabarmati Ganga look like. And mostly importantly, what such a model
would mean for our Mahanadi.
Sabarmati is the third polluted river of the nation. If population dependent on it was as big as
that were dependent on the Ganges, it would have easily taken the first
position in pollution. Studies by the
Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) as well as that by independent
environmental organisations, and even known academicians confirm Sabarmati’s
plight. The CPCB, which studied
pollution levels in multiple stations along ‘polluted river stretches’ found
out that at various stations the pollution was so high that at most of the
places in Sabarmati as well as other rivers of Gujarat such as the Amlakhadi,
Mahi and Tapi, the water was not even fit for bathing.
This was confirmed by a very recent study by a group of
academicians who found out, from analysing multiple samples, that in the 163 km
stretch of the river from upstream of Gandhinagar city to Vataman near
Sabarmati estuary, the river stretch from Ahmedabad-Vasana barriage to Vataman
was highly polluted due to perennial waste discharges mainly from municipal
drainage and industries.
In fact the CAG has slammed the Govt. of Gujarat and the
state pollution control board, in very strong words, for failing to control
pollution of water bodies and rivers.
Most of the rivers in the state are polluted by untreated discharge of
both chemical and municipal wastes. What
is it then the Gujarat government projecting as a model for Ganga?
It is the much touted Sabarmati Riverfront Development Model
that was started way back in 1997. This
model with lot of constructions – mostly on beautification of river side -
using funds from the environment ministry, housing and urban development
ministry and other such sources is actually a western style ‘development
project’ in a very small stretch, that is just 10.5 km of the total 370 km long
river. Urban people of Ahmedabad see
this as a great achievement because of the looks. In reality, has the Sabarmati River
benefitted, or in any sense ‘restored’?
A dam about 165 kilometers upstream has already killed the
river’s natural flow. This 10.5 of
beautification has been done out of water diverted from Narmada River canal as
because this western style restoration – that requires heavy funding and
construction – required bringing back the natural flow into the river. Such restoration works have their inherent
dangers. They encroach upon flood plains and treat rivers like canals. Rivers are ecological entities and not
‘economic commodities’ and the Sabarmati Riverfront Development Model does not
respect this, nor is the solution for our ailing rivers.
Mahanadi is in a dying state and there have been many river
side constructions here. Hirakud has
already intercepted its natural flow to a large extent and pollution from both
industries and municipalities has made the river virtually a dead river.
What we need is to tackle pollution at the source, free the
flood plains and water bodies of the basin from encroachment and work towards
low cost, people owned ecological restoration of the rivers. We certainly don’t need Mahanadi to turn
India’s third polluted river.
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This article of mine was published in May 2014 at the following link. However, just realized the article is no more online. So, sharing this on blog today.
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