Saving Ourselves

After many years and Crores of rupees spent on cleaning the Ganga, all to without any avail, we have yet another spectacle of the BJP Government in Uttarakhand launching a Save Ganga campaign. Quite a noble initiative, one would say. After all, aren’t rivers the life blood of our country? And doesn’t the Ganga occupy the highest pedestal of them all? Moreover, with environmental consciousness being the newest ‘cool’ fad amongst Indian elite, isn’t it time that we should all stop dumping plastic bags in the river and save it from drying up?

Of course, yes! Answers to each of these questions would be in the affirmative. Sadly, saving the river is much more that stopping sewage or dumping of sundry dead bodies. Coming from the BJP Government, which only a couple of days back has decided to oppose the Central GoM decision not to go ahead with construction of dams in the 155 kms stretch of Bhagirathi, this Save Ganga campaign seems to be as meaningful as Nitin Gadkari’s song at the BJP National Convention at Indore. As more and more hydrologists are now accepting, setting up of sewage treatment plants to save rivers are akin to administering distilled water before it is administered to a dead body; a dead body because a river without water is dead. Period.

Over the last century, we as a Nation has failed Nature which made the Indian Subcontinent among the most fertile, productive and populous regions of the world. Dams after dams on rivers crisscrossed with ill conceived canals have ensured that even the supposedly perennial rivers get reduced to a rivulet like trickle for most of the year. A dam building western model, simply duplicated without study of its applicability in the Indian context, has ensured that within a few years, dams get silted up, never achieve even half of their power generation or irrigation capacity and finally, fail to achieve its target of flood alleviation. Nothing can be more potent a symbol of this rot than the Hirakud on river Mahanadi. This dam was ostensibly constructed for protection of deltaic Orissa from floods. Now, the dam management has to flood Orissa to save the dam!

Coming back to the Ganga, the river as we know, is an amalgam of many streams and rivers, of which, some like the Yamuna are even mightier than the Ganga when it actually merges with the latter at Prayag. The primary stream, which flows from Gangotri and before it, from Gaumukh, is the Bhagirathi and it is the same Bhagirathi which carries the name of Ganga throughout its journey in the Indian heartland.  Most importantly, the BJP wallahs whose hearts seem to beat so strongly for the Ganga, want not 1 but 3 dams to come up over Bhagirathi, effectively killing the river and by extension Ganga. 

Unfortunately, killing the Ganga does not seem to be an obsession with the BJP alone. Since the times of British, when canals were built to divert water from the Ganga, more and more projects on the river have meant that there is lesser and lesser water in the river. A river, which sustained river trade, lakhs of fishermen and multiple civilizations has been left gasping for the element which makes it a river in the first place. What good would a save river campaign do when there would be no river to protect?

Unfortunately, like most other issues of public domain, environmental concerns in India have been hijacked by extremists, one of the breast beating variety, and the other and more dangerous ilk (for they are the power wielders), of everything-is-fine variety.

What is more confounding is that both these varieties come together when India is ‘pitted’ against the ‘imperial’ west, aka, India’s persistence with the per capita emission standards. While it can be argued that the Hagen summit was doomed to fail on account of the developed world’s intransigence on bearing the cost of cleaning up of their mess, more shameful has been India’s assertion of its right to pollute, based on the per-capita emission figures. Again, while India may not be found wanting in legal speak, the morality and truth behind such a position needs a definite enquiry. Rather than seeking refuge behind its destitute millions, India should pause and think of a developed country whose land, air and water is even half as poisoned as India or a country whose forests, rivers and mountains have faced so much denudation as ours. The fact remains that these destitute millions, who allow India to shamelessly ask for a Right to pollute are the ones who demand the least of Natural resources. I dare say that the carbon emission rates of our consuming classes would be at rates which would put even the much maligned Americans to shame.

More inexplicable is people’s reluctance to accept that the climate is changing. It doesn’t require one to be a greybeard today to proclaim that the summers are hotter, days hotter, nights warmer, and rains shorter than what they were even 10-15 years back. Flowers and fruits bloom out of season and what comes is always more severe than its predecessor. Our surroundings have changed. The common house sparrow has been replaced by the pigeon and mynah without even our realizing it. The weaver bird, the tailor bird, the parrot, the bulbul, the crane and the sarus seem headed only to our illustration books. Squirrel population has boomed and we have many more monkeys around. But what about other mammals? The udbilav, the mongoose or even the rabbit? We haven’t realised it probably but we have lost Spring. For a land which chronicled six seasons, we have been left with three, a very long summer, a short winter and a short season of rains. But who cares? Our culture, which was so intricately entwined with nature has moved on. For a people who worship trees, mountains, rivers, animals and birds, we seem to display little sensitivity even in instances where the land may be as sacred as Braj or the river as sacred as the Ganga.

Last year’s drought is still fresh in my memory. Indicators for this year have been far from cheerful with absolutely no rainfall in North India in either February or March. Even thinking of a consecutive year of drought sends shivers down my spines. In spite of myself, I cannot but go back to those hymns of the Rig Veda which talk of the 12 year drought, which caused erasure of all knowledge from Earth. We survived that period though at a great cost. Wonder if we have that much of time today?

Let us just remember that we will not be doing Gangaa favour by not throwing polybags in its waters.