This is Kanpur, my birth place. I vividly remember sumptuous breakfast of Shatabdi Express that would accompany us every summer I traveled back to Kanpur , the famous ‘thagoo ke ladoo’ where my mother would stop by for popular Kanpuria laddos, traversing in ethnic rickshaws bustling the roads with ear scratching horns, narrow by lanes filled with aroma of spices. Loud ‘dhik-chik’ Bollywood music is the trade mark welcome greeting in the Phool Bagh area where beloved grandparents resided.
Sadly, the city’s massive industrialization coupled with unplanned development has reduced it to hub of non stop factory sirens, gushing chimneys, smoggy atmosphere and the holy Ganga which has been reduced to a sewage drain. As a visitor to the city you would never be invited or recommended a visit to the Ganga. Maybe that’s why I do not remember it as a part of my itinerary. The convenient reason given is that it slightly far from the city.
But the horrifying truth is today Ganga ranks in the top five most polluted rivers of the world.
About 250 million liters of waste water and poisonous effluents are discharged from hundreds of tanneries standing erect near the banks of Ganga. Most tanneries do not have water treatment plants. Incase they do, the plants aren’t operational. And if these plants manage to run somehow , power cuts ensure more than 300 million liters of noxious black brown chemicals to gush into the azure of Ganga.
The effluents contain animal remains, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, chrome that kills the fish and give life to weeds that choke the river.
Huge population of fish, turtles and other aquatic flora and fauna continue to lose their lives everyday.
An ordinary person residing in Kanpur may not have woken up to this aquatic eco disaster which was the first alarm of a larger biodiversity loss… but recent tales of failed crops, skin diseases, illness, death toll in villages around have shaken the Government and the tannery industry.Government attempts like an exclusively constructed tannery sewage treatment plant in Jajmau are repeatedly failing. Nishad, a farmer in Shekharpur village says, “Our water was polluted with chromium , so we needed pumps to draw water from the underground table at 150 feet. We are not allowed to go deeper. Water is exhausted. How will we grow water with chromium water? What will we drink?”
“ We have stopped grieving. No one cares. There is no hope.” Said Ritu Nishad, 18, who lost his father, mother and aunt in one month. Several have complained about intestinal pains, burning skin sensations etc.
Even the drinking water going to city is not safe. The water suction areas of Jal Board are near slaughterhouses, burning ghats, sewage lines.
Dr. Padma Vankar, scientist from IIT Kanpur who tested the Ganga water says , “ When we tested the water, we saw that the test tube turned blue, which indicates the presence of chrome. Chrome causes various diseases.”
India’s most ambitious river cleaning project, the Ganga Action Plan (GAP), is a colossal failure. Despite spending Rs.20,000 crore on the project, the river remains polluted. The project is 13 years behind schedule. Hard earned money of us tax payers has literally gone down the drain.
About 83 tanneries do not have chromium recovery plants within their premises. Another 20 tanneries discharge waste water directly into the Ganga.
In 2006, the UPPCB had issued closure notices to 15 tanneries. To our dismay, all 15 units began operating within a months time even after the closure notice was pasted on their gates. Several pollution control drives were initiated in the past but the curbs failed to reap any benefit due to political interference.
Non-stop inflow of untreated civic waste and industrial effluents have choked Ganga. About 400 million people look to the Ganga as a primary source of freshwater. No other river supports such a large population in the world. Ganga is the fulcrum where all diversity, faith, culture of India unite. Time has given has several opportunities. It is still not to late to save Ganga.
Amidst all the trouble there has been a ray of hope. In the recent past we have witnessed success stories like WWF India’s Living Ganga programme, cost effective technologies developed by IIT-Kanpur scientists etc. Hopefully, these small successes will bring back the lifetime glory of our scared Ganga and erase the taint industrial baggage from my beloved city.
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