In this twenty-eight archive story by Kristian Bertel, we are visiting India's most polluted river, the Yamuna.
Read the background story of this archive photo by the photographer.

The Yamuna continues to be polluted with garbage while most sewage treatment facilities are underfunded or malfunctioning. In addition, the water in this river remains stagnant for almost nine months in a year, aggravating the situation. For Hindus, the Yamuna is not just a natural resource, but also one of the holiest rivers in India. In this photo the Yamuna River has been photographed in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Yamuna – India's most polluted river

In 1909 the waters of the Yamuna were distinguishable as clear blue, as compared to the silt-laden yellow of the Ganges. However, due to high density population growth and rapid industrialization today Yamuna is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, especially around New Delhi, the capital of India, which dumps about fiftyeight percent of its waste into the river. New Delhi generates 1,900 million litres per day of sewage. Though many attempts have been made to process it, the efforts have proven futile.

Is the Yamuna River more than just a natural resource?

For Hindus, the Yamuna is not just a natural resource, but also one of the holiest rivers in India. She is a goddess, a giver of life and the chief lover of Krishna. So the protesters were motivated as much by faith as by environmental outrage. In the past they would have relied exclusively on prayers, incense and offerings of fresh flowers to practice seva, the Hindu ritual of loving service to the deity. But of necessity there has lately also come to mean environmental action, working to restore life to a river now widely regarded as dead.

One of the major tributaries of the Ganges
The Yamuna River, also known as the 'Jumna', is one of the major tributaries of the Ganges in northern India. It is one of the major rivers in India and flows through the states of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It is the longest tributary of the Ganges and has a length of 1,376 kilometers. The Yamuna is an important river for the Hindu religion and culture. It is one of the seven sacred rivers in Hinduism, and is considered to be a goddess in her own right. Hindus often perform rituals and take part in festivals at the river's edge and the river is worshipped during the sacred 'Kumbh Mela festival'. The Yamuna is also a vital source of water for the communities that live along its banks. It is used for drinking, bathing and irrigation and is also home to many species of fish and other aquatic life.

One of the most polluted rivers in India
Unfortunately, the Yamuna is one of the most polluted rivers in India. Industrial effluents and sewage are dumped in the river and the water is often highly contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides and other toxins. In addition, the over-extraction of water for agriculture and other uses has caused the river to dry up in some parts of the year. In recent years, the Yamuna has become the focus of several clean-up efforts, including the 'Yamuna Action Plan', which aims to improve water quality and restore the river's ecology. The Government of India is also investing in programs to improve the management of the river, such as the 'Yamuna Riverfront Development Project'. Despite these efforts, the Yamuna remains a major environmental concern. The river is in dire need of protection and restoration and it is up to all of us to help ensure that this sacred river is preserved for future generations.Yamuna continues to be polluted with garbage
Although the government of India has spent nearly 500 million dollars to clean up the river, the Yamuna continues to be polluted with garbage while most sewage treatment facilities are underfunded or malfunctioning. In addition, the water in this river remains stagnant for almost nine months in a year, aggravating the situation. Delhi alone contributes a lot of sewage in the river. The Government of India over the next five years has prepared plans to rebuild and repair the sewage system and the drains that empty into the river. The Yamuna is the largest tributary of the Ganges River. Where it flows through Delhi, it is estimated that fiftyeight percent of the city's waste gets dumped straight into the river. Millions of Indians still rely on these murky, sewage-filled waters for washing, waste disposal and drinking water.

Polluted river in India
The Yamuna River starts out clear as rainwater from a lake and hot spring at the foot of a glacier, 19,200 feet up in the Himalayas. But for much of its 853-mile length, it is now one of the world's most defiled rivers and most polluted river in India. Agricultural demand repeatedly depletes the river's flow. Rapid modernization of the Indian economy since the 1980s has added thousands of manufacturing plants to the Yamuna's watershed, with little thought given to how much water they take out or how much pollution they add back. And urbanization has roughly quintupled the population of New Delhi, from about 3.5 million people 30 years ago to more than 18 million today. In some places, the Yamuna is now so heavily exploited that broad swaths of riverbed lie naked and exposed to the sun for much of the year.

In other places, the river is a sudsy, listless morass of human, industrial and agricultural wastes, literally an open sewer. Given that 60 million people depend on the river for bathing and drinking water, a protest might seem inevitable. The surprising thing, at least to untutored Western eyes, was that the leaders of the Yamuna march were not primarily political activists. They were 'Sadhus', or holy men, devotees of the central Hindu hero and deity Krishna. They briefly shut down their temples along the river as part of the protest and they added a colorful strand of religious belief to the familiar environmental language of oxygen content, turbidity and toxicity.

"With more than half the sewage in Delhi entering the river untreated and fecal coliform counts in places reaching over 100,000 per 100 milliliters which is 200 times the standard for water to be swimmable"

A holy river in India
When Mathura, one of the towns along the route, moved to end the blight of plastic shopping bags along the river banks. The river seemed relatively healthy when he first moved to New Delhi almost thirty years ago. People were swimming in the river. You could drink the water. But the condition of the Yamuna deteriorated rapidly from that point as India began to modernize. There was clearly a lack of coordination, a lack of information and perhaps an ignorance of the aggregate impacts. But now there is no such excuse. Now we see the collective impact of what happened and the condition of the river is so dire that it has become impossible for anyone to ignore and the problems fall into five broad categories, which are lack of flow due to dams and heavy withdrawals for agricultural irrigation and other purposes at Delhi, where pollution authorities say the flow should be at least 285 cubic meters per second, it drops down in summer months to as little as five cubic meters per second.

Contamination of the river consist of
• Agricultural pesticides and herbicides
• Toxic industrial wastes
• Human wastes

Yamuna in religious imagery have now largely vanished and no one really knows the status of bird species that depend on the river. And in the face of global warming the uncertain future of the dwindling Himalayan glaciers that are the source of the river. The creatures that depend on the river are clearly in trouble and the big river turtles that carry the goddess. Aquatic life has also suffered and 500 river villages that were largely based on fishing in the 1970s must now earn their livelihood by other means. The effects of the river's pollution on human health, though also inadequately studied, include a sharp spike in cases of 'Hepatitis A' and 'Typhoid fever', according to recent work in New Delhi. Reliance on polluted river water is also a major factor in India's high infant mortality rate more than 50 deaths per 1,000 births and pollution of the Yamuna could also have public health consequences worldwide.

Read also: Waste and recycling in India


			Read also: Waste and recycling in India

Yamuna – India's most polluted river

Read also: Waste and recycling in India

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