River Sutra

On July 26, 2005, when the clouds burst over Mumbai and there was record rainfall, the entire city drowned because the rivers that no one knew existed in it overflowed and then flooded the streets. The main one was Mithi and, soon after and even now, massive amounts of money have been poured into it so that it could restore its form and purity. And, yet, it remains more or less a sewage outlet. Its condition is also reflected in most rivers in the state.

Maharashtra’s minister for environment and climate Pankaja Munde spoke about the severity of the problem in the legislative council early this week, noting that sewage totalling 4,344 million litres simply flows into the state’s rivers without any treatment. She is creating a task force to address the issue and coming up with many more sewage treatment plants. And yet it is not clear how that will be the solution to a problem into which enormous funding and energy has already been expended. The sewage treatment plants will help but then if sewage has to be treated then it has to be collected first and that is hardly a given, especially in urban slums and rural areas.

Munde was asked in the legislature about creating protected zones alongside rivers, like how Coastal Regulation Zones exist for the oceans, and replied that she was open to considering it. But CRZs have also opened up an entire industry of corruption. Along swathes of Mumbai, it prevented neither encroachments nor unauthorised constructions. A policy for rivers might end up with the same ailments.

As the suburban train in Mumbai’s western line moves over a bridge after Bandra station one can see a black foul-smelling creek making its way to the nearby Arabian Sea and the colour of the Mithi’s water here hasn’t changed for decades despite everything the state has promised to do. The problem of river pollution is not limited to Maharashtra either. It is hard to think of success stories of polluted rivers in India that have been brought back to purity. River pollution ultimately has a correlation to poverty and the solution is the latter part of the equation changing, which is how it happened in those developed countries which have clean rivers today.

Arabian SeaMithi RiverMumbaiPankaja Munderainfallsewagewater pollutionWeb Exclusive