Heavy machinery
is used to scoop sand
from the Son riverbed
in Bihar. Although
this operation may be
legal, sand mining
is often done illegally
under cover of darkness.
Sand supplies India’s
booming construction
industry, but excessive
mining disrupts rivers
and destroys habitats of
endangered species
such as river dolphins and
crocodile-like gharials.
meet all sorts of characters in unlikely places.
But Major Hindustani turns out to be blind too.
Kumar-Rao emits a squeal. She spots dolphins
offshore. A cow and her calf. They rise and fall in
the glossy brown currents of the Beas, breaking
the surface with a sound like a soft kiss.
A recent survey suggests that no more than 11
Indus River dolphins live in the Beas.The Chambal: Common injustice
GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, water defeats almost any-
thing. Stone. Iron. Bone. Rivers saw through the
stratigraphy of time itself. Yet patriarchy endures.
What is the most common injustice seen on a
walk across the world?
Not the suppression of ethnic minorities.
Not intolerance rooted in religion. Not income
inequality. No: It is the exclusion of women from
humanity’s ledger of rewards and opportunities.
No society is completely immune. Half of thePunjab. Millions are fleeing, emigrating to the
Middle East, North America, elsewhere.
“It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed,” Kumar-
Rao hollers on a canal road whining with trac-
tors pulling house-size bags of chaff. She’s spent
years documenting the strip-mining of India’s
water resources. “Our denial is a form of mass
blindness.” Kumar-Rao wants to find another
blind creature, the endangered Indus River
dolphin—Platanista gangetica minor—a fresh-
water cousin of the famed sea mammal.
“There are no bhulan here anymore!” a dapper
man calling himself Major Hindustani declares
near the Harike Barrage. Bhulan is the local
name for the Indus River dolphin.
Major Hindustani is a trick motorcycle rider.
He works with a small traveling circus. With
shirtsleeves rolled to display bulging biceps, he
performs stunts for us—perching one-legged
on the seat of his moving Royal Enfield—as we
watch, stunned, on a quiet, muddy, relict bank
of the Beas River. Walking India is like this. You
88 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC