AUGUST 13, 2018 INDIA TODAY 39The India Today Group has launched a ‘Save the Taj’ campaign across all its platforms. The magazine will
feature each of the problems the Taj faces and possible solutions in the coming issues. Join our campaign
and send in your ideas of what can be done to restore our most precious inheritance.
Write to us at: [email protected]physician and an active member of River Connect Campaign.
About 90 drains discharge untreated effluent and sewage
into the river, only 29 have wire meshing. “We have drilled the
ground,” says doctor and river activist Harendra Gupta, “and
it’s packed with plastic, polythene, waste leather cuttings from
the shoe factories up to about 10 ft under the river bed.”
That’s not all: they organise walks demanding release of
water into the Yamuna and speeding up cleaning pro-
grammes; they bring oxygen cylinders to draw attention
to the fact that the river has zero oxygen; they pour sand
over themselves and pretend to swim on the dry river bed;
they write to the president, prime minister, water resources
minister and the Uttar Pradesh chief minister on the con-
cretisation of the Yamuna riverbed; they demand auditing of
Yamuna cleaning expenses, especially foreign loans (namely,
Rs 937 crore from the Japan International Cooperation
Agency); they float hundreds of paper boats in a dry Yamuna
to remind Union transport and shipping minister Nitin
Gadkari of his 2014 promise: that soon it will be possible
to go to Agra “sailing” on the Yamuna, with “help from the
Netherlands government”.
COUNTING THE BROKEN PROMISES
In November 2013, when Narendra Modi came to Agra to
campaign for the BJP, his first promise was to provide safe
drinking water by reviving the Yamuna. Almost five years
later, there is no relief in sight. The Yamuna Action Plan,
which was initially funded by Japan decades earlier, has failed
to bring about any results. A senior administration official
says the Yamuna Action Plan has been limited to files and
neither the state nor the central government pays attention to
the requests of residents for a clean Yamuna. The sewer lines
are still flowing untapped into the river despite the expense of
several crores on treatment plants on all sewer lines.
“There has been little improvement in the state of the
Yamuna since 2014,” says Brij Khandelwal of the Blue Ya-
muna Foundation. “It has become worse as the river remains
dry year-long now, filled only with the city’s sewage and
whatever flows down from Mathura.” To Khandelwal, the
pathetic state of the river is the primary reason why the Taj
has been facing insect attacks. The yellowing of the monu-
ment is also because there is no water in the Yamuna to
absorb the air pollutants and suspended particulate matter.
“Unless the Yamuna is refilled with clean water, there is no
hope the beauty of the Taj will survive another 100 years,”
he says. “And until the Yamuna is revived, our Yamuna aarti
will continue unabated.”
According to available information, the Hathnikund
Barrage has released over 600,000 cusecs of water, to which
the Gokul Barrage (Mathura) has added 45,011 cusecs. With
the river brimming with water now, residents are rushing to
witness that rare phenomenon: a famously blue, magical and
mighty river flowing as it should. They are offering diyas to
the river and praying: for good rains, for the prosperity of the
city and for the long life of their very own mausoleum with
soaring minarets—the Taj Mahal. nMONUMENTAL THREAT The Taj Mahal complex waterlogged by an overflowing Yamuna (left); a washerman at Hathi GhatYASIR IQBAL