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| Concluding religious rituals being conducted on the river bank |
Though
I am advanced in age I happen to be markedly irreligious or, one might say,
unspiritual. I do not go to temples, do not observe any religious routine at
home and, like numerous others, I do not go out to spiritual congregations
where the so-called godmen give discourses day after day. Godmen, somehow or
other, get my goat especially after that nasty old man – Asa Ram Bapu, a wolf
in human shape – was caught indulging in nefarious activties and is now cooling
his heels in Bhopal’s Central Jail. He is perhaps the worst of his kind.
One thought once his serial crimes against
women is known to the people they would stop flocking around godmen of any
kind. Sadly that did not happen. People, it seems, are in dire need of ethical
and moral instructions by someone who looks and adorns himself as a spiritual
kind. There seems to be a dire need for ethical pep talk as our society is
getting soaked in venality, Many of those who hear him with patience could well
be venal and corrupt. I have a belief that whoever has a catch in his
personality unfailingly goes after these religious sermons in the hope getting
pardon from the Almighty.
Recently,
a spiritual leader had come and lectured in Bhopal. He apparently has the local
chief minister as one of his followers as the latter ceremoniously received him
at the airport and attended his first discourse. His discourses were covered in
the vernacular press. From what I saw in the papers reporting on his statements
somehow impressed me. I thought what he said about conservation of rivers was a
kind of a slap on the face of the chief minister who is currently running “Narmada Seva Yatra” that is claimed
to be one of the biggest river conservation campaigns in the world.
What
Murari Bapu, the spiritual leader, said was that instead of worshipping the
rivers, people should “love” them if they wanted to conserve them. Hindus have
always had an inclination to worship rivers calling them ‘Ma” or mother. At the
same time they would abuse the rivers by polluting them, pumping sewage into
them or mining sand from their banks and even from midstream.
Virtually,
every big river, from Ganga and Jamuna to Narmada and Godavari and from Krishna
to Kaveri, all and many more are considered holy and “aartis” (Hindu ritualized
worship with the help of a number of brass oil lamps) are held on their banks. Simultaneously
religious mantras are chanted collectively or devotional songs are sung in
chorus by the assembled congregation, often broadcast with the help of
loudspeakers.
I have had occasions to witness such
performances at Haridwar and Varanasi on the banks of the Ganga. Despite them Ganga
remains as filthy and as polluted as ever; clothes are washed in it using toxic
soaps, sewage and industrial effluents are channelized into it and half burnt
dead bodies are thrown into it in the belief that the departed soul will find
salvation. The decades-old Ganga Action Plan yielded very little as people
generally do not care for Ganga – in Murari Bapu’s words, they do not “love” it
enough. They use it as a channel to dispose of waste and rubbish.
This
is true of most of the so-called holy rivers. Just as worshipping rivers is not
enough, taking care of them in the way of the Narmada Seva Yatra proposes to do is also not enough. Prohibitive action needs to be taken in respect of that which damages the river.
If
anything, sand mining in Narmada is the biggest cause of damage to the river
and its ecology. The government of Madhya Pradesh has very cleverly skirted the
issue and it has not mentioned a word in the “objectives” of the “Yatra” about banning
illegal sand mining in, for example, Itarsi and Hoshangabad areas. That the
River is being severely damaged because of the relentless sand mining does not
seem to have registered with the government. Every other thing like flow of
industrial effluents, encroachments destruction of forests, illegal tapping of
its waters, etc. are mentioned but not sand mining.
One
suspects, it has been omitted because political biggies are involved in
exploiting this precious resource of the river. Unmindful of the damage it is doing
to the river millions of tons of sand are excavated and dispersed to various
parts of the state to feed the real estate industry. It is a big business; not only
the illegal sand miners have been thriving, even the government officials
working at various check points have prospered with the bribes that they get. Recent
checks had revealed that among the illegal sand miners were many connected with
politicians, even the ministers and their relatives.
Surprisingly
it is not realised that Narmada cannot be conserved if it is stripped of its sands.
One might establish sewage treatment plants wherever drains come and empty in
the river, one might even take care of its catchments and plant a million trees
on its banks but all these and many other steps would not be able to sustain
the river unless sand mining in it is brought down to a sustainable level.
Smriti
Kak Ramachandran, a journalist of note, had written in The Hindu that the environmental
costs of illegal sand mining is far greater than what can be imagined. “From forcing the river to change
its course, to affecting the groundwater tables and adversely impacting the
habitat of micro-organisms, the ramifications of illegal sand mining are many.”
Smt. Ramachandran has quoted Manoj Mishra of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan who says “Sand
is important for ground water recharge, on a riverbed it acts as a link between
the flowing river and the water table and is part of the aquifer.” Mr. Mishra
also says that illegally dredged sand is equivalent to robbing water. Sand
holds a lot of water and when it is mindlessly mined and loaded on trucks a lot
of water is lost. Negative impact of illegal sand mining far outweighs the
economic benefits, says Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams,
Rivers and People.
Illegal
mining of sand that is going on in a big way in the State in Chambal, Narmada
or Betwa or numerous other rivers is likely to prove disastrous for the state
in the long term. Agriculture might get adversely affected and the state may
eventually turn out to be water-stressed. Sooner the government heeds the advice
of Murari Bapu and starts respecting and loving the state’s rivers better it
would be for the wellbeing of its people.
*Photo is from internet
10th
April 2017
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