Government Pledges to Clean Up Yamuna River (Again)

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times The Yamuna River in New Delhi.

NEW DELHIâ€" Confronted with thousands of angry protesters, the Indian government promised this week to clean up the filthy Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi.

India’s minister of water resources, Harish Rawat, has promised that the government will have a blueprint for a river cleanup program and to map out construction of sewage interception drains within two months. Mr. Rawat made the pledge late Wednesday night to protesters who had amassed in an open field after a march to Delhi.

“These are very complex demands,” Mr. Rawat said in a telephone interview Friday. “But we have accepted them as they suggested and we ill try to fulfill them as soon as possible.”

More than half of Delhi’s sewage flows untreated into the Yamuna, ruining it for farmers and wildlife downriver. The 22-kilometer (14-mile) stretch of the river that flows through Delhi has a dissolved oxygen content, a measure of a river’s health and ability to support life, of zero in some areas.

Tsering Topgyal/Associated Press Protestors who marched from Mathura, Uttar Pradesh to New Delhi supporting the “Save Yamuna” river campaign, gathered in the national capital on Tuesday.

Yamuna Rakshak Dal, ! an umbrella organization of religious, cultural and farmer groups, organized a 12-day march to Delhi of thousands of people from nearby areas to protest the pollution.

“The Yamuna pollution is affecting farmers seriously in many ways,” Bhanu Pratap Singh, president of the Indian Farmers Union and a protester, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “Because of less water and polluted water, our productivity has come down sharply” and costs have gone up, he said.

“Earlier because of fresh water, the wild animals like antelope and wild pigs used to live on marsh land,” Mr. Singh said. “Now because of river pollution, those animals do not live in the marsh. They come to our fields and destroy our crops.”

The Indian government has promised since the 1990s to clean up the Yamuna, and dedicated millions of dollars to the cause, but the problem has not improved.

Aside from its agricultural importance, the Yamuna is first and foremost considered a holy river for Hindus, who call it Jamuna-ji, using the honorific.

Explains Radha Jivan Poddar, 57, a garment exporter from Florida who came to India to participate in the protests: “Jamuna-ji is a goddess for Hindus. Lord Krishna was born here. The life history of Lord Krishna revolves around Jamuna-ji.  We use Jamuna-ji water at the time of birth and death. But now what we get here is the sewage of Delhi.”

The government has promised that 250 cubic feet per second of fresh river water will flow beyond Delhi and that it will construct 22 kilometers of sewage interception drains along the river, Jai Kishan Das, the head of Yamuna Rakshak Dal, said by telephone Friday.

However, the government has not given a wri! tten and ! signed copy of the agreement to protesters, he said. “You have to trust the government. What else you can do” he said.