Massive March for Yamuna River Nears Delhi

Kevin Frayer/Associated Press Yamuna River in New Delhi in this Nov. 28, 2012 photo.

NEW DELHI â€"Tens of thousands of villagers are marching toward Delhi to pressure the central government to save the Yamuna River, in one of the biggest protests against river pollution in India.

The protesters, whose numbers have fluctuated between 20,000 to 100,000 since they embarked on their journey on March 1, include men, women and children, mostly from Uttar Pradesh but also from Haryana and other neighboring states.

They started from Vrindavan, a holy town near Mathura on the bank of the Yamuna River, also known as the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna. Ten days later, they have traveled north 140 ilometers (85 miles) to reach Delhi’s border, where they are camping in an open space.

The group leading the march is Yamuna Rakshak Dal (Save Yamuna Group), which consists of a large contingent of farmers and agricultural laborers and followers of Man Mandir, a religious organization based in Barsana, near Vrindavan.

The Yamuna River originates from the Champasar glacier in the Himalayas and traverses 1,376 kilometers to merge with the Ganges River at Allahabad. The most polluted part of the Yamuna starts from the Wazirabad barrage, a type of dam, to Okhla barrage, a 22-kilometer stretch in New Delhi. About half of Delhi’s sewage flows untreated into the Yamuna.

“Our two key demands are that Yamuna should be allo! wed to flow unrestricted and that the Delhi’s polluted water should not flow into the Yamuna,” Radha Kant Shastry, one of the organizers of the Save Yamuna march, said in a telephone interview from the Delhi- Haryana border on Monday.

“The government should construct intercepting canals along the river in Delhi,” Mr. Shastry said. “No water flows to Yamuna beyond Wazirabad barrage. It is only the sewer of Delhi. The big volume of water is diverted in Haryana for agriculture irrigation and rest is diverted in Delhi for drinking water.”

Mr. Shastry vowed that he and his fellow protesters would not go back home until all their demands are met. He also said that a group of 2,000 people may go to Jantar Mantar, a designated protest area in Delhi, if their pleas go unheeded.

On Monday, Meira Kumar, the speaker of Lok Sabha, said that the lower house of Parliament should send a message to the marchers by showing that the entire house is serious about the issue and by promising correctve steps will be taken soon.

In Delhi, 52 percent of sewage flows into the Yamuna untreated. A government study in 2009 showed that the Yamuna River’s volume of dissolved oxygen in the New Delhi stretch was zero and the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) was 23.00. In comparison, in Tajewala, at the entry point of Haryana, where the water is without pollution, the volume of dissolved oxygen was 9.40 and the biochemical oxygen demand was zero.

The central government has spent 13 billion rupees ($239 million) to reduce pollution in the Yamuna through the Yamuna Action Plan, which had two phases spanning from 1993 to 2008.

The results were disappointing. In 2009, Jairam Ramesh, then the environment minister, said in Parliament, “The true test is does the Yamuna look cleaner today tha! n 20 year! s ago. The answer is no.”