Cry of a River -- Pollution of the Ganges River
- India
- It’s surprising how long we can live without food, but without water, survival is impossible, that’s why it’s the most precious of our natural resources. Now though, only 1% of the world reserves are safely drinkable. Yet, we consistently fail to see or treat water as the life-giving treasure that it really is. Supplies are being contaminated with industrial and biological waste, aggravating a water crisis that is already crippling countries in every continent. Even India, which has tended to treat its waters with respect and awe, famously worshipping the River Ganges, has a cautionary tale to tell.
Hindu people believe that if their sacred Ganges should ever be lost, the Universe would disappear too. Locals who have lived and worked on the river since childhood confirm that water quality has deteriorated dramatically over the years. For generations it has been the local custom to cremate the deceased and scatter their ashes on the river. However, many poor people can’t even afford firewood, they often resort to water burials in the river without burning, inevitably, this causes even more pollution. As serious as the health risks are, that is just a small part of the Ganges’ wider pollution problems. Two other major factors are contributing to the river’s toxic decline; raw sewage flows directly into the once sacred water and factories dump huge quantities of chemical waste.
The proper disposal of human waste is a pressing issue in India with proper toilets a rarity in rural areas. Many millions of villagers never even consider installing a regular toilet, held back either by poverty or blind acceptance of the status quo. Defecating in streets and fields is unsanitary and leads to the faecal contamination of ground water and so, waterborne diseases are commonplace. The government is attempting to address the problem with financial support and education initiatives for villagers.
Progress is slow though; there are already places in India where local water reserves are now unfit for human consumption, or even for agriculture. Kolkata for example, on the Ganges Delta, has an abundance of water but the city has to depend on freshwater deliveries because its own supplies are so contaminated, they can’t even be used for laundry let alone drinking.Earlier, the river Ganges was white. Now it's green. Earlier, the river Ganges was white. They used to throw money into the water.
It's dirty now. We don't drink that much now. We don't drink now. This is my bathroom and this is my toilet.
We put the water in this and this water is going by the river. from this pipeline, and this water going to the river. Welcome in this museum. And one more very exciting thing is this sofa toilet used in Victorian clubs in England. Before, with their friends playing chess cards and gossiping, they were defecating, and they had a person to attend them, standing next to them, putting perfume.
This museum is Dr Patak's pet project. project. For many years he has promoted toilets. That may seem a peculiar obsession but according to the World Health Organization one-third of the world's population has no access to proper toilet facilities and almost two billion people take their drinking water from sources contaminated with fecal matter. 120 million houses have no toilets in the rural areas people have mobile phones but not toilet so like sulabh we want missionaries should be in the villages to build their toilets and also to see that they function very well Is it dirty?
Do you pick it up and throw it away? Yes, we do. Is this our place? Yes, it is.
We start from here and end up there. We are running out of electricity in the morning. It only gets dark in the morning. Namaste!
Please raise your hand and tell us who doesn't have a toilet. So they all have no toilets in their houses. Please raise your hand. Raise your hand if you don't have a toilet.
So this time the government has made a program that toilets should be made in every house by 2019. In every house. We have chosen this village under the same programme. But before the toilet is built, they should know... ...what are the benefits of building a toilet.
And if they don't have it, what harm were we incurring? It's been a day. How will we go out now? There will be problems going out.
So how do you survive the whole day? Will you go to the toilet when it gets dark in the evening? We are happy. We are very happy.
We are very happy. You are from this village? Yes, we all go to the fields. And then the ladies go to the gyms, and then the ladies have to stand in the middle.
Because when the gyms come, then they have to stand. Okay. Exactly sir, let me tell you one more thing. There is one more thing here, that when a woman goes, and she is pregnant full-time, and she is going to have an immediate delivery, like she goes to the farm thinking, there have been cases like this, that she has gone to the toilet, and there the baby is there.
And there they have brought her home with great difficulty. There was also a death, there was one more lady. There was also a death? She had two daughters and a daughter-in-law.
Her daughter-in-law went out of the house to think. When she goes out of the house to think, she has to go very far. Because there is a house nearby, she has to go a little far. So the snakes took her dust.
The snakes took her dust. If there was a toilet, this would not have happened. She would have lost her life. She came and lay down.
I don't know if it was a snake or an insect, but it must have been a lily. There must have been blood everywhere. So we called for help and they said it was a snake. I didn't want to go out.
That's why I did all the work. It's important to think about it. And like your sister, whose wedding will take place in a month. So, have you taken care of the laundry in the house where we will have the wedding?
Yes, I have taken care of it. So, you are looking after the house? Yes, I have taken care of the house and the laundry. You have seen everything.
No one has seen it before. We will get married to a girl. It is very itchy. Look at this one.
The water is very dirty. The whole body is dirty. It is a water problem. It is a problem of dirty water.
It is very dirty. This is the toilet where they defecate in the rainy season. The water flows from there to the lake and is stored there. We have brought the wood.
Bring the rope. Bring the rope. This place is started by Lord Shiva. Mother Sati was burned here more than 3,500 years ago.
And same fire keep going on non-stop. We don't burn body, man, sadhu, children, animals, leprosy, pregnant lady, cobra bite. So all this body we take a heavy stone and tie body with a rope. Take one boat, go to middle Ganga and see without burning.
Ganga has its unique characteristics, besides bacterial phases, there are some bacteria also they kill other pathogenic bacteria and thirdly Ganga water has very high concentration of dissolved oxygen say around 12 to 14 milligram per liter this is the concentration which is normally doesn't occur in other rivers of the world that is where you will find that because of these rocks and minerals Ganga water become medicinal. It is believed in India that if you have any skin disease and if you take water, if you take bath into the Ganga, then you will be cured. You will not find original quality of water. You will not find the water which can be said that this is Mother Ganga.
These medicinal properties have been lost from the Ganga water. It has become so much that every person comes and throws a hole in the whole thing. Just like a cow or a buffalo dies in an animal, it is tied to a rock and put inside. That's with the bodies cannot make any big difference, you know, because this since long traditional doing this, things plastic or something dirtiness or something synthetic things or chemical things, they throw it in Ganga. day that happens, Madhav Ganga will be lost.
And when we lost the Madhav Ganga, it means we lost the universe. In Kanpur, River Ganga is being polluted by leather factories. There are 400 tangerines right on the bank of River Ganga. The wastewater is highly chemicalized and hazardous.
It's going to the river without any treatment. This water contains a variety of chemicals, dyes, acids, sulfites, chlorides, preservatives, and the most important, basic chrome sulfate. And it's fatal to the life. And chromium is a known carcinogen, and it causes cancer.
This water is used for irrigating 2,500 hectares of land, but this water is not safe for irrigation. And this water has impacted the local environment, the soil, and also the groundwater. Ideally, no crop should be grown here because the crop is also contaminated. nothing should be grown which is for human consumption or even for animal consumption the international market know that these industries are polluting you they simply ignore it or they close their eyes to the problems they want good quality leather at the low cost Because of this, the plants have started to dry up and the yield has also decreased. Now, all the flowers have dried up and the water is polluted.
I have had a problem with my stomach for the last 4-5 years. Because of the stomach, I have got bruises on my neck. The water has become so polluted that everyone here is sick. I showed it to the doctors and they told me that the water here is absolutely good.
Because of the water, all the facilities are not good. She told me to keep watering the fields and do the other work that I used to do. I kept watering the fields for a year and a half. Then the seeds started to grow.
Before that, the fields used to get burnt. The meat kept getting burnt inside the fields. Then we used to take medicines from other places. The doctor told us about it.
We used to take medicines from other places and we benefited from it. Now we have to go to the fields one by one. You can see for yourself that no human being can work with one hand. Whatever she does, she will do it for us.
But we are not capable of doing anything. If we go to do labour work, the labourer will also see that he cannot do it. He will also throw us out. We can't go because we can't do anything with one hand.
They are the ones who bring in the income and raise the children. We have never been there. Because a person cannot do any work on his own. This is our situation.
This is the biggest industry in the region. And this is the biggest rice plant in all the rice mills in Asia. What these people do here, which they have been complaining about, is that the water that comes out of the raw materials, They don't have any treatment to get them out of the water. They have to be taken out with a drain.
So what they do is, they burwell the water and leave it there. By leaving the water there, all the nearby villages, the 20-25 villages that come to this area, their water level is polluted. When we reached this house while searching, we found out that the people here are very sick because of the water. And they were suffering from cancer.
Then we searched the next house and found out that there were two or three people in this house who were also sick. After that, as we continued our search, we found some people in each house. All the people here are telling us that the water is the cause of all these problems. Everywhere we go, they are telling us that the water is the cause of all these problems.
The water that they are taking out from the ground is the source of all these diseases. This is the 701 TDS here, which is about five times the normal water level. Drinking this water will kill you very soon. There's plenty of water in India's former colonial capital.
But barely a drop of it can serve any useful purpose. Nearly all the groundwater is contaminated by naturally occurring arsenic. And large-scale dumping of industrial waste from all over the country has rendered the waters of the river Ganges unusable. Most of the poor meet all their water needs by going to local street pumps, a source that's considered relatively safe.
Water is good, the water is good. It's good, it's big. Whatever comes out, we have to drink. Throughout Kolkata, though, more and more water sources are becoming unsafe.
Special water tankers deliver clean water around a town that's covered by an extensive network of lakes and canals. All this might be understandable in a desert, but not in a city with the highest numbers of water sources in India. Why do they need to take water from the tanker if they have these pipes, this canal and so Why do you take water from the tanker? The water is not good.
The water is black. If you squeeze it, the water will turn black. So what's wrong with this water? The water is smelly.
It's smelling. It's smelly. Why is it smelly? It's dirty.
It's smelly. Do you drink this water? No. Do you use this water to bathe?
No, I don't. I used to, but now I don't. The water is completely black. It stings, so I don't use it.
She's washing her clothes with this water. I don't wash it now. I used to, but it's not good. Do you use this water?
It stings, but I don't use it. It stings, but I don't use it. Northern Asia, the Middle East, most of Africa, northeast Mexico, the western states of America, Argentina, Chile and most of continental Australia suffer from a lack of fresh water. And pollution is the major cause.
