The way in which Covid-19 has quarantined most social and economic activity, is being called the world’s largest scale experiment ever. When the quarantine protocols are lifted, data collected during this experiment should help build better societies and economies. One notable area in which new baselines of what is possible have emerged is the environment. Specifically, consider the lockdown report cards of India’s rivers. From Ganga to Cauvery parts of our major rivers have reported dramatic improvements in water quality, becoming ‘fit for drinking’ for the first time in decade.
No mining, no manufacturing, no commercial activity mean no industrial discharge. This makes for swift and thrilling facelifts in cities like Kanpur that have several polluting enterprises along the river. Of course the health of the nation needs such activities to resume, and grow even stronger than before. But that doesn’t mean we have to pollute our rivers again. Several countries have been implementing industrial wastewater treatment strictly for half a century now and India needs to join their ranks at the soonest. It needs to protect rivers from untreated domestic sewage as well. The 34% reduction in faecal coliform reported from a Haridwar ghat in April may be on account of the paralysis of tourism, suggesting how appallingly human excreta are normally allowed to pollute the holy Gang.
Knowing what needs to be done is one thing, doing it is another. But the current pandemic is a clarion call for walking the talk. Even before this, India’s per person disease burden due to unsafe water and sanitation was 40 times higher than China and 12 times higher than Sri Lanka. Now the need to wash hands worsens the distress of not having enough clean water to do so. Don’t waste a crisis, they sensibly say. It has shown that reviving the hydrology of our rivers is not just necessary but doabl.
This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
