Foul Flows The Ganga

IT'S just after dawn in Varanasi. A thick winter haze hangs lazily on an even lazier Ganga. The sun looks like an egg-yolk, its fire mellowed by the fog. Even the boatman's muscles ripple meditatively, as if in sync with the river. In the distance, to the north, a 130-year-old marvel of British engineering spans impressively across the river; and as if to complete the picture, a train tunnels through it, its form and declaration smudged out by the white blanket. Along the western bank, reminders of Indian history, the famous 100-odd ghats, rise sleepily through the mist. The eye can barely discern a few human shapes performing morning rituals (or ablutions? It's difficult to tell). The peals of temple bells, however, easily pierce through. Now and then, a black curved thing surfaces from the water and gracefully disappears into it. Not many know it, but they are river dolphins. To a newcomer, especially to an unbeliever, the experience borders on the surreal. For the believer, however, it could well be mystical.

But as the sun ascends, the veil lifts, revealing the real behind the surreal. Bare bottoms defecating; dilapidated walls of the majestic ghat mansions streaked with fresh as well as dried-up turd; sewage running down the walls and furrowing the bank as it drains into the river; hundreds of buffaloes wallowing on the ghats; dhobis washing clothes on the banks; most appallingly perhaps, every day thousands of people taking holy dips and sips in what can only be called a cesspool. Faith overwhelms any fears or inhibitions. Ignorance, of course, is an able abettor.

But for Veer Bhadra Mishra, this predicament is particularly ago-nising. Not because he is the head priest of perhaps the most visited temple in Varanasi, the Sankat Mochan temple, but because he is also a professor of hydraulic engineering at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). It's a rare oxymoron, epitomised by Johann Kepler, a German Catholic priest who unravelled the laws of planetary motion. And the similarity doesn't end there. Kepler was troubled by the apparent contradiction between religious faith, which saw the planetary orbits as circles, and scientific reason which told him they were ellipses.

Likewise, the 58-year-old Mahantji, as he is fondly known in Varanasi, feels tormented by the tugs of faith and reason. "I have to take a holy dip if I have to live. Without it my day is not complete. At the same time, I know what its BOD and FCC is," says Mishra with anguish. BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) measures the amount of organic waste present in the water (more BOD means less oxygen, which in turn is fatal for life) while FCC (faecal coliform count) gives a measure of human and animal waste in water, by counting the number of faecal bacteria which could cause deadly diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

No holy sip for Mishra. To keep his faith, however, he takes a daily dip in the river. But he is anxious about the health of the 60,000 devotees who daily bathe in the river. The professor knows what he is talking about. At Tulsighat, where Tulsidas, whose spiritual heir Mishra is, authored the Ramcharitamanas, there is a state-of-the-art laboratory where water samples from nine different points along the ghats are analysed for various pollution indices. The results are alarming.

In November this year, the FCC varied between 70,000/100 ml at Assi Ghat to 1.5 million/100 ml, a shocking 140 to 15,000 times what is permissible. Similarly, the BOD varies from 3 mg per litre to 25 mg per litre—the maximum permissible level for river water is less than 3 mg per litre.Says Mishra angrily: "Come here during the rains when floods force the sewage pumps to shut down for five months. All the sewage then finds its way into the river. Untreated."

So, what has been achieved under Phase I of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP)? About Rs 50 crore has been spent in Varanasi, on work which began in 1986 and took 13 years to complete. But the river is as dirty as ever. Ever since GAP Phase I was declared successful in Varanasi in 1993, the Sankat Mochan Foundation (SMF), an NGO founded by Mishra along with two BHU professors, has been looking into its claims. "Our investigations convinced us that the sewage-treatment technology installed in Varanasi was completely inappropriate," says Mishra.

So began a search for a workable alternative. Mishra's suggestion is the Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond System (AIWPS), a sophisticated version of how nature takes care of sewage in ponds—breaking it down into elements like nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The system was developed by William Oswald, an emeritus professor of engineering at University of California, Berkeley. The two men were brought together by Friends of the Ganges, a San Francisco-based environmental group working with SMF to find a sustainable answer to the Ganga's pollution problems.

Mishra's radical idea is to lay an underground sewer along the ghats which will intercept all the sewage drains/nallas. Propelled by the force of gravity, the sewage will flow 15 km downstream to Sota where 32 ponds over an area of about 200 hectares are envisaged. The treated wastewater will then be released back into the Ganga. Intercepting sewers along Varuna and Assi are also planned for treatment at Sota. Moreover, the construction of two dykes at Sota will serve as bridges for the 25,000 residents of Dhab, which is cut off from the main city during floods. As the proposed location is on government land, no displacement of people would take place. The whole project would cost about Rs 100 crore and would have a capacity of 300 mld in contrast to 100 mld in the currently operating system. The annual recurring cost: Rs 1.16 lakh/mld as against Rs 5 lakh/mld for the present system. Unlike the current system, AIWPS will also remove coliform, pesticides and heavy metals.

Unfortunately, the issue of purifying the Ganga has now turned into a political game. In May 1997, Varanasi Nagar Nigam submitted a project feasibility report for Ganga Action Plan Phase II to the National River Conservation Directorate (NRCD). The report was prepared by SMF together with Oswald's engineering company and funded by USAID. NRCD, however, is still sitting on the proposal. NRCD hired two professors of environmental engineering, I.C. Aggarwal of Motilal Nehru Engineering College, Allahabad, and J.M. Dave of JNU, to pick holes in the report. For example, the sewer would disturb the sanctity of the ghats, or that the sewage pumps and the sewage plant, on which crores were spent, would become redundant. "But we have made fitting replies to all the criticisms," says Mishra.

This October, in a hearing of a PIL filed by two municipal corporators from Varanasi, the Allahabad High Court termed GAP a failure and ordered its stoppage in UP. It ordered an audit of the entire project by Samir Gupta, a former head of CAG. The court also sought an explanation from NRCD as to why the municipal authority's proposal has been overlooked. And asked an expert committee—comprising experts such as G.D. Aggarwal, ex-chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and P. Khanna, director of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute—to examine the technologies adopted in GAP Phase I.Following this, NRCD filed a petition with the Supreme Court, arguing that the HC order to halt work was contrary to an earlier court order which asked for speedier work under GAP.

Clearly, a government order for an independent investigation into the tall claims about the success of GAP Phase I in Varanasi is crucial. For, Varanasi is the only city where GAP Phase I has been declared complete. If accepted as successful, GAP I would serve as a model for cleaning other rivers under NRCD's Rs 2,500 crore project. That would be disastrous. Great reputations are at stake, great money too. Hence the controversy over which technology is apt for solving India's sewage crisis.

NRCD is tight-lipped about whether they will continue with the present sewage treatment methods or whether they would go in for alternatives. At least one technology is being marketed aggressively in India. Developed by the Dutch, it's called the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB).

THE first UASB plant to treat domestic sewage was set up in Mirzapur, near Varanasi. But the 14 mld capacity plant is a failure. The treated effluent still has an unacceptable BOD, and besides, it doesn't take care of faecal coliforms," says Mishra, who has analysed samples from the plant.

UASB uses anaerobic bacteria to break down organic waste. Unlike ASTP, it doesn't require a constant breath of oxygen to keep the bacteria alive and hence is not energy-intensive. But there are problems with UASB. "First, it was initially designed to treat effluent which had a very high BOD, about 50,000 mg per litre. It works quite well in industries like tanneries, vineries, sugarcane plants, but nowhere in the world is it used to treat domestic sewage," says Mishra.

 Yet, the Indian government is embracing it without much debate. GAP in Kanpur has installed a 35 mld capacity plant, while the Andhra Pradesh government has okayed a 50 mld plant in Hydera-bad. And, reportedly, more than 20 plants are proposed to be set up under the Yamuna Action Plan. Says another critic: "The government has compromised on pollution standards—BOD from 20 mg per litre to 50 mg per litre; suspended solids from 30 mg per litre to 100 mg per litre—to make UASB acceptable."

Says Prakasam Tata, manager, research and technical services at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago: "Skilled operation is needed to maintain the blanket of sludge granules. One disadvantage with the UASB process is that if the sludge granules are lost from the system, it may take about four to six months to reinstate them."

While the Indian government is investing in technologies without an informed debate on them, the Illinois Institute of Technology, USA, organised a debate in Chicago on Sustainable Development in the Ganges River Basin. Krishna Pagilla, assistant professor, department of chemical and environmental engineering, IIT, says: "A low-energy method such as AIWPS is appropriate for the Ganges basin while energy-intensive systems such as UASBs are impractical for Indian circumstances."

Agrees Tata: "The behaviour of microbes used in sewage treatment systems is predictable. What is unpredictable is human behaviour and performance. If I can make a statement in three phrases about how wastewater treatment systems can be made to perform successfully, they are: proper maintenance and operation, proper maintenance and operation, and proper maintenance and operation."

But will the government listen to Mahantji's appeals to make an informed choice so that the blunders of GAP Phase I are not repeated? Will there be a debate on how India's rivers should be cleaned? And will GAP Phase II be executed by those who failed in Phase I? These are questions that trouble Mishra. "Lobbying was never my cup of tea, but willy-nilly I have been pushed into activism, and I've vowed I'll fight to the last to clean Ma Ganga," he says with passion. Science, religion and activism are a potent threesome and should carry him through. As the Mahant told Alexander Stille of The New Yorker: "Life is like a stream. One bank is the Vedas and other bank is the contemporary world, which includes science and technology. If both banks are not firm, the water will scatter. If both banks are firm, the river will run its course."