Governance

Since last week, people of Birjain village have been protesting against erosion by the river bank. They are demanding that the government should put in efforts to prevent river erosion and save their houses, otherwise they will continue with their Satyagrah and perform Jal Samadhi (suicide by drowning). Sattore, a flood-prone Panchayat has about 3000 houses. According to the locals, erosion was not present in the panchayat till 2019, when it was first reported. The problem intensified this year.

People in remote hamlets left out by previous schemes like Swajal and Sector Wide Approach Program of the Uttarakhand Jal Nigam and Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan longed for household-level piped water supply for drinking and domestic purposes. People’s Science Institute (PSI), a not for profit organisation based in Dehradun took up a drinking water and sanitation program with the active participation of local User Water and Sanitation Sub Committees (UWSSCs) through the support of The Hans Foundation in 2016.

“We went through a lot of trouble over the month. By God’s grace, we are still surviving."

While describing his plight, the pain in the 43-year-old Prakash Mukhiya's voice is palpable. He was trapped in his thatched hut for more than a month in floods. Now that the water has receded, he is able to cook food in his house.

India has seen large scale rural-urban migration of people trying to escape rural distress in the last few decades. “The urban areas are looked at as the centre of India's development trajectory and urbanism has become synonymous with development, as rural masses drift into the glitter and grind of the urban life,” said Prof RS Deshpande, an honorary visiting professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore.

A civic body frees a river instead of concretising it, for the first time

There aren’t many studies on understanding the socio-economic impact of river pollution, and the handful of those available miss out on capturing the voices of the local communities who are most affected by river pollution. Keeping this in mind, the Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at UChicago undertook a focused social study with the riverine communities of the Yamuna in Delhi, which contributes to nearly 76 per cent of the pollution load in the river.

A large section of the population living in the Ganga river basin still depends on the river for daily use activities and livelihood. Hence, the cleaning of the Ganga river’s water and making it safe for use remains a major goal for policymakers. Towards this end, the Namami Gange Clean-up programme was launched with a budget of Rs 20,000 crore during the period 2015–2020. However, the National Green Tribunal stated in 2017 that “not a single drop of river Ganga has been cleaned so far.”