Bhagirathpura Tragedy and its Lessons

 The line between the private and the public in India is demarcated by garbage and sewage. People are particular about keeping their houses spic and span but are not bothered about public spaces, particularly the roads bordering their houses. Consequently, these roads are littered with garbage and sewage with the expectation being that this waste will be taken care of by urban local bodies ULB). However, the cleaning of garbage and the transportation of sewage and its treatment to prescribed standards is a very expensive proposition requiring the levy of taxes and charges for the same from the citizens. This does not happen as not only are the charges levied much less than what they should be but also even these low charges are not levied on a regular basis. Thus, our cities and towns are mostly dirty and strewn with garbage and with open drains flowing with foul smelling water. Some amount of solid garbage collection does take place but the waste water flows untreated and contaminates both the ground water and water bodies, especially rivers and streams that flow through these cities.

Ideally, the waste water should be conveyed through sewers to sewage treatment plants (STP) and then properly treated there before being released into the environment. However, laying of sewer lines and construction and running of STPs cost a lot of money which is not available with the ULBs. Even where sewers have been laid in some of the bigger cities, they are not functioning properly because the flow in these sewers is not enough to transport the sewage to the STPs and so deposition of sludge takes place in the sewers blocking them. This corrodes the sewers and cracks develop in them leading to the leakage of highly toxic sewage water into the ground near these cracks. Simultaneously, there are the potable water pipelines near these sewer lines and they too in many cases have cracks in them as they were laid quite some time back. So, in many cases the water from the sewers contaminates the water in the potable water pipelines.

Sometimes, the cracks in the sewers and in the potable water pipelines are so great that the amount of contamination becomes large leading to fatal outcomes for the citizens. The recent horrid example of this is the diarrhoeal outbreak in the Bhagirathpura locality in Indore where more than twenty people have died and hundreds have been hospitalised. The irony is that the city of Indore is the cleanest city of India and yet this has happened there. The reality is that Indore is clean only as far as solid garbage removal is concerned but it has not been able to collect and treat its waste water properly and so this tragedy has happened there. Indore is clean on the surface because it has a fairly good collection and treatment system for the solid garbage that emanates from the houses. This is because upwards of ₹ 1000 crores are expended annually for doing this which is paid for by the state government as the Indore Municipal Corporation recovers only about 10% of this cost from user charges. Properly collecting and treating the waste water would cost another ₹1000 crores or more which the state government is not willing to subsidise. So, even though there are sewers and STPs in place to collect and treat the waste water, this is not being done because of a lack of funds for doing so.

The way out of this impasse is to move away from centralised sewer and STP based systems of waste water collection to localised systems at the household and community level, which treat both waste water and garbage as reusable resources and not something to be thrown away. This will happen only when the mindset of people which is that of releasing waste water and garbage into the public spaces is changed. In fact the centralised garbage collection system too does not work very well in most places because of its high cost and is working in Indore only because it is being heavily subsidised by the state government. Thus, what is needed is household and community level waste collection, treatment and reuse systems as shown in the graphic below. Indeed, this system incorporates a rainwater harvesting system also to cover the potable water supply requirements also. This will be possible only with extensive awareness building drives among the citizens so that they take the responsibility instead of putting it on the shoulders of the cash starved ULBs.  

This circular system relies on the segregation of grey water from the bathroom and kitchen from the black water from the toilets and is very cost effective because treatment of grey water is much easier than that of black water. The details of this system are as given below.

1. The rainwater falling on the roof of the building is either harvested or recharged. Harvesting is more costly as it involves the construction of an underground sump to collect the water. Currently the cost is about Rs 8 per litre as a reinforced concrete tank has to be constructed. Thus, an optimisation has to be done as to how much of the rainfall is to be harvested and how much recharged depending on the groundwater yield in a particular area, which in turn depends on the underlying hydro-geological characteristics, as recharging is much cheaper. In hard rock areas with poor water availability in summer, water harvesting can be done to take care of the water demand in the summer months if the groundwater dries up then. However, if there is water recharging done on a mass scale throughout the urban area both in a decentralised and a centralised manner, then most towns in the country will have adequate water in the confined aquifer. In alluvial plains, like in the Mahanadi, Ganga and Godavari basins of Chhattisgarh, even the shallow aquifer will have adequate water in summer if water recharging is done. That is why in the diagram two options have been provided and there is also a recharge pit alongside the harvesting sump. This pit is filled with a mixture of gravel and sand and is designed to be of a size to absorb the flow of rainwater coming to it from the roof. The rainwater falling on the ground too will be recharged either directly through the soil if there is a garden or the water falling on the paved area will be directed to the recharge pit. The rain water falling on the roof is filtered through a mixture of gravel and sand before being collected in the harvesting sump. The first one or two showers are bypassed to the recharge pit as the water is dirty with dust gathered on the roof and so about 80 percent of the rainfall can be collected if so required but usually to optimise on storage construction costs, less is collected.

2. The harvested rainwater and the groundwater provide the potable water supply for drinking, washing and bathing uses. There is separate plumbing under a dual plumbing system for the water for flushing of toilets and gardening, which is to be supplied from treated grey used water.

3. The grey water from the bathroom and that from the kitchen, which latter has to first pass through an oil and grit trap, are directed to a filtration tank consisting of gravel, sand and charcoal. After filtration the water is collected in a sump where it is aerated and chlorinated to clean it further. This water is then used for flushing of toilets and gardening through a separate plumbing system. In this way the use of potable water for these uses is obviated which is a considerable saving because as per the CPHEEO norms, of the 135 lpcd of water supply as much as 25 lpcd is for gardening and 40 lpcd for flushing of toilets and only 70 lpcd is for potable uses. Since the black water does not have to be carried in sewers, the quantity of water needed for flushing is greatly reduced and special toilets can be installed that require less water. Sensors have to be placed in the sump and the overhead tank to automatically regulate the pumping of water from the former to the latter so as to prevent over flow in the former.

4. The black water from the toilets and the green waste from the kitchen are sent to a biogas plant. The gas generated from this plant contains mainly methane and some hydrogen sulphide also. The latter being harmful, has to be removed through a scrubber. The gas generated can be used for cooking and for heating water in a gas geyser. In case of four storied or higher buildings, the gas produced can be used to generate electricity which can be reused in the operation of the aerators for grey and black water treatment. The digested slurry is collected in a two chambered sump in which one chamber is alternatively filled up and the sludge further digested by anaerobic decomposition to be turned into manure that can be used in the garden while the other chamber fills up much like a two-pit latrine but with the water not leaching into the ground but drying up slowly in the chamber that has filled up as an aerator runs in it to both oxidise the slurry and dry it up. The energy required for this is much less than that needed to run the heavy blowers in large sized STPs of centralised systems. In fact, if the pits are built large enough then even aerators can be dispensed with as the retention time increases allowing for natural drying up of the sludge.

Communitarian Circular Water Management

 India faces the dual problems of inadequate potable water supply and pollution from untreated used water. This is mainly due to the colonial legacy of centralised water management that ignores the economically and ecologically sustainable household and community level circular water management, which is schematically depicted in the accompanying graphic.

The key to circular used water treatment and reuse is the separation of grey water (from kitchens and bathrooms) and black water (from toilets):

· Grey water accounts for nearly 85% of total used water and is easier and cheaper to treat.
· Low-cost methods such as filters filled with 25 mm brick pieces and with canna plant roots can clean grey water to prescribed standards.
· Black water treatment is costly due to the faecal matter in it. When grey and black water are mixed, as in centralized systems, costs rise significantly due to transportation, treatment in Sewage Treatment Plants (STP), sludge management, and infrastructure for reuse of treated water. Sewers need a greater water flow to prevent deposition of the faeces in transit and so it is imperative to mix grey and black water in centralised systems.
A very good example of circular grey water management, in this sordid context of its overall neglect in this country resulting in polluted water bodies, is the newly commissioned grey water treatment and reuse system at the Swami Vivekananda Vidyapeeth campus in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh (https://lnkd.in/dw6NGFEE) run by the NGO Parivaar shown in the picture below.

This circular grey water treatment and reuse system has the following features:

· Daily inflow of 7,000 litres (with a peak of 5,000 litres in the morning).
· Three treatment chambers with 25mm brick pieces hosting beneficial microorganisms.
· Canna plants in the second chamber absorb nutrients and enhance purification.
· Hydraulic retention time of 3–5 days ensures that for the treated water collecting in the fourth chamber, all the important parameters such as ph, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Total Nitrogen (TN), Phosphorus (P) an d Faecal Coliform (FC) are as per the standards prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board as shown in the  table.

·  Automated disinfection with bleaching powder (5g per kilolitre) before reuse.
·  Treated water reused for toilet flushing and gardening, replacing costly potable water.
The installation cost of this system is only ₹30000 per kilolitre and the operating cost is ₹3 per kilolitre without the need for any electricity. Whereas, centralised used water transportation through sewers and treatment in STPs has a combined installation cost of ₹100000 per kilolitre and a combined operating cost of ₹25 per kilolitre. The cost of reusing the treated water in this localised circular system is low as the point of reuse is near to the treatment plant. Thus, Parivaar has set an example that should be replicated widely.

Planetary Boundaries Have Been Breached

 A team of scientists created the Planetary Boundaries Framework in 2009 for nine ecological areas which ensure the continuance of life on the planet. Since then this framework has been assessed from time to time and currently, six boundaries, climate change, biosphere integrity (genetic diversity and energy available to ecosystems), land system change, freshwater change (changes across the entire water cycle over land), biogeochemical flows (nutrient cycles), and novel entities (microplastics, endocrine disruptors, and organic pollutants) have been severely breached as shown in the graphic. Only stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading and ocean acidification are within bounds as described in this article in Down To Earth https://www.downtoearth.org.in/.../six-of-9-planetary...

.

The main problem at the base of all other problems is excessive fossil fuel energy use. This is what has created the present human over consumption and ecological crises. We need to both rein in energy use and also transition to renewable energy immediately if we are to avert climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, pollution and the like.
The linear resource extractive economy is causing this problem. A local circular economy needs to be prioritised and this will be possible only if all governments strictly apply the polluter pays principle to garner the resources for subsidising the mitigation measures. 

See less

Communitarian Forest Conservation in Alirajpur

 The Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS) in Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh will be completing four decades this year in its fight for justice for the Bhil Adivasis. Not only has it been one of the most successful mass organisations in the country in the implementation of the Forest Rights Act for its members but it has also organised them into doing communitarian ecosystem restoration by leveraging their traditional labour pooling customs. The biggest achievement of the KMCS has been the conservation of forests, soil and water over 12500 hectares in 62 villages. The forests are either very dense (over 70% canopy cover) or medium dense (between 40% and 70% canopy cover) with one village Bada Amba having as much as 64% of its area under dense forests and overall the proportion of forest area to total land area of these villages is 24%. Analysis of Remote Sensing Data over a period of 33 years between 1990 and 2023 was carried out by the School of Climate Change and Sustainability, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, for these 62 KMCS villages and compared with 62 control villages in the district which did not have communitarian protection. The results are summarised in the map attached in which the green areas are those in which there has been increase in vegetation and the red areas are those in which there has been decrease in vegetation. The green circles are the KMCS villages where there has been communitarian ecosystem restoration work and the purple circles are the villages in which there has not been any communitarian ecosystem restoration work. Clearly, the vegetation has increased in KMCS villages as compared to the control villages.

A more detailed analysis of LandSat data with higher resolution of 900 square meter pixel size was also carried out and that shows that even in the control villages there has been increase in vegetation over the three decades from the 1990s even though there are no dense forests there as there are in the KMCS villages. So overall there has been an impact of the KMCS in the whole of Alirajpur district as people have been inspired to protect trees. This is an extremely important achievement from the perspective of Climate Change Mitigation.

Incidentally, 13000 hectares of forests were submerged by the Sardar Sarovar dam and as per the detailed project report, the Government should have done compensatory afforestation on four times that area. However, even after spending a few hundred crores, there is nothing to show. whereas the KMCS through communitarian collective action has done almost the same amount of conservation as the forests submerged.

Propagating Heirloom Seeds

 Kansari nu Vadavno, the Bhil Adivasi women's organisation led by Subhadra Khaperde has been reviving the cultivation of the traditional indigenous seeds of Western Madhya Pradesh over the past eight years. These women farmers have not only succeeded in cultivating over thirty varieties of traditional seeds ranging from millets, rice, wheat, pulses, oilseeds and fibre to vegetables, but have also spread them across the country by participating in organic seed festivals. Bicchibai and Gendabai two stalwart farmers of the organisation are participating in the latest Organic Seed Festival in Indore with their cornucopia of seeds and are holding forth before farmers, consumers and the media about the importance of this campaign to save the agro-biodiversity and so the food security of Western Madhya Pradesh.

The Used Water Debacle

 A few years ago I did a study for the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) on the status of Water management in the city of Jaipur (https://lnkd.in/dqwkV4yM

). On the basis of data collected I had shown that centralised water management in the city was both economically unviable and ecologically unsustainable. I had also said that the beautification project on the Dravyavati River passing through the city was ill conceived and would fail in the long run because the plan for intercepting drains emptying into the river and treating the used water in them through STPs would not work. The main problem was that the Jaipur Municipal Corporation did not have the funds to operate the STPs and the centralised water supply. While water supply being crucial is somehow fulfilled to some extent, used water treatment is given a go by.
I had also said that the only solution was to implement building level rainwater harvesting/recharge and used water treatment and reuse.
I find now on a visit to Jaipur that all my dark predictions have unfortunately come true.
The biggest STP at Delawas of 215 MLD capacity is dysfunctional and is releasing the sewage water untreated into the Dravyavati River. The smaller STPs along the river built to treat the used water from the intercepted drains are also dysfunctional. Consequently, the Dravyavati River is not only stinking to high heaven but is also emitting the green house gas methane in large quantities.

What I found most disconcerting was that a totally irrational method of disposal of used water is being implemented in individual buildings. Small wells called kuis of 1m diamter are dug to about 10m depth and concrete rings with a few small holes are put in them. The untreated used water is emptied into them.

 These wells fill up very soon and then they are emptied by desludging tankers which then empty their tanks in the Dravyavati River or some drain that empties into it.

To add insult to injury, farmers downstream are using this highly polluted water of the Dravyavati River to produce food crops.

There is something seriously wrong with water management in this country, especially in our cities and towns and despite clear guidelines in the rules and laws for implementation of building level water management, the folly of centralised water management is persisted with.

The Crisis of Smallholder Agriculture

 The biggest concern at present should be about the severe constraints that the small and marginal farmers, who constitute 85% of all farming households and 50% of the total population of India, face. These farmers put in a huge amount of back breaking family labour into their farming. This labour is grossly underpaid at about Rs 100 per day as revealed from surveys that we have conducted in Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh. Whereas the latest statutory minimum daily wage in the state is Rs 335 for unskilled, Rs368 for semiskilled, Rs 421 for skilled and Rs 471 for highly skilled. Farming is a highly skilled operation and so the farmers should be paid Rs 471 in the interests of equity. Especially because the analysis of the consumption expenditure surveys that we simultaneously carry out show that the respondents are suffering from chronic hunger. One can easily imagine what raising the household labour wage to Rs 471 per day will do to the farmgate price of agricultural produce. When we paid a wage of Rs 220 per day (the statutory minimum wage for unskilled labour in MP last year) and also a fifty percent profit over and above their operating costs to the farmers with whom we work in our organic farming project (https://kansariorganics.in/) the farmgate price of our organic wheat shot up to Rs 27 per kg as opposed to the Rs 17 prevailing in the market for chemical wheat and the Rs 20 offered under the MP government's MSP scheme (which is anyway available to a limited number of farmers). After adding on the costs of the subsidy we provided to the farmers for organic composting and bio-enzyme rich liquid making and cleaning and grading the price of our wheat in Indore is Rs 35 per kg whereas the chemical wheat of similar quality sells at Rs 25 per kg. Few people are prepared to buy our wheat at this premium despite its being the cheapest authentic organic wheat available in this country because we are not charging any profits or management costs which are met by grant funding. This in turn means that there is a need for direct transfers to farmers by the government to compensate them properly as the market will not do so. Since the chemical agriculture being practised now is both economically and ecologically unsustainable this cash transfer should be given to farmers to switch the country from chemical monoculture to organic biodiverse agriculture combined with huge investments in communitarian ecosystem conservation and restoration, compost and bio-enzyme rich liquid making on a very large scale to replace chemical fertilisers and decentralized renewable energy production from gasification of agricultural and forest biomass.

But why have we come to this sorry pass? There were four major constraints to agriculture in the British colonial times as follows - high land rents under the zamindari and ryotwari systems, usury, these two in turn prevented investments in soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation development and the low availability of fertilisers. We had innumerable varieties of crops including rice and wheat varieties that were of a high yielding type and therefore there was no constraint as regards to crop varieties. There was no storage problem either as there were traditional methods of decentralised storage of crops that were very effective. With independence the first obstacle was removed to a great extent even though land reforms did not take place as much as they should have and this released the energies of the peasantry in farming leading to a considerable boost in agricultural production. However, usury continued and constrained investments in soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation. Therefore, what was required was greater land reform, control of usury and extension of cheap credit, heavy investments in forest, soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation development and last but not the least heavy investments in composting to increase organic manure availability which is a highly labour intensive process. Animal manure on its own is not enough for the huge agricultural land in this country and so agricultural residue has to be mixed with a little organic manure and composted to greatly multiply the availability of manure. Beginning with Albert Howard there have been many experts in composting in India and so the needs of fertiliser can be easily met through widespread composting and bioenzyme rich organic liquid making. Unfortunately, none of these were done and so agriculture continued to be constrained and combined with the other folly at the time of independence of not implementing compulsory and free school education which would have put boys and girls in school instead of them getting married and producing children which led to a population explosion, we faced a food crisis in the 1960s. There was no nationalism involved in going for the green revolution. It was a neo-colonial collaboration between the American MNCs and the Savarna elite who were ruling this country and still do ( the British too were able to rule over India for such a long time because of the collaboration they received from the Savarna elites. they would have been kicked out in 1857 itself if they had not received extensive support from the Savarnas who had benefited from their rule), to ignore the possibilities of a policy of land reform, control of usury, investment in forest, soil and water conservation and in situ irrigation and widespread composting and instead foist hybrid seeds, big dams, deep tubewells, chemical fertilisers and pesticides and cheap coal fired electricity all heavily subsidised by the Government. This chemical monoculture has devastated both agriculture and food availability, especially in the rural areas where there is chronic hunger.

There is only one solution to the crisis of agriculture, water scarcity. rural unemployment and chronic hunger - gradually switching the whole country to organic biodiverse agriculture over a period of five years by providing heavy subsidies to farmers to make the switch by investing in forest, soil and water conservation, in situ irrigation and composting and generation of decentralised renewable energy from gasification of agricultural and forest biomass. Especially composting because it is a labour intensive process and absolutely essential to replace chemical fertilisers. This is difficult though because after 50 years of chemical agriculture most farmers have lost the belief that it is possible to do agriculture in any other way and it is extremely hard to convince them to make this switch as we have found out when we have tried to fund farmers to make this switch.

Rationale for Taxation

 A recent paper published by a team of economists led by Thomas Piketty (https://wid.world/.../WorldInequalityLab_WP2024_09_Income...) on the huge rise in inequality in India and their suggestion of taxing the rich to reduce this has led to a huge push back with people saying that it is the rich who create wealth and they should not be penalised through taxation. These people forget that redistribution of incomes through taxation has been a settled principle of all major economies since the 1930s because of very sound reasons. It would be helpful to go through these reasons which are as follows -

1. A modern economy has many enterprises which compete with each other to sell their products in the market and this leads to cutting of costs to stay competitive. Consequently, all enterprises tend to cut both material and labour costs. Cutting of material costs devastates the environment and labour costs are cut by paying low wages. Cutting of labour costs is also achieved by mechanisation which reduces the demand for labour while at the same time increasing the demand for materials, thus further devastating the environment.

2. The low wages of most employees in the economy, with some being unemployed or under employed, results in low effective demand for goods and services. This leads to recession in the economy and markets are flooded with goods and services that do not find buyers resulting in an over production crisis. Simultaneously, the devastation of the ecosystem results in the production of goods and services itself being jeopardised which can be termed as a production crisis. Thus, an unregulated competitive economy will eventually collapse due to an over production crisis combined with a production crisis.

3. This is what happened in 1929 across the USA and Europe and so the modern states thereafter stepped in to regulate the economy. An elaborate system of regulation was put in place to ensure that there is fair competition, wages are just and the ecosystem is not devastated indiscriminately. Moreover, the State in any economy is the biggest spender, not only in buying goods and services and developing infrastructure but also in providing subsidies of various kinds, especially in education, health and welfare, which ensures that the effective demand is kept at a level that counters recession. Apart from this the State maintains law and order and provides external security so that the economy can function smoothly. The state also protects the right to property without which the market cannot function and wealth cannot be accumulated by the rich.

The State has to garner the resources for this necessary regulation of and investment in the economy from taxes. The proportion of taxation in all developed economies currently is 40% of the GDP or more whereas in India it is only 12%. Therefore, the rich need to be taxed much more than they are being at present in India!!

The Water Wisdom of the Mughals

Burhanpur town on the banks of the River Tapti in the foothills of the Satpura Range was the southern outpost of the Mughals. Consequently, it had a massive garrison of soldiers numbering two lakhs and a supporting civilian population of around thirty thousand in the early seventeenth century when the Mughals not only wanted to defend their territory against possible incursions from southern kingdoms but also had plans to expand further south. Providing safe drinking water to this huge population was a major concern of the Mughal administrators. They feared that the water of the River Tapti and its tributary Utavali may be poisoned by their enemies and so they preferred the use of ground water. However, wells themselves could not provide enough water and also it was laborious to draw water out of them for such a large population in those days when there were no mechanised pumps.
The Subedar or Governor of Burhanpur Abdul Rahim Khankhana commissioned a Persian geologist Tabukul Arj to devise a system that would be able to harvest the rain water falling on the Satpura ranges and bring them by gravity to the town in 1615. A very ingenious plan was drawn up wherein a few large tanks were constructed to harvest the rain water and recharge it into the ground. Finally a 3.5 km long tunnel about thirty feet below the ground level, lined with marble, was constructed just uphill of the town into which the water from the t Bhandaras seeped in through the ground.
There are 103 round wells that reach this tunnel from the top at intervals and provide access to it for cleaning it of any debris and sediments that might have accumulated. The water in the tunnel flows by gravity from the first well to the last well at the end of which there is a tank from which pipelines take the water to the town below. The wells are called kundis whereas the tunnel is called Khooni Bhandara possibly because of the slightly reddish colour of the water in it.
Currently about 0.15 million litres of water per day flows out of the tunnel.
What struck me most was the ingenuity of the Mughals in devising a system that first tapped the rain water by harvesting it and then used an underground tunnel to extract it and take it by gravity to the town. This was a necessity at the time because there were no mechanised pumps to do lift water from the underground aquifer at that time. This tunnel was dug by human labour obviously as there were no machines then and this adds to the uniqueness of the system. Water harvesting is the most sustainable means of water supply. The Asirgarh fort on a high hill nearby too has excellent water harvesting systems for its water supply.