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.

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 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.

 

More on Farmer's Income

 Here is an analysis of some more results from the Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India in 2019 (https://lnkd.in/drkF7wDz) conducted by The National Statistical Office (NSO) of the Government of India.

I have taken the monthly crop income data from this report for each state, adjusted it for inflation to get the 2022-23 income and divided it by the monthly household consumption expenditure (HCE) data for 2022-23 recently released by the NSO (https://lnkd.in/dW4xkjh2). I have also estimated the composite proportion of total output that was sold at the minimum support price for each state from the first report. The results are shown in the graph below.
Overall for the country only 18.4% of the household consumption expenditure for farmers is met by their crop income and they have to perforce rely on wage labour, animal husbandry and other non-farm incomes to make ends meet. Interestingly overall for the country only 17.9% of the farm output is sold at the Minimum Support Price and the rest is sold in the open market. Therefore, the argument that doing away with the MSP and promoting open market sale of crops will improve farm incomes is not supported by this data since even after 82.1% of such sale the crop income to HCE ratio is still a dismal 18.4%.
Statewise the best ratio of crop income to HCE is for Meghalaya at 107.9% and among the major states it is the highest for Punjab at 41.8%. The proportion of output sold at MSP is highest for Kerala at 78.2% and it is zero for Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Assam.
Combined with the fact that the average operational holding size is 0.833 hectares and that 89% are small and marginal farmers with an average outstanding debt per hectare of Rs 75000 these results paint a very sordid picture of the status of farming as a profession in this country. Thus, even though year on year farm output and gross value added are increasing, the farmers who are actually producing our food are not being able to make ends meet from their crop income alone.
Consequently, they are migrating in large numbers either seasonally or permanently for work and further immiserising the farm economy and also overburdening the cities where they get subsistence wages only.
The only solution is for the government is to invest heavily in transitioning to sustainable agriculture, ecosystem restoration and distributed generation of renewable energy to both raise rural incomes and counter climate change.

Oneness with Nature

 Our office cum residence is in Indore on the Malwa plateau while our farm is in the Nimar plains below. Indore city is part of the Ganga basin and it initially drains into the River Chambal which originates near it. Whereas the Nimar plains are in the Narmada basin. Therefore, a trip to our farm from our house in Indore involves crossing a ridgeline between the two basins which is atop the Vindhya hill ranges. Yesterday with my off-roader friend Subhasis Basu, I made such an inter basin trip in his Mahindra Thar. Beginning with a magnificent view of the Nimar plains from the edge of the Malwa plateau we descended through the forested Vindhyas, which being dry deciduous are mostly brown at this time of the year and eventually reached the River Narmada at Omkareshwar after a brief stop at our farm which is at the bottom of the Vindhyas at the beginning of the Nimar plains.

The Narmada and Chambal are both perennial rivers despite not being snow fed as they have heavily forested catchments. Even though a lot of deforestation has taken place, there is still considerable amount of forest cover which enhances natural recharge and so even if the base flow has decreased it is still there. Artificial recharge has also been undertaken through small tanks and earthen dams. Some of these tanks and dams too have water in this dry summer because of the underlying hydrogeology favouring retention of water in the shallow aquifer. We too have dammed a seasonal stream that used to pass through our farm but the pond so created does not hold water beyond winter as its underlying hydrogeology does not favour water retention. In fact, the dug well on our farm is one of the deepest in the area at 20 meters with water level going down to 12 meters below ground level in summer despite extensive soil and water conservation work on our farm.
The River Narmada has been dammed at Omkareshwar just upstream of the famed Shiva temple which is situated on the Mandhata island in the river there. The saint Adi Shankaracharya who revived Hinduism in the eighth century with his non-dual philosophical interpretation of the Vedas and Upanishads is said to have interned in Omkareshwar as a young boy pursuing religious studies. So now next to the temple a statue has been built of the saint named “Statue of Oneness”. However, a considerable number of trees have been cut down and a large area of forests has been cleared for this and an accompanying memorial and study centre. The dam too has submerged considerable forest area in its reservoir. So there is a question as to whether these developments are one with nature or not.  

 

 

Cry My Beloved Anjanbara

Two decades ago the village of Anjanbara on the banks of the Narmada River in Alirajpur District in Madhya Pradesh hit the international news headlines because of a fierce clash between its Adivasi residents and the police. A team of the Government of Madhya Pradesh accompanied by a substantial police contingent had gone to the village to forcibly survey it as part of the legal procedures for determining compensation to be paid to the residents who were to be displaced as a result of submergence that was to occur due to the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam downstream in Gujarat. The Narmada Bachao Andolan had petitioned the World Bank to withdraw its funding to the construction of the dam and an enquiry commission set up by the World Bank had advised it to withdraw from the project given its huge social, economic and ecological drawbacks. Following this the World Bank had given the Government of India a six month period in which to address all the shortcomings pointed out by the enquiry commission. The major point at issue was the lack of rehabilitation for the people to be ousted by the construction of the dam and so the Government of Madhya Pradesh in its high handed way had sought to force the people to agree to monetary compensation for their land in violation of the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award which had stipulated that every land holder and his adult son were to get at least 2 hectares of irrigated land each. 

The clash between the police and the people of Anjanbara soon escalated into one between the state and the Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath (KMCS) and as a result a number of members and activists of the KMCS and also some supporters who had come from outside to help were arrested and incarcerated in jail apart from being beaten up in custody and paraded handcuffed in the streets of Alirajpur. Eventually, the KMCS filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India of human rights violations by the state and this was upheld by the judges who not only castigated the state and its minions for their rampant violations of human rights but also initiated action against them. Thus, Anjanbara and the KMCS became internationally famous for sometime as international human rights groups too became vocal against the Indian Government and as a result the World Bank withdrew from the Sardar Sarovar Dam project.

The people of Anjanbara, the name means "valley of Anjan (Hardwickia Binata) trees" had been active against the dam since 1986 and continued to fight for its cancellation right up to 2014 or so when finally seeing that the dam and submergence was to become a reality, they decided to opt for resettlement in Gujarat. However, not only were not all people given land in Gujarat but also the land itself was not good. Most of the land could not be farmed in the monsoons as it remained water logged. Some of the land was occupied by others who did not want to give up cultivation in favour of the new allottees. So a substantial number of people of Anjanbara are still there in the village cultivating the forest land atop the hills. This land is of poor quality as compared to the land that has been submerged and so the people are in difficulties. Moreover, the village atop the hill does not have road connectivity and lacks electricity and so life is so much harder.

The biggest problem is the lack of potable water. The people have dug a few wells but these are underlaid with hard rock and so the water dries up in summer. Even now in winter the water availability is very low as shown in the picture below where a woman has to painstakingly fill water from a shallow spring. In summer the people have no recourse but to descend all the way to the river Narmada below to fetch water which is a very tiring exercise.

 The people are trying to make the most of a bad situation by undertaking soil and forest conservation work to improve artificial and natural recharge as shown in the pictures below.

This is the picture of stone bund in one of the farms with custard apple trees planted below it to hold the soil in place and also reduce runoff.

This is a dense mixed forest with considerable amount of bamboo which increases the natural recharge and also provides fodder for the livestock.

However, overall the situation is very bad and life is extremely hard for these people. There is no school in the village and the nearest hospital is all of 50 kms away. It is indeed tragic that after having fought so hard against the dam they should now have to go through so much difficulty to live on top of these hills without the basic amenities of a modern civilisation.