July 2008 Edition
Can Kolkata’s sewage-fed
fisheries be replicated?
Umesh Anand
Kolkata/New Delhi
EACH day Indian rivers come under assault as cities big and small across the country disgorge sewage into them. The Yamuna has been reduced to a drain as it trickles past Delhi. The mighty Ganga is no better than a cesspool at many locations on its long course. The stories of a whole lot of other rivers are no better. Since the eighties, huge sums of public money have been spent on trying to put n end to this pollution. Under dedicated action plans, sewage treatment plants have been set up, but they either have little efficiency or lie in complete disuse. Often, there just isn’t the electricity to run them. Moreover, municipal administrations are so lacking in accountability that treatment plants really have no ownership.
However, for the past 70 years or so, in the eastern fringes of Kolkata, a network of ponds managed by local people has been able to achieve what government initiatives have not. Untreated sewage flows into the ponds and is cleansed at one-third the cost of a treatment plant. The sewage is used to grow fish, irrigate fields and finally, minus its original contaminants, it flows into the Kulti Gong.
Kolkata’s sewage, estimated at 750 million litres a day, goes through underground sewers to points from where it is pumped into utfall canals that take it into the eastern wetlands. These wetlands are an extension of Kolkata’s drainage system beyond the sluice gates en route to the river.
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
KT Ravindran has been appointed Chairman of the Delhi Urban Art Commission (DUAC) at a time when the city is preparing for the Commonwealth Games in 2010. The previous team at the commission headed by the celebrated Charles Correa left over differences with the government regarding certain projects.
Ravindran, who has a long association with Delhi, is known to be sensitive to issues regarding the environment and heritage. He believes in inclusive cities with shared public spaces. He would like to help fashion a Delhi in which everyone and not just a chosen few have access to facilities. Ravindran, architect and a teacher, believes the Commonwealth Games are a good opportunity to usher in new standards for the urban environment of Delhi. He thinks that without running into a wall, the commission can play an activist role in redefining Delhi. It can build a dialogue with citizens and serve as a hub for new ideas. Edited excerpts from an interview to Civil Society:
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Civil Society News
New Delhi
DINESH Thakur, 65, owns a house in which he lives with his wife, Geeta, 60. Over time, the house has come to be worth a small fortune. But a year ago he found that his personal savings were dwindling rapidly. Incapable of earning and unwilling to sell the house and reluctant to take money from his son who lives abroad, Thakur didn’t know quite what to do till his bank manager suggested he take a reverse mortgage on his house.
The reverse mortgage allows Thakur to get Rs 35,000 a month for the next 20 years. This is calculated on the value of his house and the rate of interest that the bank must levy on the money that it is giving him. If he lives beyond the 20 years of the mortgage, the house will remain his though the money that comes to him will stop. If his wife outlives him within the 20 year period, she will get the Rs 35,000 each month. Beyond 20 years she will have the house but not the instalments.
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Umesh Anand
I was introduced to the wetlands of east Kolkata when I chanced upon Dhrubajyoti Ghosh at the offices of the state planning board on Camac Street in 1983. As a rookie journalist, I was in search of stories. I had lots of time on my hands because The Telegraph, the paper I worked for, had been shut down, along with the rest of the Ananda Bazaar Group, by striking leftist unions.
During the 51 days of that strike I had several opportunities to visit the wetlands and the garbage gardens in the eastern fringes of the city. I had grown up in Kolkata but knew nothing of this remarkable resource recycling system through which waste came back as food to the city. I found sewage being cleansed through natural processes and used to cultivate fish. The nutrient-rich water was also used to irrigate paddy fields. Vegetables were grown on garbage.
It was a decades-old system created and kept alive by the innovative spirit of local people. With Dhruba as guide, I scaled garbage hills and explored the sewage-fed fisheries. I was always impressed by his willingness to get his knees dirty. He was clearly no ordinary government engineer.
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Himanshu Thakkar
GOVERNMENTS at the Centre and the states in India are in a hurry to take up as many big hydropower projects as possible. They say hydropower is cheap, clean, green and a renewable source of energy. From the Prime Minister and the President of India, down to lowly bureaucrats, all are sold on that one slogan. Unfortunately, ardent proponents of hydropower have not bothered to justify that slogan in a credible way. Let us realistically see the performance of hydropower projects in a few snapshots.
One way to assess the performance of big hydropower projects is to see how much power these are generating per mega watts (MW) installed capacity. As of March 31, India had a total installed capacity of 36468.25 MW from hydropower. This capacity generated at an average rate of 3.39 million units (MU) per MW installed capacity during 2007-08. If a 1 MW project runs for 100 per cent of the time in a year, it would typically produce 8.76 MU of power. In others words, in 2007-08, the hydropower projects generated power at full capacity for 38.7 per cent of the time. This performance is certainly lower than the expectations and perceptions of performance of these projects.
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Aunohita Mojumdar
Wakhan (Afghanistan)
WAKHAN is a remote and poor region in Afghanistan’s Badakshan province. It has just one bumpy road which vanishes after taking you around one third of the way. There is no running water or electricity in villages here. In winter you get only three or four hours of sunshine. Temperatures can drop below minus thirty degrees Celsius in windswept Wakhan. A diesel stove is all that you can lay your hands on to keep warm.
Yet Alex Duncan lives here in Kipkut village with his wife and four children. He is a doctor, a general physician. Along with his co- worker, a Dutch woman doctor, Christel Bosman, he provides healthcare to Afghans reaching them by foot or on animal transport. The motivation to be in Kipkut, says Duncan, is to see the death rate among women and children drop. As a family physician in Britain, his work would have been much more routine.
At 1,600 per 100,000 live births, Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal mortality rates (MMR) anywhere in the world. And the province of Badakshan is much worse. It has the dubious distinction of having an MMR of 6,500 per 100,000. The reasons, says Bosman, are very basic: lack of prenatal care, simple gynaecological services and health facilities for delivery. Haemorrhages and obstructed labour are the most common cause of death for women along with anaemia due to malnutrition.
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