State does a Nero while Kharun weeps

At sunrise, everything is luminous but not clear. 

― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

In September 2015, the BJP-led government in Chhattisgarh decided to put a master plan in place for the development on the Kharun riverfront. To be modelled around the Sabarmati riverfront development project, considered the best of its kind, Kharun riverfront project is alleged to have been sanctioned without studying the impact of it on the ecosystem. Done along the lines of the development work on the banks of the Thames in London, Sabarmati riverfront development inspired many BJP-led state governments to replicate it on various rivers like Yamuna, Ganga, Brahmaputra and Mithi. 

“The riverfront development discourse often revolves around recreational and commercial activities. It is more about real estate than the river,” says a report on the riverfront development in India by South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP).

According to the report, “Riverfront of Thames in London and Seine in Paris are often cited as successful models of riverfront development in India. The ecological as well as social setting of Indian rivers and the challenges that we face, however, are significantly different from these foreign models. A blind replication will only be wastage of public funds and degradation of the rivers further. Riverfront development projects across the country seem to be alienated from the river, and talk only about its urban banks, trying to achieve cosmetic changes on the deeper wounds by encroachment and real estate development on the belly of the rivers. The need of the hour is river rejuvenation and not river FRONT development.”

“More than 90 percent of the rivers in India are polluted and in a sorry state. The drinking water availability of the people dependent on these rivers for domestic use has been severely affected because of unregulated contamination from sewage and industrial waste,” says Gautam Bandhopadhaya who has been working on the water sector issues in India for two decades. 

The plight of the river