A severe crisis is plaguing the rivers in India. A study by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2013 has found that the number of contaminated rivers in the country has more than doubled over the past five years. This is mainly due to the deposition of untreated sewage and industrial effluents in the rivers, thus putting a strain on the riverine ecosystem and making them unhealthy.
This paper, Evolving human dimensions and the need for continuous health assessment of Indian rivers published in the journal Current Science on July 25, 2016, explains the concept of river health as an integration of physical, chemical and biological factors that maintain the structure and function of the natural ecosystem of the river. It also includes the inherent ability of a river to recover after disturbance, to support local plants, animals and human populations and to maintain key processes such as sediment transport, nutrient cycling and energy exchange.
The concept of River Health Assessment (RHA) came about as an attempt to measure the health of the river. For long, these studies have focused only on the water quality which included physicochemical properties of the water. This approach had serious drawbacks as it identified only those situations where the plant and animal life in the river were at risk, but did not provide any information about the actual damage done.
RHA uses six thematic components as indicators of river health--the health of the catchment, floodplain, river channel, flow, quality and biotic health.
Researchers emphasise that it is important to consider river health in relation to the society, economy and culture. RHA needs to be a community-driven process. Participatory river protection and rehabilitation, together with local awareness at the community level, can play a very significant role in river conservation.
Except for the assessment of the health of Yamuna river at Jalalpur (Allahabad) under Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, most of the RHA work has focused only on the water quality index. Although river Ganga forms the largest river basin in India, there is significant lack of information on the condition of the river. The Ganga Action Plan I (GAP I) launched in 1986 with the aim of cleaning the river included only a few aspects of RHA protocol such as the control of pollution from agricultural runoff, human defecation, cattle bathing and throwing of unburnt and half-burnt bodies into the river, conservation of the biotic (plant and animal and ecosystem) diversity of the river and rehabilitation of soft-shelled turtles to abate river pollution. In 1993, the second phase (GAP-II) programme was launched with work on four tributaries of some rivers like Yamuna, Gomti, Damodar and Mahanadi.
Studies like the one done by Das and Tamminga in 2012 have found that the two programmes had limited impact due to little public participation. The Indian government launched another clean-up programme, the National Ganga River Basin Project in 2011, with support from the World Bank. The reports of this programme point at the crucial role of stakeholders’ participation in pollution control programmes in any effort to clean, restore and regenerate the Ganga river basin.
The growing concerns about the Ganga point at the need for proper scientific health assessment of this vital source of water in India by developing a comprehensive RHA protocol, says the article. For this, river health assessment programmes need to move beyond the top-down technocratic approaches to include collaboration and public participation to help bridge the gap between science and the sacred.
The paper ends by proposing a comprehensive model for RHA of the Ganga based on the premise that people’s relationship with the Ganga is central to any effort to restore the river’s health. The key features of the proposed RHA model need to: