Hands outstretched towards the morning sun, a Hindu priest utters a prayer on the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi, then lowers himself into a toxic soup of sewage, rubbish and industrial effluent.

Aditya Johari has done this every morning for 30 years as a symbol of worship for the Yamuna — one of Hinduism’s seven main holy rivers. “Mother Yamuna can wash away our troubles,” he said.

The 49-year-old swears that he has never become sick. In fact, he says, the river has made him stronger. Science suggests otherwise. A government test last year showed that the Yamuna contained faecal waste 100,000 times the safe limit for bathing.

When India won its independence 60 years ago yesterday, this was one of Asia’s great waterways, flowing from the Himalayas, through Delhi, and on to the Ganges. Today it is one of the world’s most polluted rivers and the most visible indication of the environmental price the country is paying for its breakneck economic development, which the Prime Minister promised yesterday to pursue for another decade.

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“What is happening to the Yamuna is reflective of what is happening in almost every river in India,” said Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment. “The Yamuna is dead, we just haven’t officially cremated it yet.” Shreekant Gupta, of the Delhi School of Economics, said that India’s economic growth of 9 per cent should be halved to factor in environmental costs.

More than 700 million Indians do not have adequate sanitation. The United Nations says that 2.1 million children under 5 die each year because of a lack of clean water and the World Bank has warned India that it stands on the edge of “an era of severe water scarcity”.

Nothing illustrates this more vividly than the Yamuna. The Government extracts 1.1 billion litres from it daily, making it the capital’s largest water source. By the time the river leaves Delhi it has turned into a vast drain, carrying an estimated 3.5 billion litres of sewage every day. Its oily black waters cannot sustain fish or plant life. Methane bubbling from its surface can be smelt across the city.

Since 1992 the Government has spent 20 billion rupees (£240 million) on cleaning the river but it has little to show for its efforts. Pollution levels have doubled and less than half of the sewage in the river is treated.

Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s chief minister, blames consultants who told the Government that building more treatment plants would solve the problem. “They didn’t,” she said. “We’re tired and frustrated of spending money.”

Arun Mathur, head of the Delhi Jal Board, said that the city’s 17 plants were running below capacity because the pipes feeding them were corroded. But the main problem, he said, was that a court order had recently prevented him from connecting three million people living in illegal neighbourhoods.

The Government is pressing ahead with plans to upgrade sewers and redevelop the riverfront for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. But environmentalists say this is a waste of money and have called on the Government to raise water prices and set up small treatment plants that reuse water locally.

Parvinder Singh, of Toxics Link, said: “People say the Yamuna is the mother river, so it can’t be dirty. People don’t come together on these issues.”

Counting the cost

7% India’s economic growth in the past decade 34 out of 1,000 die in childhood

25% infant mortality ranking out of 221 countries of population still lives below the poverty line

34 out of 1000 die in childhood

74 infant mortality ranking out of 221 countries.

Source: Times database

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