Friday, April 9, 2010

Dung River

Currently India ranks 120 on the green index and ranks very low in sanitation. The sacred Yamuna River is basically what the title suggests a fecal filled river. The amount of fecal bacteria in the river is 10,000 times higher than the amount recommended for bathing. Maybe the saddest thing is the river is this bad after the country implemented a half billion dollar, 15 year endeavor to build 17 sewage treatment plants.

India's main issue is sanitation it ranked 21 on sanitation on Yale and Columbia's Environmental Performance Index. The ranking put India below only Angola and Cambodia for countries with similar income. India is both overdeveloped and underdeveloped they are industrializing but still have a large amount of poor who cannot afford sanitation means by themselves. The poverty leaves people prone to illness from pollution causing 20 percent of illnesses, air pollution illnesses alone have cost India 20 billion dollars a year. Things don't appear positive either; the government is so disconnected there is little hope. In the case of the Yamuna River, although treatment plants have been made, the government never cleared the garbage from the drains allowing only 30 percent of the sewage to reach the plants.

India has come under scrutiny from the international community for environmental problems but what can be done in a country like India? As the article points out people still burn dung for fuel and the government is in disconnect. Should more developed hold countries like India to similar environmental standards or set more realistic goals?

10 comments:

  1. Whoops almost forgot my source.
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/143694

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  2. I think a country like India just needs time to develop more infastructure, it is very large and has a very large population as well, so building a solid infastructure for everyone to use at the same level is going to take some time.

    when cities first developed they had horrible sanitation problems, and many diseases resulted. India is in the same situation because some of thier areas are just so underdeveloped.

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  3. I agree with Marcione, a country needs time to develop infrastructure enough to support a large middle class which is usually when sanitation proliferation excels in a countries development.

    One area of this article that really concerns me is the numbers on problems versus solutions... there is 500 million being sent on sewage treatment plants, while air pollution costs 20 billion dollars
    to the government annually. Wow, just the sheer cost to the country with one pollutive topic.

    I know this article is about india, but just a cross reference on air pollution with the US's number for just smoking air pollution.

    "While fewer Americans light up every day, smoking-related deaths still costs the nation about $92 billion a year in the form of lost productivity, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data, covering the years 1997-2001"
    http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/medicalnews/a/smokingcosts.htm

    "While fewer Americans light up every day, smoking-related deaths still costs the nation about $92 billion a year in the form of lost productivity, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data, covering the years 1997-2001"

    So maybe it would be quite green of you smokers to stop killing yourself, me, and our country's GDP while walking on campus at least.... thnx ;0

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  4. It is hard to imagine what people in the United States would do if we were to have the "dung river" within our boarders. Most people are so picky about their water, even here, where we have some of the highest water quality for domestic use.

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  5. I agree that time is an important factor but I also have questions about the sacred aspect of the river. If I am not mistaken, the Yamuna is a tributary to the Ganges and is connected in ancient literature with the Ganges in a religious nature. What impacts with the religious reverence to the river, despite it's polluted state, have on any infrastructural and/or technological changes to the river?

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  6. We cannot hold India to our same standards as us be they still should have some standards. If the government is so disconnected how are they going to make improvements? Someone needs to take initiative or else this problem will never be fixed. It is amazing how half of India is so developed and the other half is in complete distress.

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  7. This is terribly sad, as well as an issue that severely needs to be addressed. It is crazy that this country can be so developed in certain sectors and yet so under developed in others. What can be done though? You can't fine the poor for not having other alternatives, yet they can't continue practicing habits that degrade the environment. I agree with the above post that we cannot hold India to our same standards, but they really do need to make some severe policy situations, and they need to do so before it is too late.

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  8. When I was studing in Australia I lived across a woman from Calcutta and I remember her telling me about how poor the air quality was as well, and every time she visited her family in India she always got a respiratory infection. One of India's main problems is over population, with a population of about 1.1 billion. It is extremely hard to encourage environmental protection when so many people are merely trying to survive. Although I think the one child policy adopted by China is a little radical, India could benefit greatly from more education and family planning oppurtunties in order to decrease population growth and dedicate more resources toward environmental protection and subsequently public health.

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  9. I visited this India last year, and went to Yamuna, and it is in fact disgusting. But, the river is very important religiously to the Indian people. Despite its unsanitary status, I don't think that the Indian people would approve any sort of treatment or sanitation of their holy river. Hopefully the Indian people will come to realize that something must be done to clean the river, but I do not think the international community can interfere with the treatment of a religiously sacred river.

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  10. It's true that we don't have dung rivers in the US, but we do have plenty of dead ones. Myriad tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, for instance, carry nitrogen and phosphorous runoff from fields, creating hypoxic "dead zones" where no aquatic flora or fauna can survive. This is the same effect ruing fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps it would be a good thing if we had the same religious respect for rivers, it might incite us to actually do something about it.

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