Staying in the capital of India, we always felt privileged to have better amenities than the rest of the country. But on monitoring the quality of Yamuna, our views changed. It made us wonder whether it was a drain or a river!

Sol-Crusaders, the environment club of our school, took up the project ‘Yamuna - Water Sampling and Testing’ to find out more about the river.

Our seniors took up this challenging project with the help of WWF-India and Development Alternatives. They deserve a bravery award for wading through the dirty and filthy bank into the greenish black brew called Yamuna! The saying goes - "One wouldn’t die of drowning in the Yamuna river, but by drinking the Yamuna waters! In the earlier project, water samples were collected at three sites - Wazirabad, ITO and Okhla barrage - and some of the tests were conducted at the site. The results showed that the quality of water was deteriorating rapidly from Wazirabad down to Okhla.

Seventeen major drains carrying municipal sewage, authorised and unauthorised, from housing colonies and jhuggi- jhopdi clusters, effluents from industries and agricultural wastes join the river. As a result, the dissolved oxygen (DO), which gives an indication of the health of the river, decreased from four mg per litre at Wazirabad to zero mg per litre at Okhla. A river with zero DO is "dead"! Not fit to be called a river at all.

To find out about the state of the river downstream, we joined the "Paani Morcha’ (water march). We ventured on a yatra along the banks of the river from Delhi to Agra. This time, we were trained to use the portable water testing kit. We started the 'yatra' (journey) from India Gate and conducted our first set of tests at Okhla, followed by tests at Vrindavan (Kesi Ghat), the holy town of Gokul and at Agra (behind the Taj Mahal). Dhobi Ghats on the banks and open drains join the river at Vrindavan to make it holier!

We announced our results in a public meeting at Vraj Academy and showed the red chironomid worms from the river.  What struck us most was the faith that the people, local as well as pilgrims, had in the holiness of the river. Our meeting made at least some people think whether the river was holy at all. At Vrindavan, the local people said they were prepared to donate about six acres of land for setting up a biological treatment plant to revive the river and bring the "Vraj" back to life again.

But we also faced some resistance from officials and a section of the public who would not take our findings seriously saying "these school children with a bag of bottles and syringes have come to tell us how the water is? These tests are done by MSc. students in laboratories with sophisticated instruments." As we had taken up this project as a challenge, we had learnt the chemistry, physics and biology of water and the various tests, taken all the necessary precautions and had our earlier Delhi result checked with the Development Alternatives’ laboratory. We argued with confidence and were branded as "activists". The yatra gave us a rich experience of not only monitoring the river water quality but also of interacting with the local people and understanding their problems.

Over the years, we found the river water deteriorating very fast despite promises given to us by the then Minister for Environment, Delhi. We wanted to find out about the status of the MCD water supply and the bore-well water supply. We joined the CLEAN-India Programme launched by Development Alternatives. Under the programme, Delhi has been divided into 12 zones based on certain environmental parameters. Zone eight has been allotted to us. We have selected nine sites, some are bore-well pumps near slums at Okhla industrial area, others include MCD supply in housing colonies, and the river water at Okhla. We conducted tests for 14 parameters four times in a year.

We have found levels of fluoride and nitrate to be very high. The areas surrounding many hand-pumps are dirty with stagnant pools of water having colonies of mosquitoes and larvae. The open areas near the slums are used as open toilets and dustbins. There are no toilets, no drainage system, no MCD truck goes there to collect garbage.

Here, a motley crowd of men, women and children would surround us with anxiety to look at our ware of bottles, test tubes and injection syringes. An old lady said something which touched us a lot - "If you school children go and tell the government about the water and the conditions here, they might do something to improve this place."

We feel that we have taken up a responsibility and our work is taken seriously by the NGOs and government officials, our findings are used for something constructive, and most important of all we have learnt to respect the environment. Sometimes, we had to work after school hours and on holidays too. But, we have realised that : "Now is the time for action and we have to do it." q

Maneesha Gopalakrishnan