Biking along the Yamuna from Delhi to Agra, ravleen kaur hears constant calls for saving the river, but witnesses little action. Photographs by vaibhav raghunandan
The roaring of motorcycles shattered the early morning calm on the Yamuna floodplains in Delhi. On World Environment Day on June 5, a group of professionals, farmers, activists and journalists gathered for a bike rally along the river at the Yamuna Satyagraha site, where a bunch of farmers and activists have been campaigning against the construction of the Commonwealth Games Village on the riverbed for over 300 days.
As the river drifted into Faridabad its burden of sewage and industrial waste kept on increasing and the spectacular failure of the Yamuna Action Plan began to unfold. In Dhadhasiya, 40 km from Delhi, a sewage treatment plant (stp) of 20 million litre per day capacity sprawled over 7 hectares made a great showpiece of the plan, but it was shut down for upgradation. Untreated sewage was being discharged into the river.