A trip to Bailadila wasn't on my agenda when I arrived at Chhattisgarh. But a meeting with Pratap Agrawal, a feisty Jagdalpur lawyer who keeps the state government on its toes with his various petitions, convinced me otherwise. "You must see the Shankhini and Dankini, they are the worst polluted rivers in Asia,' he told me. Curiosity piqued, I decided to make a 41-km detour from Dantewada to Kirandul (the Bailadila industrial area is divided into two mining towns, Bacheli and Kirandul). How bad could these two perennial rivers in India's rural hinterland be; compared to what I'd seen of the Hooghly in Calcutta and Yamuna in Agra?

Local lore has it that the rivers were named after two female demons