Poisoned and over-exploited, many rivers are in a parlous state

THE RIVER VIEW HOTEL on the banks of the Yamuna river at Okhla, on the outskirts of Delhi, lives up to its name. But the view is not uplifting. Rubbish is strewn along the water’s edge. As elsewhere in India, industrial pollution, untreated sewage and the still widespread practice of open defecation make this stretch of the Yamuna a toxic soup teeming with bacterial infection. According to India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), in 2016 the water contained at times 1.6bn faecal coliform bacteria per 100ml—more than 3m times the CPCB’S “desirable” bathing limit of 500 per 100ml.

About 600km (373 miles) downstream from Okhla the sacred Yamuna joins an even holier river, the Ganges, or Ganga, at Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), site from January to March this year of the six-yearly kumbh, a Hindu festival that is expecting 150m devotees—perhaps the largest human gathering ever held anywhere. They have waited for days for the chance to cleanse their souls, if not their bodies, by taking a short dip (limited to 41 seconds, in an effort to avert stampedes) in the blessed waters. The river there is considerably less toxic. In December the CPCB ordered state governments to stop “grossly polluting units”—distilleries, paper mills and textile factories—discharging effluent into the river. The Tehri dam upstream released more water to ensure it flowed just fast enough to wash away sins but not sinners.