The
latest addition to Singapore's tourist attractions is a river themed
wildlife park for river dwelling animals, aptly named as 'River
Safari.' The 'U' shaped theme park has been created on both sides of
a bay of water, fed from Upper Seletar Reservoir. As visitors enter
the park and walk along a well laid path, they can see the tranquil
bay water on one side and number of water ponds with glass walled
sides. Each of these ponds is named after a major river system of the
world such as Mississippi, Congo, Nile, Mekong, Amazon and so on.
Each of the ponds houses marine animals exclusively found in that
river system. Because of the clear glass wall on one side, visitors
can observe animals like crocodiles, tortoises and off course,
various fishes.
One of
the pond exhibits is dedicated to river Ganga, India's most sacred
and revered river. A visitor can see here, critically endangered
Indian Gharial- a fish eating crocodile and the goonch catfish- a
reputed man eater. In the background of the pond is a structure,
which looks like an Indian temple with series of steps, which are
known in India as temple 'Ghats.' Visitors are likely to feel
initially, that there is a problem with this particular exhibit,
because unlike other exhibits, where visitors can clearly see the
marine life through clear glass and crystal clear waters, in the
Ganga exhibit, the marine life looks unclear and foggy. A visitor may
think first that the glass side wall has not been cleaned properly.
But that is not the case. Glass is cleaned every day. The problem
lies with the water itself, being murky and highly polluted. A sign
nearby explains, that the park authorities have taken care to keep
the waters in the pond truly like that of the original river- highly
polluted - and that is why the visibility is so poor. This perhaps is
the best way to tell the world, how polluted the waters of the Ganga
river actually are.
Ganga
is one of the largest river systems of the world. This river rises in
the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand and flows
for 2525 Km to south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North
India into Bangladesh, where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. It is
the longest river of India and is the second greatest river in the
world by water discharge. The Ganga basin is world's most heavily
populated river basin with more than 400 Million inhabitants. The
population density in this basin is a staggering number of 390
inhabitants per square Kilometers.
Hindu
mythology considers the river Ganga as a divine mother and is
worshiped as a Goddess that purifies the soul and brings new hope to
the worshiper. Hindus would put few drops of Ganga water in the mouth
of a dying person to absolve him of all the sins. Yet the same river,
considered as ultimate form of purity, is almost dead and is now
struggling to survive and breathe freely as unimaginable quantities
of garbage and filth flow into it.
The
main factors responsible for polluting the river are, industrial
effluents, run-off from chemical fertilisers and pesticides used in
agriculture, huge quantities of solid wastes released in the river,
drainage from cities and towns discharged in the water, a large
number of animal carcasses and hundreds of human corpses thrown into
the river everyday and finally the faecal matter or human waste, that
gets thrown in the river. Most of the people living in the Ganga
river basin, have no sanitary facilities. They are forced to use the
river for their ablution because there is no other way. This keeps
fouling the river water and turning it into a source for spreading
diseases. 2011 census has found out that there are about 131 million
households in India that have no toilets on their premises, with
eight million using public facilities and 123 million just defecating
in the open. These numbers indicate the gravity of the situation.
There
is more bad news for the people, who believe that the Ganga water is
the purest and cures all the ills. Experts from UK’s Newcastle
University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, led by
professor David Graham , an environmental engineer based at Newcastle
University, sampled water and sediments at seven sites along the
upper Ganges in the months of May-June 2013, when millions of
pilgrims travel to towns like Rishikesh and Haridwar to worship the
Ganga as a mother Goddess.
The
teams findings show that besides high levels of other contaminants
in the water, the levels of the most deadly form of superbugs that
are resistant to drugs are about 60 times higher,when millions of
pilgrims travel to the river than other times of the year. The
multi-drug resistant superbugs, found in Ganga waters, include the
deadly NDM-1 virus also.
The
NDM-1 virus was first identified in New Delhi and coded by the
resistant gene blaNDM-1 . Until recently, strains that carry blaNDM-1
were only found in clinical settings or hospitals but in 2008,
blaNDM-1 positive strains were found in surface waters in Delhi.
Since then, blaNDM-1 has been found elsewhere in the world, including
new variants.
Professor
David Graham says that the temporary visitors from outside the
region, overload local waste handling systems, which seasonally
reduces water quality at the normally pristine sites. The study found
overloading of waste treatment facilities as a factor to blame along
with many cases, where untreated sewage was going straight into the
river, where the pilgrims bathe. He adds:
"The
bugs and their genes are carried in people's guts.If untreated wastes
get into the water supply, resistance potential in the wastes can
pass to the next person and spiraling increases in resistance can
occur. This isn't a local problem - it's a global one. We studied
pilgrimage areas because we suspected such locations would provide
new information about resistance transmission via the environment .
And it has - temporary visitors from outside the region overload
local waste handling systems, which seasonally reduces water quality
at the normally pristine sites."
He blames excessive use of antibiotics as the principal cause for
this and adds:
"What
humans have done by excess use of antibiotics is accelerate the rate
of evolution , creating a world of resistant strains that never
existed before. Through the overuse of antibiotics, contamination of
drinking water and other factors, we have exponentially speeded-up
the rate at which superbugs might develop. For example, when a new
drug is developed , natural bacteria can rapidly adapt and become
resistant ; therefore very few new drugs are in the pipeline because
it simply isn't cost-effective to make them."
What
needs to be done then? How to protect the people visiting and living
at these sites so that we make sure that the spread of resistance
genes that promote life-threatening bacteria is achieved without any
interference with important religious practices that are carried out
by the people. Professor David Graham suggests that this can be done
simply by improving waste management at key pilgrimage sites.
What
is needed is a silent sanitation revolution to be undertaken on the
banks of river Ganga, to improve waste management and to make her
pure and free again. It is as simple as that!
19th
February 2013
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