Why Buddha Nullah clean-up continues to be a lost cause

Now in his late 60s, acclaimed Ludhiana-based ayurveda practitioner Dr Ravindra Vatsyayan recalls how during his school days, he and other students would regularly bathe in the Buddha Darya, as it was called then. “I’ve seen the crystal clear water turning into dark black sludge,” he says, and “just nobody seems bothered”.

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Synonymous with life-threatening pollution not just in Ludhiana but most of the Malwa region of Punjab, Buddha Nullah has come to exemplify the gross failure, ineptness and corrupt practices of governmental systems. Every new dispensation in the state lists cleaning the Buddha Nullah as the top priority, with negligible outcomes.

A new wave of civil society angst has put the spotlight back on the pressing issue.

What used to be a freshwater rivulet in the 1980s has turned into a drain open to multiple sources of pollution, including industrial effluents that are toxic and carcinogenic. The Buddha Nullah is also made to “digest most of the waste from almost half of Ludhiana”, which has a population estimated at 40 lakh.

A seasonal water stream, Buddha Nullah, after passing through Ludhiana, flows into the Sutlej river near Hambran, carrying with it pollutants of all hues. Since a large area in south-western Punjab solely depends on canal water for irrigation, water from the Nullah enters various canals after the Harike waterworks near Ferozepur, affecting areas like Malout, Lambi and Zira.

Several studies have attributed the exponential rise in cancer cases in Malwa to toxic and carcinogenic agents seeping into the groundwater. A Punjab Agricultural University study in 2008 revealed the presence of toxins and heavy metals in the food chain due to the use of Nullah water to cultivate vegetables and other crops.

Jaskirat Singh, a social activist associated with ‘Kale Pani Da Morcha’ (the campaign for cleaning the Buddha Nullah), says, “They call us blackmailers. You can paste my picture anywhere you want, but please do not let the masses suffer the pain. In Gaunspura village near Ludhiana, nine members of a family died due to one disease or the other and the lone survivor moved overseas. In Dharangwala village in Fazilka, every household has a cancer patient. If the government had good intentions to save the masses, there was no need for people like us to come forward.”

Another activist, Kuldeep Singh Khaira, terms it the number one environmental problem that North India is facing, “putting a minimum of 80 lakh people at risk”. Villagers in Gaunspura, Hambran, Walipur and Maniawal near Ludhiana, experts say, live under the constant threat of deadly diseases.

Till date, nearly Rs 2,000 crore has been spent to clean the black spot of Ludhiana, but its water remains polluted and acidic. In 2006, a Ludhiana-based human rights organisation filed a case with the Punjab State Human Rights Commission. At that time, environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal led his followers in cleaning the 164-km-long highly polluted Kali Bein rivulet without any government aid.

Jaskirat Singh says there is no will to address the issue. “The officials of the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) are the main culprits, as they are neck-deep in corruption. They not only mislead the courts or the National Green Tribunal (NGT), but also misinterpret the orders. In fact, they are the ones who show the way to the dyeing industry to save their skin,” he alleges.

Dyeing and electroplating units and dairy complexes are considered the main culprits. Though the dyeing units claim to have installed Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) by spending crores, these do not fulfill environmental conditions.

On December 3, activists of ‘Kale Pani Da Morcha’ announced to plug these CETPs so the dyeing industries are not able to discharge liquid into the Nullah. The industry owners asked the huge workforce to confront the activists and the issue was sorted out on a temporary basis.

Dyeing industry owners claim the entire blame is shifted on them, when the electroplating industry, dairy complexes, and dumping of domestic and medical waste are equal contributors. Bobby Jindal of the Punjab Dyers Association says the PPCB had to provide them a document, which has not been done. “Because of that, the dyeing industry got a stay from the NGT. The next date for the hearing of the case is in March.”

Nullah cleaning involves technical and non-technical aspects. “The authorities argue on technical issues in courts, while no one pays attention to the key issue of illegal connections,” says Kapil Arora, an activist.

The chairman of the Vidhan Sabha monitoring committee, Daljit Singh Bhola Grewal, says “we are watching everything very minutely. The corrupt practices of the previous government and government departments under them have been stopped and things will be brought back on track very soon”. He claims the Chief Minister himself is monitoring the working of PPCB. “In 2025, you will see some positive outcome on Buddha Nullah,” he says. Let’s see!