TAPI TOWN ON A TICKER?

Suryaputri Tapi-the Sun God’s daughter, originates as a pure ,bubbly spring ,full of life in the dense tribal district of Betul, in Madhya Pradesh from a place called Multai.Its name originates from the Sanskrit name Multapi.

While it is the life line of our town and the pride of the city’s rich glorious past, present day sees it contaminated with worst ever effluent industrial waste, sewage drains that flush out in it, algae and river bed vegetation which act as natural polluters and other harmful organisms dumped in by humans and animals.

Our civic body, the SMC, was amongst the first in the country to acquire standards to process and distribute quality water in required quantity on time and implemented the ISO 9001-2000 certificate to improve quality of potable water way back in 2004. Many an anti pollution drives and campaigns have been carried out to try and keep our river clean; sometimes after being alarmed over high levels of pollution or on other occasions, due the discovery of strange red organisms in the water treatment plant at Varachha water works.

The on going, month long Tapi Shudhhi karan campaign is by far the most aggressive and well attended ‘clean our river waters’ drive that we have experienced. In addition to correcting the damage done by the ‘khadis ‘that pour in the polluting factors, well meaning denizens and the civic body have joined hands to make sure that the Tapi stays protected from humans and animals that pollute its ovaras and ghats,with plastic, waste. The campaign will end on 27 June.And, in the rare case that we responsibly carry on the good work; things might just be back to square one or even worst, by this time next year.

Along with being the brightest jewel in the industrial capital of the country, it comes with little surprise that our city has also qualified as being one of the highest polluted. As deadly messages in the form of dead fish have often washed ashore, littering our beaches, dying cattle have had meek protesters and sniffing the gaseous air beyond Piplod as the evening sets in has become a way of normal life for us.

With over 400 textile processing units and more than 600 odd chemical factories that fume, it is little wonder that the presence of Carbon Dioxide in the air is more than 100 microgram per cubic meter than the permissible presence of below 80 micrograms.Yes, we took a giant step with converting our means of public transportation on road into CNG dependant vehicles but our air has worst enemies. As does our soil that has been found to be heavily contaminated with high levels of metals and toxic wastes.

The Gujarat Pollution Control Board has served a general improvement notice this year to industrial agencies. Some of its rules state that ‘All sources of water consumption have to be informed to the GPCB,Effluent discharge like ETP,LETP,FETP etc shall be allowed only through flow meter indicating correct quantity being discharged, any increased generation exceeding CTE(NOC0should be reported immediately, effluents are to be discharged only from authorized points ,only authorized fuel is to be used and any disposal of waste via pipeline connections,leakages,spillage,by pass,burying,underground or outside discharge is illegal.
The notice also states that while law abiding units can enjoy the rights of business and good infrastructural facilities provided by state government, wrong doers are warned that any illegal activities will be punished with ‘dire consequences’-the parody of the situation is, the wrong doers are punishing us already, with ‘dire consequences’.

As the mudslinging and finger pointing for the responsibility of Bhopal-the worlds worst industrial disaster reaches its zenith, lets learn from it and leave a better future for our children to live in ,lest we be known as the Andersons of our times.