Krishna Consciousness & Ecological Awareness

We are sorry to announce that this blog will again be inactive for an indefinite amount of time. Instead, please visit our blogging friends at The Yoga of Ecology for regular posts dealing with nature and spirituality.

We apologize that for the next year, this blog will be inactive.  Instead, please visit our friends at The Yoga of Ecology for regular posts dealing with nature and spirituality.

Article from Deccan Herald

Amid uproarious scenes, Karnataka Assembly today passed the controversial cow slaughter ban Bill, which provides for stringent punishment for violaters and makes the offence cognisable and non-bailable.

After more than a four-hour debate, the Bill was passed by voice-vote as the entire opposition — Congress and JDS — trooped into the well of the House and shouted anti-government slogans, branding the BJP government “communal”.

Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah, who termed the legislation “draconian”, “anti-secular” and “unconstitutional” tore a copy of the the Karnataka Prevention of Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill, 2010 — and threw it in the air.

Earlier, Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa defended the Bill, saying it was aimed at protecting cows and preserve cattle in Karnataka. A number of states, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir, already had similar legislation, he added.

Cow slaughter ban is in force in Cuba and Iran, Yeddyurappa said, and highlighted the medicinal benefits of cow urine which have been proved by research.The bill prohibits slaughter of cattle, sale, usage and possession of beef, puts restriction on transport of cattle and also prohibits sale, purchase or disposal of cattle for slaughter. Continue reading →

From the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests

In the context of environmental Audit, the Ministry of Environment and Forests is engaged with looking at innovation in governance since the past few months. Two very important initiatives are ongoing, namely the National Green Tribunal (NGT) with a network of specialized Environment Courts and National Environment Protection Authority (NEPA). Delivering a key note address at the two day conference on a ‘Environment Audit – Concerns about Water Pollution in India’ organized by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India here today, Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests (I/C) said the NGT will give the Indian citizen first time judicial remedy as far as environmental damages are concerned. India would be the first country in the world to have such an extensive network of specialized environment courts. Shri Jairam expressed the view that environment is still seen not as an essential function such as economic activity, but as an additional cost that has to be borne. Unless and until, we internalize issues relating to environment as part of normal process of economic decision making, we will not get the kind of seriousness on matters relating to environments. Continue reading →

By Krishna Pokharel, The Wall Street Journal

VARANASI, India—More than a million devout Hindus bathed in the Ganges River Friday, braving the risk of terrorist attack, stampede and petty crime for the chance to wash away the sins of a lifetime and open the gateway to heaven after death.

But perhaps the greatest threat to the devotees who flocked to Haridwar, India, on one of the most auspicious days of the triennial Kumbh Mela festival, was the water itself.

The river is intensely polluted with sewage and industrial waste. Water-treatment facilities have been unable to keep up with India’s rapid growth, often held back by a shortage of funds and other resources.

A dip in the Ganges River in India is believed by devotees to wash away all sins. But increasingly it has become heavily polluted with sewage and industrial waste. Now, a $4 billion government program aims to clean the river.

Now, the spiritually cleansing waters of the Ganges are about to get some cleaning of their own. The Indian government has embarked on a $4 billion campaign to ensure that by 2020 no untreated municipal sewage or industrial runoff enters the 1,560-mile river.

Only 31% of municipal sewage in India undergoes treatment, according to the Central Pollution Control Board, a government agency in New Delhi, while the rest gets discharged into the country’s rivers, ponds, land and seas, contaminating underground and surface waters. More than 500,000 of the 10.3 million deaths in India in 2004 resulted from waterborne diseases, according to the most recent comprehensive mortality data from the World Health Organization.

The filth in the Ganges holds special resonance for this majority-Hindu nation. The Ganges basin supports more than 400 million of India’s 1.1 billion people, the majority of whom are Hindus, who revere the river as “mother” and “goddess.”
Cleaning the Holy Ganges

The cleanup initiative, which is supported by the World Bank, includes the expansion of traditional treatment facilities and, for the first time in India, the introduction of innovative river-cleaning methods.

Veer Bhadra Mishra, a 70-year-old priest and hydraulics engineer in Varanasi, the holy city downstream from Haridwar, has been a prominent advocate of treatment methods used abroad but not yet in India. His plan: to introduce a system to divert sewage and effluents, before they enter the river, to a series of specially designed ponds, for treatment and ultimately to be used use in irrigation or directed back into the river.

His efforts were mired in court and by opposition from local bureaucrats. The bureaucrats had a “difference of opinion” with Mr. Mishra about the best way to clean the river, says Ramesh Singh, general manager of Ganga Pollution Control Unit, the local government body charged with running government treatment facilities in Varanasi.

Mr. Singh says the technologies already in use were time-tested and reliable, but suffered from a lack of trained manpower and proper infrastructure, and a shortage of funds for equipment maintenance.

Last summer, after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh identified cleaning up the river as a national priority, the government in New Delhi increased funding to operate and maintain conventional treatment facilities, and also approved Mr. Mishra’s plan—giving $184,000 to his organization, the Sankat Mochan Foundation, for the design of a new sewage treatment plant.

The foundation is working with GO2 Water Inc., a Berkeley, Calif., wastewater-technology company. In the plan, 10.5 million gallons of sewage a day—13% of the daily output from Varanasi’s 1.5 million people—will be intercepted daily at the riverbank, and diverted. In a nearby village, water will pass through a series of ponds, where sunlight, gravity, bacteria and microalgae will clean the water. A larger pond system is planned, to process 33% more of the city’s sewage.

The treatment system “will be the best solution for dealing with huge amount of domestic sewage being discharged into Gangaji and other rivers in India,” Mr. Mishra said, using the honorific “ji” with the river’s local name, Ganga.

In Haridwar, the National Botanical Research Institute is developing a wetland with local species of reeds to absorb the polluting elements from the wastewater, according to U.N. Rai, a scientist heading the project. Other wetlands will be developed in other areas “to ease the current pollution load in the river,” Mr. Rai says.

The load is heavy. On a recent winter morning in Varanasi, lab technician Gopal Pandey descended the stone stairs of Tulsi Ghat, one of the holy city’s 84 bathing platforms, to fetch some Ganges water for testing at the Sankat Mochan Foundation, an organization run by Mr. Mishra.

In the laboratory, Mr. Pandey found that each 100 milliliters of the river’s waters were laden with 29,000 fecal coliform bacteria, which potentially cause disease. India says a maximum of 500 per 100 milliliters is safe for bathing in the river. Another sample from downstream, after the Ganges meets a tributary carrying a black mass of thick industrial effluents, showed 10 million bacteria—mostly E-coli—in the same amount of river water. Mr. Pandey’s verdict: “The pollution is at very, very dangerous level.”