The spirit of Delhi, made of thrice distilled waste

Picture credit: Vijay Pandey

A metro line above and a bullock cart below; a makeshift house made of plastic sheets next to a condominium; a horse cart selling mangoes parked at the entry or exit of a flyover; and men dying while cleaning the carbon filter of a sewage treatment plant. These are some vignettes of the nation’s capital. Now it's pouring in Delhi and its neighbourhood. Monsoon is the season to rejoice when the pollutants are washed down and the air becomes breathable, yet it isn’t. For, the roads of Delhi, Gurugram and its neighbouring cities, that make the National Capital Region, become unnavigable water bodies after a spate of rains.

 

Congress was in power in Delhi for 15 years, Aam Admi Party for 10 years and now BJP has wrested power. In fact, the BJP is in power at the Centre, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana and yet the traffic to apartments worth Rs 100 crores in Gurugram is stuck in muck flowing freely. Sure, those who sell and buy penthouses for Rs 190 crores do not seem to bother. This indifference to the civic disaster that is Delhi is what evokes the spirit of Delhi. A spirit made of thrice distilled waste --- human, industrial, hospital and of every other kind.

 

I live in Delhi’s suburbs beyond the eastern waste dump. Every boundary of Delhi is marked by a mountain of waste that Delhiites create. Every time Delhi celebrates a surge in GDP numbers taking the country a notch higher in the scale of prosperous nations, the mountains of offal too grow several notches. Yet shamelessly all parties promise to clear the waste and clean the Yamuna. Some six years ago former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal promised to make Delhi look like London or Paris. But it still looks like Delhi --- dirty, slushy, crowded and polluted.

 

Every year, one has seen underpasses getting submerged during the monsoon without fail. Only a drought can avert this sight of floating vehicles. Every other tunnel and underpass in Delhi that has been built since the British left get flooded as a symbol of rising India’s engineering prowess. Last year, this month, three UPSC aspirants --- Shreya Yadav, Tanya Soni and Nevin Delvin --- were killed when the clogged drains outside, on the road, pushed dirty water into the basement of a UPSC coaching centre. As simple as that. Storm water drains and sewers do not get cleaned in Delhi NCR.

 

And when an attempt is made, it is often at the cost of the most dispensable human beings --- a group of people doomed to clean others’ waste in a nation that had by law prohibited manual scavenging.

 

Brijesh and Vikram --- workers who go down the waste holes may not have surnames --- died of suffocation in a Delhi hospital this week. Over 70 of them met with the same fate in the last decade or so just in Delhi. Brijesh and Vikram were healthy when they reached the hospital to clean the carbon filter inside the sewage treatment plant but died of negligence. And the hospital is blaming the contractor. The reason for death is as old as the mountains of Delhi’s waste: no safety gear. Workers are sent down manholes, sewer lines and sewage treatment plants without even ensuring their safe return. If they are lucky, they will get back, if not, the hospital, shopping mall or hotel will not be responsible.

 

That is, the glittering half of the national capital is not responsible for the waste it creates and for the lives of those who clean the waste, often with bare hands without any equipment. This morally repugnant system should not gloat over GDP numbers because our GDP numbers are made of transactions of our teeming, hungry billion and a half; and not of prosperous households. Every packet of the cheapest biscuit and unbranded atta adds to the growth numbers, which to be meaningful should offer a dignified living to those who sustain the economy.

 

The callousness of a society that sends some of its most miserable members down the septic tank to near certain death, extends to the choked drains in Gurugram roads that lead up to Rs 200-crore apartments. Passengers dying in floating cars is not unheard of in this country. 

 

Civic infrastructure needs accountability more than investment. Every road, drain, sewer line and streetlamp that fails ought to be paid by the contractor, the engineer, the babu and the politician --- the bigger the loss the greater the accountability. Just as the kickback goes up the chain all the way till the politician, the accountability too ought to reach till the secretary and the minister who run the department. Once a token amount is deducted from the salaries of the minister and the secretary, not a single drain would get clogged anywhere in Delhi NCR or any other part of the country.

 

And when lives are lost cleaning the drains and STPs, the contractors and those who hire them ought to be tried and convicted under section 106 of BNS for criminal negligence. Or else, India would no longer have the moral right to talk about its economic miracle, military might or national pride because all of this get submerged in a Gurugram road and all the achievements of honest tax-paying individuals die a suffocating death in the blocked sewer lines.

 

India cannot expect integrity from its babus and netas, so it must be enforced. Every stretch of road should have the name of those responsible for its upkeep and when a piece of civic infrastructure goes under, the one named for its upkeep should be held accountable. Bureaucracy is the vilest cog in the Indian wheel, and it needs to be replaced every time it brings normal life to a grinding halt.