Pollution of Water Bodies in India

POLLUTION OF WATER BODIES

Pollution prevention is expensive

Pollution is much more expensive

Greed is even more expensive…to humankind!

By Captain Chinam Kali Prasad

From time immemorial human habitations had always developed near water bodies, initially, around fresh water sources and later as agriculture and industry developed, near sea-coasts for the purpose of trade and commerce. A dash of adventure was thrown in and the discovery of our planet also began along with a bit of thievery on the high seas, piracy as we refer to it! As agriculture and industry prospered, trade and commerce also prospered and the countries as much as the people who played a role in these sectors also prospered. This prosperity saw an exponential growth of population and the demand/supply imbalances continued to give an impetus to the growth of trade and commerce. The result as we see it today is that usage of waterways has increased tremendously, so is there cause for worry? Yes indeed. These four sectors, agriculture, industry, trade and commerce have an unfortunate negative side to them……pollution……of land, air and water. As a seafarer, I will dwell upon the water and air pollution in coastal and inland waters.

While all international waters are monitored judiciously, coastal and inland waters are just as much kept an eye upon, but only in a few countries. And where do we stand? To understand our position, one must understand our psyche and not just seafaring people, but, people of the entire country. Do we believe in a future for the generations to come? As much as we have enjoyed taking from our planet during our lifetime, are we doing enough to ensure that our future generations can also enjoy just as much? Is there collective responsibility involved? A definite yes here and one cannot but over-emphasize this collective responsibility. The rule books are here, very detailed and continuously improving to keep pace with every conference or protocol or treaty that happens on our planet. But, and a very big one at that, do we believe?

An emphatic ‘no’ would be my answer going by what I see and what I read and what I hear, every day, in the print media, in the audio-visual media, in the electronic media and from my seafarer friends. What is evident is that a majority of our coastal areas are heavily polluted as also our inland waters. Our psyche, more often than not, dictates that there is always somebody else to do the job; our psyche says that menial jobs are below our social standing and, for example, segregating garbage at source is a menial job. If we see someone causing pollution, we hesitate to correct them, because, we may be fighting our own inner devils, or, we may be having guilty feelings, or, may be that we do not believe that such an act can do grave damage! The end result is that at the collective level, nobody takes responsibility and everybody feels that someone else is responsible for cleaning up the mess that we create. We have teachings, we have mentoring, we have monitoring, we have inspections, we have policing and we also have cleaners…and qualified people to undertake these mammoth tasks, so, does that mean that only these persons are responsible for ensuring that our future generations have a habitable place to live…on this planet?

Our younger generations are taught to follow the examples set by their parents/elders. And as parents, do we not find it difficult to explain why things are not right! How do we explain away Global Warming and the resultant loss of land, how do we explain away garbage on the beaches and equally, the huge amounts that get washed ashore day in and day out, how do we explain away sewage and industrial wastes entering water bodies, how do we explain away the poor ambient quality of the air that we breathe today and worse tomorrow? Species have evolved over eons and millennia but in conditions of purity and whenever impurities have interfered, mutations resulted from them. Will our future generations suffer from the impurities that we are creating or should we ensure that they have a pure future to continue evolving safely?

Rhetoric gives rise to more questions than answers. The idea here is to generate a healthy debate and also the reason that no names of places, states or ships have been taken.

‘BELIEF GENERATES ACTION’

The author is a retired Captain with 33 years of service in the Indian Navy and is presently free-lancing in the Merchant Navy. He is available at ckaliprasad@gmail.com for taking the debate further.