INDIAN'S ENVIROMENT IS SICKNING

About 45 percent of India's land is degraded, air pollution is increasing in all its cities, it is losing its rare plants and animals more rapidly than before and about one-third of its urban population now lives in slums, says the State of Environment Report India 2009 brought out by the government.


The third official report on the state of India's environment, published after a gap of eight years and released by Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Tuesday, has only one word of cheer: it says India is using 75 percent of the water it can use, and it has "just enough for the future if it is careful".



The report, prepared by NGO Development Alternatives under the aegis of the ministry, says 45 percent of India's land area is degraded due to erosion, soil acidity, alkalinity and salinity, waterlogging and wind erosion.



It says the prime causes of land degradation are deforestation, unsustainable farming, mining and excessive groundwater extraction.


On the bright side, the report shows how over two-thirds of the degraded 147 million hectares can be regenerated quite easily, and points out that India's forest cover is gradually increasing.



Ramesh said it would be unrealistic to expect that India's area under forests would go above the current 21 percent, given the competing demands for land. "Our plan is to have all this 21 percent as high and medium density forests within the next 10 years," he said. Currently, only two percent of India is under high density forest cover, while medium density forests cover about 10 percent of the land.



Presenting the salient features of the report to the media, Development Alternatives President (Development Enterprises) George C Varughese said one of its most worrisome findings was that the level of respirable suspended particulate matter--the small pieces of soot and dust that get inside the lungs--had gone up in all the 50 cities across India studied by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Central Pollution Control Board.


"In these 50 cities, with their population of 110 million, the public health damage costs due to this was estimated at Rs.15,000 crore in 2004," Varughese said.


The main causes of urban air pollution were vehicles and factories, he pointed out, appealing for a major boost to public transport.


While India still had some cushion when it came to water use, this scarce resource would have to be managed very carefully, the report says. It identifies lack of proper pricing of water for domestic usage, poor sanitation, unregulated extraction of groundwater by industry, discharge of toxic and organic wastewater by factories, inefficient irrigation and overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides as the main causes of water problems in the country.


While India remains one of the world's 17 "megadiverse" countries in terms of the number of species it houses, 10 percent of its wild flora and fauna are on the threatened list, Varughese pointed out. The main causes, according to the report, were habitat destruction, poaching, invasive species, overexploitation, pollution and climate change.


The report points out that while India contributes only about five percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions that are leading to climate change, about 700 million Indians directly face the threat of global warming today, as it affects farming, makes droughts, floods and storms more frequent and more severe and is raising the sea level.


In the section on urbanisation, the report points out that 20 to 40 percent of people living in cities are in slums. Varughese said there were good projects to upgrade their lives and improve the environment at the same time, but the problem was that most of the money from schemes like the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission was taken away by the big cities, "while the major problem is in about 4,000 small and medium towns".

CASUALTIES DURING INDIAN ELECTION TIME- NEVER REACHING EUROPEAN NEWS

This is never shown in European news , just 11 people killed and that by Maoist called naxals

IS INDIAN ELECTION TIME A DANGER ?

In the following a video showing why the Australian Tennis Federation refused to meet with India in the frame of the Davis Cup. And why the short time cricket organization moved to South - Africa instead of playing there were it was born and named for.

What can be seen are the supporters of two political parties dislike the debates and wanted some real controversies.



This is also a warning for tourist

Delhi's Pollution

Although Delhi has some green lungs and I always thought that because of that it was less polluted than e.g. Mumbai of Pune.At sunrise there is a thick broad layer of black colored particulates and soot covered by a brownish orange layer of NO2 (Nitrogen Doxide). This morning there was no wind, so this was for sure no dust and what is worse, this was in the early morning after a regular weekend. That means that the pollution did not move over night and keeps the city in his tentacles day and night

DAILY ENCOUNTERS IX

These ladies are not islamic extremist, there plan is not to rob a bank, they just want to protect themselves against the extreme pollution. I assume they will know that the scarfs will not protect them against the unimaginable high concentrations of Carbon Monoxid (CO), Hydrocarbons (THC)and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)in the centre city roads , but they will have some protection against particulates. For me it is nearly schizophrenic to observe that in the European emission regulations we soon will have particulate counters (not opacity or so) real counters to measure the amount, not the mass of nano particulates from the size of a cluster of C-atoms to the size of a small bacterium (2.5 micrometer)and there will be limits for that for the homolgation test. And here the mass of emission maybe 1000 times higher and nobody protest.

DEAD RIVERS, SEWAGE and PLASTIC BAGS

India’s pollution is out of control and rivers are dying.

As an example: three billion liters of waste are pumped into Delhi's Yamuna River each day.
Like many rivers in India, New Delhi's body of water is little more than a flowing garbage dump, with fully 57 percent of the city's waste finding its way to the Yamuna. Cascades of garbage on its banks, makes it unaccesable and smells to hell. Most rivers also Mutha and Mula in Pune are so contaminated they can hardly sustain marine life.
"The rivers are dead, they are just just has not been cremated
Fully 80 percent of urban waste in India ends up in the country's rivers, and unchecked urban growth across the country combined with poor government oversight means the problem is only getting worse. A growing number of bodies of water in India are unfit for human use.


Much of the river pollution problem in India comes from untreated sewage. Samples taken recently from the Ganga River near Varanasi show that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were some 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing. Only 55 percent of the 15 million Delhi residents are connected to the city's sewage system. The remainder flush their bath water, waste water and just about everything else down pipes and into drains -- many of them open -- that empty into the Yamuna. Eleven of the 17 sewage treatment plants in the city are underutilized with a quarter of the plants running at less than 30 percent capacity. As it turns out, the city's decrepit sewage system is simply unable to deliver sewage to the plants. The lines are "silted and settled...and are corroded.


A further problem is presented by the sprawling slums of New Delhi that are unconnected to the system. The sewage from "1,500 unplanned colonies find its way into the drains and then into the river



There is little city residents can do. A confusing web of political appointees, civil servants, and weak elected officials with short term limits makes accountability almost impossible. At least eight separate agencies from the city, state and federal level oversee are handling the case, competing for funds.
And even in the most sophsticated areas as the industrial parks of Gurgaon you will find the most splendid new towers of the continent , directly aside of a wild wast dump ... and what is worse nobody seems to care.

Experts believe spending more money into building sewage diversion and treatment infrastructure is a waste of time. She calls for rethinking the entire pollution control paradigm, building small-scale waste treatment plants on a neighborhood scale and re-using the water locally.



And people stilla are forced to wash in the silty water, because there is no other water available.