Music Music The composition of the liquid has changed. It doesn't have any properties of water left. Music And by starting Yamuna Rika, people are not going anywhere. Cleaning is very important.
If it's fine, then it's okay to drink. But if it's not, then it's bad. Basically, this is the water crime. The Yamuna River in North India begins high up in the Himalayas and teems with life for hundreds of kilometres.
In the Indian capital of Delhi, it undergoes an astonishing transformation. This is the Wajirabad Behradj. This is the Yamuna that enters up to this point into the Delhi. On that side, the water is clean.
Before Behradj, water comes from the Himalaya region, the origin of the Yamuna point. So it's clean, 400 kilometers and then... 400 kilometers.
And then the next 22 kilometers, it's what it becomes. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Basically, this is the same water. Okay?
Before the barrage and after the barrage. Yamuna is basically killed by the human activities. In this water, heavy metals, toxic metals, pesticides, all are present.
Oxygen levels in parts of the river are zero. No animal life can be sustained. But human life on the river continues.
Planting crops along the Yamuna was banned by India's Supreme Court. They feared the food supply might be tainted. But the law is barely in force and every day thousands of kilograms of vegetables grown in Yamuna water find their way into Delhi's homes and restaurants. It's hard to see the state of the Yamuna today as anything but a tragedy.
But some make the best of it. People like Sikanda have been working off this river for 30 years. He scours this whole section looking for trash.
And he earns maybe 5 or 10 rupees for each piece. He can make up to 5000 rupees every month and that for him the state of the river right now is not such a bad thing. I keep my shoes in the bag.
I carry them with me. I have the luck to have a small piece of gold. So I keep the things in my bag.
It will be good for everyone, but it won't be good. This world's garbage, this pollution will spread. This river will spread everything. This is a business.
Hindus consider the Yamuna to be a goddess. Once a year, tens of thousands of pilgrims gather on its banks in the towns of Mathura and Vrindavan to pray and immerse themselves in the water, believing it brings them good health and prosperity. This is the birthday of Chandan ji.
It's fun. This is the place and this is the fruit. We are blessed to live here. We are the basic mother. In this, we are the only one who is in a bad condition.
In every Hindu's heart, there is a big sadness. We are outside a Asari dyeing factory near Mathura, one of the temples of the Lord. ...that lines the Yamuna River.
It isn't just sewage that's pumped into the river every day, it's also a lot of industrial effluent. In this case, chemicals, a by-product of the Surrey Dying Process. As you can see, it's flowing pretty freely into local drains. From here, it'll make its way into the Yamuna and onto people's food and water supplies. Eventually, someone will be drinking this.
More than 60 million people rely on the Yamuna for their water supply, including the residents of Patipachgai village near Agra. It's a relatively wealthy community, but a few years ago, people here started getting sick. So this is the filter that the government...
came to install. Yes, yes. But what's the problem with it? So, no, it is not working now. It asked for service twice in a year, but since last five years it is not serviced at all, not for a single time only.
So the water comes out of the ground. And it's pumped into here which is supposed to clean it? Stored into that tank and then it comes to that filter. But this thing doesn't clean anymore? No, no, no.
This is not cleaned anymore. So the water comes out of this tap here? This is the only outlet for that filtered water.
But now as you know it is a simple water, only normal water. So what happens to people who drink that water? People are having many problems like pains in their joints.
And they are not able to move. able to walk properly. And do the villagers know that the water they are drinking is bad for them?
Yeah, they know but there is no other option to live. If they have to survive then they will have to drink this water. In 2012, there was no work, no work, no food, nothing.
We had to go to the mill to make tatti. I have to go to the hospital. I have to go to the hospital. If I go to the hospital, I have to go to the hospital. If I die, I will be in trouble.
If I die, I will be in trouble. The doctor said that you should change the water. He said that you should drink 1 litre of water. The price of this is very high. You should drink 1 litre of water and then go to the hospital.
If the medicines are working, then you should not get hanged. You should not be put under the bed. Nearby, in the city of Agra, local activist Bridge Khandelwal is fighting to rescue the river at its most famous point. When this building was constructed here, one of the major reasons was the river, which the Mughals thought was a much better place. better river than the one in heaven because of the water quality.
What did it look like back then? Oh, it was, in fact, Baba himself had written the water of the river. It was as good as nectar. But today, it's so scary. The Uttarakhand High Court has ruled in a judgement that both Ganga and Yamuna, the whole list of Indian rivers, they are living entities and from the judgement also follows that the river has some basic human rights.
How can the human rights of a river really be enforced? If it is a living entity as the Uttarakhand High Court says, then every living entity has basic human rights. But the number of people killing this river must number in the millions.
Everyone who openly defecates on its banks is in a small way responsible for its murder. That is true, but we have agencies which are supposed to regulate anti-social activities. Politics has so far failed to clean the Yamuna.
In Agra, residents are looking elsewhere for help. One evening they held a prayer ceremony on the riverbank to bless bricks they hope might one day be used in a barrage that would raise water levels in the city. We took the initiative of inviting everybody who was concerned with the river to the riverbank and initiate action by doing havan and puja of stones which we will place eventually when the foundation is led by the government.
The action has to continue. We will go to the CJM court. People who are responsible for the death of a river, they have to be punished.