# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Editor's note: This article was originally published on 13 March, 2016. In light of the Cauvery river water dispute, this piece is being republished to highlight how Bengaluru's water problems stem from the state of its lakes.

In March, the Ulsoor Lake in Bengaluru turned fish graveyard as hundreds of thousands of dead fish surfaced belly up, shocking environmentalists and neighbourhood residents. V Purushottam, president of a local residents' group said that sewage water from many parts of the city was allowed to flow into the lake, thereby depleting oxygen levels in the lake water. He said that authorities have been continuously ignoring pleas to repair a bund that was supposed to keep this from happening.

Following Monday's incident, officials swung into action. Environment minister Prakash Javadekar that he had held two meetings with officials to discuss the incident. "They have given me details on what they are doing to improve the situation. The lakes' system in Bengaluru has been destroyed for the past few decades. Colonies have been discharging their effluents into the lakes, which has led to this situation."

Mamata Saravanan, local corporator of the area also admitted laxity. "The maintenance of the lake has been very poor," she said, adding that the lake's health was worsened by the immersion of idols following festivals and unrestricted fishing activity.

Water samples collected from the lake have been sent for testing. Meanwhile, concerned citizens have started a petition on change.org asking the municipal commissioner to affix responsibility for the loss of aquatic life at Ulsoor lake.

The real tragedy though is that Ulsoor still remains one of the better maintained lakes in Bengaluru. Located in a high-end residential colony, it's a popular destination for walkers and joggers, while rowing and boating activity also draws crowds. And this incident comes just a few years after the government launched a massive clean-up operation here. Until the clean-up, Ulsoor was full of slush and silt left behind after the immersion of Ganesha idols. The lake was found to be full of water hyacinth. Clearly, the action taken by the government wasn't enough.

And Ulsoor is not the only Bengaluru lake to be facing these concerns. Last year, the Varthur, Bellandur and Yamlur lakes were all found to be frothing at their mouths. Soon afterwards, the Yamlur lake burst into flames. In December last year, bird waters and students surveyed 20 lakes in and around Bengaluru to do a census on the waterfowl found here. It was the first time in 19 years that such a census was being conducted. Ulhas P Anand, one of the bird waters, told , "Land use has been one of the biggest changes, which has affected the bird population tremendously, particularly among waders.

A bird census in the mid-90s had found several varieties of migratory birds, numbering over 5,000 in each lake. However, by 2015, these numbers had fallen drastically. According to the bird waters, sewage inflow, debris lining the shore, commercial fishing, unhindered chopping of trees along the shore and disappearance of wetlands had all affected the health of the lakes. Furthermore, some of the lakes had gone dry while some others had been bifurcated by main and arterial roads, while industrial areas surrounded some others.

All these factors contributed in a big way to the reduction of the bird population. Migratory birds, just like fish and other aquatic life, are the best indicators towards the health of a lake. In turn, the lakes are essential water bodies, needed to improve the quality of life of citizens. Disappearance of the lakes could result in rising temperatures, water shortage and reduced rainwater storage basins. Since the lakes have catchment areas for the collection of rain water, an ill maintained lake could mean increased dependence on already depleting underground water resources.

But it wasn't always so. Bengaluru was always known as the city of one thousand lakes. These are lakes dug in the 16th century by the city's founders, the Kempe Gowdas. The Mysuru Wodeyars and the British later developed them further. These wetlands were home to a variety of aquatic life, nurtured water birds and also provided drinking water to the area's residents. By 1960, Bengaluru had only 280 lakes though. This figure dropped alarmingly to 80 by 1993. Currently, the number of healthy lakes in and around the city is a dismal 17.

Horrifying statistics, right? So, what happened to the lovely lakes that Bengaluru was known for?

Many of the lakes were converted to bus stands, golf courses, playgrounds and residential colonies by the government or were leased out. The rest were encroached by slums and builders, while some others dried up or became cesspools of human and toxic waste.

In 2013, DNA reported that the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) would be conducting a survey of lakes in the city to identify encroachments made by the influential land mafia. The ambitious project, costing an estimated Rs 50 crore, was supposed to clear the encroachments and rejuvenate 78 lakes in the city. This was part of a more comprehensive plan which was to revive and conserve 183 lakes in and around the city.

That was over two years ago. In September last year, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had pulled up the Karnataka state government over encroachments on lake beds. The tribunal regretted that a city renowned for its 261 lakes only had 68 as of today. It also slammed the high-powered committee and the Lake Development Authority set up by the government and raised some serious questions.

Among the points the NGT raised were:
- Un-authorised encroachment and possession of wetlands by builders
- Steps to be taken by the officials and the extent of damage done to the ecology and environment, particularly the wetlands, by the builders
- What was the extent of the discharge of sewage and other effluents from the lakes? What remedial measures were being taken to ensure compliance of the law?
- What was the status of the show-cause notice issued by the Pollution Control Board to the builders? What steps are to be taken?

Meanwhile, several environment organisations have, over the past few years, been conducting regular surveys on the lost and disappearing lakes of Bengaluru. They have now joined forces to get the government to take action and save these lakes. Whatever efforts are being made to save the last few remaining lakes and water bodies of Bengaluru, one thing is clear: It cannot be left to the government alone to take action. Like any successful campaign, even this needs to happen with the support of environmentalists and citizen bodies.

These bodies have also got to be extra vigilant to monitor the action taken by the government. It is ultimately up to us to ensure that what happened at Ulsoor lake this week doesn't happen anywhere else.

Published Date: Sep 19, 2016 11:39 am | Updated Date: Sep 19, 2016 11:41 am

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Cauvery issue: The shocking story of Bengaluru's dried up '1,000 lakes'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editor's note: This article was originally published on 13 March, 2016. In light of the Cauvery river water dispute, this piece is being republished to highlight how Bengaluru's water problems stem from the state of its lakes. In March, the Ulsoor Lake in Bengaluru turned fish graveyard as hundreds of thousands of dead fish surfaced belly up, shocking environmentalists and neighbourhood residents.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu view the river as a mechanistic producer of water, not as a dynamic life-giving system that is responsive to local and global triggers of use and abuse.

Two days ago, a journalist asked me if the next World War will be over water. That question was triggered by the recent violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supposedly over Cauvery's waters. There is no doubt that water conflicts are set to increase and intensify. But it would be wrong to suggest that the hooligans that engaged in loot and arson on either side of the border were actually soldiers in any World War. I think they had no agenda beyond their love of violence and the sound of breaking glass.

That is not to say that there is no conflict over Cauvery's waters. The conflict is real, and has been since the princely Mysore state began seeking a role in determining how Cauvery's waters were to be shared. If anything, the conflict is only likely to worsen. This instance of violence may have brought out only the hooligans in our midst; the conflicts to come are likely to bring out the hooligan in each one of us.

The possibilities of a de-escalation of conflicts over Cauvery's water are remote given that two principal stakeholders - the River Cauvery and future generations - are not represented in all the negotiations in the tribunal and the Supreme Court. What is being referred to as a water-sharing formula is little more than a loot-sharing formula for divvying up the booty.
Some history
There is more than a century's history to the problem. From medieval times up until the mid-19th century, Tamil Nadu had undisputed access to Cauvery's waters. Early engineers from the Chola era onwards had carved out irrigation tanks, and diverted Cauvery waters through anicuts and canals to irrigate farmlands. Irrigated agriculture in the Cauvery delta was already well-developed centuries before the East India Company swung by Madras.

The upper riparian stretches of the Cauvery, notably the Mysore principality, were late starters in irrigated agriculture. When it did begin in the 19th century, attempts by the Mysore state to divert Cauvery water even with minor structures were viewed with suspicion and indignation by the lower riparian farmers in the then Madras Presidency. They feared a decrease in their own share of the river's waters. Citing historical use, delta farmers claimed prescriptive rights to the river's water.

The first two agreements, of 1892 and 1924, were aimed at ensuring that the upper riparian's right to develop its agriculture is not hindered by delta farmers, and that the latter's historical use is not infringed upon by the water users in Mysore.
Not about farmers
The bus-burning and stone-pelting in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu happens, they say, only during distress years when the two states vie to retain an adequate share of the meagre spoils from the river. Solidarity is quick to coalesce for the Tamils or Kannadigas depending on whose buses are being burnt that season.

Sadly, though, no one weeps for the Cauvery itself. Regardless of whether it is a distress year or a normal year for the people of the two states, every year is a distress year for the river. From Mercara to the Bay of Bengal, Cauvery's journey is fraught with danger and abuse. If stewardship were a pre-condition to enjoying the waters of the river, neither Tamil Nadu nor Karnataka would qualify for even a drop of the river's water. But stewardship is not on anyone's agenda.

It is surprising that after all that hot-blooded South Indians have done to their river, there is still a river left to fight over.

A casual reading of the Cauvery tribunal's 2007 award reveals how the river is viewed as a mechanistic producer of water, not as a dynamic life-giving system that is responsive to local and global triggers of use and abuse.

Demand for water within the basin has grown multi-fold. Simultaneously, degradation of catchments and sand mining have compromised the river's ability to sustainably produce water. The proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs is sick and calling for help. Everyone seems intent on squeezing out the last egg. What about trying to keep the goose alive?
What ails the goose
The Cauvery originates in the Brahmagiri ranges of the Western Ghats in Kodagu. High-range tributaries like Harangi, Suvarnavathi, Hemavathi, Lakshmanathirtha and Kabini join the Cauvery where the ghats flatten out to become the Mysore plateau. In the plateau, or maidan, the rivers Shimsha and Arkavathi join waters with the east flowing Cauvery. Arkavathi is fed by Vrishabhavathi, which drains half of Bengaluru.

In Tamil Nadu, Moyar, which joins Bhavani, Amaravathi and Orathar, which in turn adds to Noyyal, empty into the Cauvery. Kulithalai in Erode is about where the delta begins and the Akhanda Cauvery (or broad Cauvery) starts its slow plod to the sea through seven distributaries with beds of sand - Nandalar, Nattar, Vanjiyar, Noolar, Arasalar, Thirumalairajanar and Puravadaiyanar. (See here for an excellent account on the Cauvery network of rivers.)

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed massive interventions in the river's hydrology. All major tributaries - Hemavathi, Kabini, Arkavathi, Amravathy, Bhavani - were dammed. New and large reservoirs like Krishnarajasagar, Bhavanisagar and Stanley Reservoir were created. Minor reservoirs over Orathar-Noyyal and Amaravathi came up. New areas were opened up for water-intensive cash crops in Mandya, Hassan, Erode, Salem and Coimbatore aided by canal- and borewell-based irrigation. And the reservoirs attracted water-intensive industries like flies to honey.

Physiographically, the river flows in three parts: the Western Ghats, the Mysore Plateau and the Delta.
The Ghats
The erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore had two natural landscapes - the malnad, or hill country, and the maidan, or the plateau. It is in the hills that South Indian coffee production took root in the 19th century. From being a peasant crop that was grown in every backyard, coffee became a hot commodity and a mixed plantation crop with the worldwide export of the beans grown in the shaded, stream fed forests of Kodagu gathering steam. Today, Kodagu coffee is grown by 42,000 families over 104,000 hectares. Early planters did alter the landscape but preferred the hardy, shade-giving native evergreens such as rosewood, wild fig and jackfruit. Unlike the tea estates that devastated the countryside, Kodagu coffee planters retained enough of the original habitat to nourish biodiversity and maintain the hydrology.

But that habitat has begun to change particularly rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century and then the 21st century. Responding to global market triggers, the area under coffee has expanded at the cost of forests within private landholdings, and agro-forestry lands under cardamom. An assessment by the Coffee Agro-forestry Network in Kodagu of forest-cover change between 1977 and 1997 indicated that it had declined by 28%, from 2,566 km ² to 1,841 km ². Medium elevation evergreen forest, which decreased by 35%, was the most depleted forest type according to the study.

Climate change too was triggering land-use change. Rainfall over the coffee-growing tracts of Kodagu has been erratic over the last three decades, reports environmental journalist Gopikrishna Warrier. CAFNet's study of 60 years of rainfall data from 116 coffee farms revealed that the rainy season had shrunk by 14 days over the last 35 years. Shade-grown coffee requires predictable blossom showers in the early months of the year. With rains becoming increasingly erratic, farmers are finding shade management tiresome; they are switching to irrigation, intensive open cultivation and substituting the native evergreen shade trees for the more exotic, fast-growing and remunerative Silver Oak.

CAFNet concludes that these changes "may affect ecosystem services like water supply, carbon storage and biodiversity."

High range forests are also being cut down for infrastructure development; this also will have a bearing on Cauvery's headwaters. In July 2014, the National Green Tribunal dismissed a petition by the Coorg Wildlife Society challenging a 55-km high-tension electricity transmission corridor that cut a swathe through the womb of the Cauvery in the Brahmagiri ranges. At least 20,000 evergreens were to be sacrificed just in the Brahmagiri and Pushpagiri ranges. The case was dismissed not on merits but on a technical ground that the petitioners did not show sufficient reason for condonation of delay in filing the petition within the period of statutory limitation.
The Mysore plateau and the Maidans
In 1934, construction of the Krishnarajasagar dam was completed; subsequently, reservoirs came up over Hemavathi, Yagachi, Harangi and Vattehole rivers. This led to the development of intensive irrigated agriculture in the Mandya and Hassan districts of Karnataka. The Cauvery basin reservoirs irrigate more than 100,000 hectares in Mandya and 47,000 hectares in Hassan district. With paddy, banana and sugarcane as key cash crops, the agriculture across the Cauvery basin is not just water-intensive but also fertiliser and pesticide intensive.

The assured supply of reservoir water irrespective of seasons also attracted water-intensive industries. The Nanjangud Industrial Area located on the banks of the Kabini houses 83 large, medium and small industries in a 532 acre plot 25 km from Mysore. Predictably, the Kabini leaves Nanjangud loaded with contaminants from the industrial area and domestic sewage.

The Mysore side of the river too has seen a spurt of water-intensive industries. A study by the Karnataka Engineering Research Station at Krishnarajasagara found that polluted wastewater from three industries -a paper mill, a distillery and a fertiliser manufacturer - had rendered stretches of Cauvery near the once-famed Ranganathittoo Bird Sanctuary "unsuitable for drinking, bathing and fish culture."

The once sacred Vrishabhavathi River that runs through south Bengaluru is now a carrier of sewage and industrial effluents from the Peenya Industrial Estate. The city has one of the highest rates of water wastage in the country. According to a 2013 study by the Bengaluru-based Institute of Social and Economic Change, the city wastes 48% of the 1,400 MLD water pumped to the city.

Bengaluru's rise from a sleepy little garrison town to an IT hub has destroyed everything that made the city a paradise. The city's water needs were once met by the large network of lakes, whose spillover would feed the Vrishabhavathi. From 261 in 1961, the number of lakes in this garden city has fallen to just 85 in 2016. Now, the city sends sewage to the Cauvery through the Vrishabhavathi, and pumps up water from the Cauvery 500 feet below.

A study by the Ashoka Trust for Environment and Ecology found high levels of toxic heavy metals, including nickel, copper, chromium and lead in soil and groundwater, and milk and vegetables from the nearby farms. The Vrishabhavathi Sewage Treatment plant that was designed to handle 180 MLD of raw sewage only receives 130 MLD. Of this, only 26 MLD arrives through underground sewers. The remainder is sewage and industrial effluents that flows in the river's course.

Paraphrasing the 1960s singer Tom Lehrer, what they flush out at breakfast in Bengaluru, we drink for dinner in Tamil Nadu. The Karnataka minor irrigation minister is reported to have revealed in the Assembly that more than 1,400 million litres of sewage is discharged daily into Tamil Nadu. That is nearly 20 TMC from one city in one year - three times the allocation for Pondicherry, and twice the allocation for 'environmental protection'.
Some plateau and the delta
Karnataka had only 316 km of the 800 km river to abuse. They have not done too badly, considering that most of it is in inaccessible, difficult-to-pollute hilly terrain. Tamil Nadu is blessed with 416 km of Cauvery, all in gently sloping ground and plains.

The Stanley reservoir, or Mettur dam, is the barometer of tension between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Within two years of the reservoir's construction, the first industry had come up based on water availability. Mettur Chemical and Industrial Corporation was set up in 1936. Within 15 years, it was already identified as a major polluter of the Cauvery and as the cause of mass fish mortality. Discharge of effluents into Cauvery from this company continued for several years after 2007, when the company's successor Chemplast Sanmar announced zero liquid discharge plans.

On one bank of the Stanley reservoir is a mountain of red mud - a toxic residue from years of alumina production by the Madras Aluminium Company, Ltd. Every passing rain washes a little of the poison into the reservoir.

As if that were not enough, tens of small- and medium-scale chemical industries in the SIDCO industrial estate continue to discharge their effluents through natural drains and engineered canals into the Cauvery. Beneath the reservoir, on the banks of the original river course, sits a 1,240-MW water-guzzling coal-fired thermal power plant operated by TANGEDCO. The Mettur Thermal Power Station has permission to draw 184 MLD (2 TMC annually) of river water. Coal ash from the plant is dumped up on a hill, from where it finds its way back to the river.

Roughly 45 km from here is where the Bhavani joins the Cauvery in Erode district. By the time it reaches the Cauvery, the Bhavani carries the effluents from dyeing industries, leather tanneries and pulp and paper mills - all heavy water-users and heavier polluters. The industrial town of Salem discharges about 35 MLD of untreated sewage into the Cauvery through the Thirumanimuthar. This sub-tributary was converted from a river to a concrete lined drain with money borrowed from the World Bank.

The Lower Bhavani river stretch receives about 38,000 cubic meters of effluents and wastewater from the industrial cluster around Mettupalayam town. Additionally, untreated sewage from Mettupalayam, Sathyamangalam, Gobichettipalayam and Bhavani are also discharged into the Bhavani. Pesticide-laden waters from the coffee and tea plantations of the Nilgiris contribute their bit to the Bhavani.

Further east, the Noyyal, with its notorious effluent-filled Orathupalayam dam, joins the Cauvery. This river, once a lifeline for farmers, is now biologically dead, killed by the exports of the dyeing and bleaching industries from western countries to the hosiery town of Tirupur on its banks. In 1980, there were just 26 bleaching and dyeing units in Tirupur. In 2001, there were 700.

Water withdrawals from the Noyyal sub-basin were 4.4 MLD in 1980; one study projected it to increase to more than 115 MLD in 2005. Growth, development and the pursuit of the good life depleted local water sources and polluted what remained. Now, Tirupur draws water from Bhavani's confluence with Cauvery, about 55 km away. A public-private partnership - the New Tirupur Area Development Corporation, Ltd. -was set up to supply 185 MLD (2 TMC) water of which 125 MLD was reserved for the textile industry. About 120 MLD of effluent is released in the basin.

All along the Cauvery's route, it picks up not just industrial effluents but also municipal solid waste and untreated or partially treated urban sewage.

The post-liberalisation construction boom has birthed a new mafia in Tamil Nadu: the sand mafia. Cubic metre for cubic metre, sand has proven to be even more valuable than water. From Kulithalai in Erode, where the Cauvery expands to a breadth of 1.5 km, the river bed is largely sand. The sand is a spongelike storehouse of freshwater that feeds riverside wells and keeps the farmers happy. About 60% of the state's sand requirement is met by sand mined from the Cauvery basin. Legal or illegal, the quantum of sand that is being removed has harmed the ability of the river to remain a river. And sand-mining operators are a ruthless lot with friends in the district administration, assembly and the police.
Root cause is demand
It is surprising that after all that hot-blooded South Indians have done to their river, there is still a river left to fight over.

The scale of abuse is evident. Yet, it has escaped the attention of the members of the tribunal and the Supreme Court. The complexity of river systems, the hydrological dynamics that determine their ebb and flow, and other anthropogenic confounders such as land-use change and climate change have had no influence on the tribunal order.

The 2007 award that was 16 years in the making is meaningless drivel. From its declaration that a "Normal year" will be a year in which the Cauvery yields 740 TMC to divvying up this yield with an arbitrary 10 TMC to spare for "environmental protection", the Tribunal's award exposes its hurry to deploy reductionist arithmetic hydrology rather than confront the confounding elephants in the room - ever-increasing demand, climate change and land-use change.

The inimitable Ramasamy Iyer says it best in his article already cited above:

Finally, interstate or inter-country river-water disputes often arise because the combined water demand of all the co-riparian states or countries exceeds the water that is there in the river in the lean season. The "development" that we have embarked on involves a heavy draft on natural resources as well as the infliction of heavy damage on those resources and on nature itself. In the context of water, this leads to inter-use, inter-sector, inter-area and interstate conflicts. There is ever a demand for more water and still more water; we are asking for water that does not exist. Unless we abandon this competitive, unsustainable demand for water, and learn to use prudently, effectively and harmoniously the water that is available, there will be no end to conflicts. The notions of "development" and "growth" that lead to that kind of demand need to be re-examined.

If tensions rise only in times of scarcity, it is the notion of scarcity and the scarcity itself that need to be addressed. Scarcity is a function of demand and supply. It can be reduced by increasing supply and reducing demand. In the case of the Cauvery, the same policies that increase demand (and trigger growth) - construction boom, infrastructure development, intensification of agriculture - also harm the river system and its ability to produce and carry water. For the Cauvery, and most of India's rivers, available supplies can be enhanced by preventing pollution and safeguarding the river's catchments, banks and riverbeds. Replacing water-intensive agriculture and industrial practices can free up more water than we currently need. Rather than find new uses for it, this water should be reserved for the river. The 10 TMC of water allocated for "environmental protection" by the tribunal is meaningless considering that just one city - Bengaluru - dumps 20 TMC sewage into the Cauvery.

Today's planners try to spare water for ecological flows, not realising that ecological flows are what keep the river a river.

Nityanand Jayaraman is a Chennai-based writer and social activist.

Categories: Environment

Tagged as: Cauvery River, Chemplast, climate change, coffee plantations, ecological flows, Harangi, Hemavathi, hydrology, Kabini, Karnataka, Kodagu, Krishnarajasagar dam, Lakshmanathirtha, MALCO, Mettur dam, Moyar, Nityanand Jayaraman, Noyyal, Orathar, Orathupalayam dam, sand mafia, Sand Mining, silver oak, Stanley Reservoir, Suvarnavathi, Tamil Nadu, untreated sewage, urban sewage, Western Ghats, Yagachi Vattehole

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Soon, We May Not Have a Cauvery River to Fight Over

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Two days ago, a journalist asked me if the next World War will be over water. That question was triggered by the recent violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supposedly over Cauvery's waters. There is no doubt that water conflicts are set to increase and intensify.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As Bengaluru continues to lose its edge in all benchmarks of quality, its fall from the 7th position in the list of clean cities to 38th is an indication of prolonged neglect by the administration.

This dubious distinction follows another failure - of not being considered at all in the top 100 smart cities list, not being even eligible to be counted in the competition.

The fall of Bengaluru is gaining momentum with frustrated citizens wondering whatever happened to its erstwhile titles of "garden city" and "lake-city" given its current popular description being "garbage city" or "potholed city"!

The plunging image of the City is symbolic of a massive trust deficit among citizens who feel betrayed by successive apathetic and corrupt administrations. Corruption and lack of accountability are now synonymous with Bengaluru! Precious lake beds are encroached by unscrupulous builders; potholed roads managed by corrupt contractors across the city; a garbage crisis that refuses to go despite crores of taxpayers' and public money going into funding it; and state agencies operating without transparency and financial audit for years together. The final blow to citizens comes in the form of an ill-conceived Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). The Karnataka Government which made tall promises of a corruption-free administration, has managed to disrupt and undermine the functioning of the LokAyukta by setting up the ACB. The new ACB is a corrupt attempt to weaken the Parliament sanctioned institution of LokAyukta and will only further the rampant corruption and abuse of discretion the people of Karnataka and Bengaluru are witnessing today.

In the 2014-15 budget, the city's civic agency BBMP was allotted Rs. 2160 crore for road infrastructure projects. Accounts show projects worth Rs 1,000 crore were approved, of which no details exist of how Rs. 461 crore was utilized. In 2015-16, BBMP's allocation for roads and storm water drains was Rs 1882 crore; where is the money going as bad roads and open drains continue to take innocent lives? BBMP spends huge amounts on Solid Waste Management; Rs. 415 crore was reportedly allocated in the budget for 2015-16 but as Bengaluru continues to face a garbage crisis, nobody knows where this money has vanished.

Bangalore's citizens face misery on another count. The city's lakes are dying and are in urgent need of rejuvenation. A report by Prof TV Ramachandra of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - Pathetic Status of Wetlands in Bangalore, reads "Citizens of Bangalore allowed the development in the region with utmost good faith - contaminated air, land and water are the penalty citizens have to pay for exercising tolerance with good faith. Numerous para-state agencies with un-coordinated actions, inefficient regulatory agency and negligent industries have converted the garden city to unlivable city. Clean air, water and environment are the fundamental rights of citizens as per the Constitution of India (Article-21)"

Bellandur Lake, the city's biggest waterbody put Bengaluru in the global news for the worst reason possible - once a lake full of life; it has gradually transformed into a sewage tank. The case of Bellandur Lake is one of fundamental neglect and decay for the last twenty years. While most of the public discourse on Bengaluru is focused on roads and traffic, the silent destruction of this Lake and unabated pollution of other lakes in the city has dangerous consequences for public health and environment, the cost of which will be borne by future generations.

Citizens of Bengaluru and the administration must go beyond transportation issues, for while these cause short term inconveniences of a few hours a day, the lakes getting poisoned and destroyed is a critical environmental problem that will damage the city irreversibly and permanently.

This should not appear as a mere account of the dismal state of our City, but an urgent wakeup call to action that the Government must take seriously. Bengaluru is the fastest growing metropolis after New Delhi where its population has risen by 30 lakhs in 10 years or 47% during 2001-2011 estimated at 10.1 million in 2015, but its social indicators have nosedived. There is no lower the city can fall and it is time the administration rose to perform duties that it is supposed to.

I had earlier reached out to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for putting in place a long term plan for the city. Bengaluru needs a proper statutory long term plan, including a financial plan. The Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) is working on a plan, but that process needs to be made transparent involving citizens and NGOs, and then placed before the Bengaluru Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) where again it must be discussed transparently.

Bengaluru, more than any other city in India, needs to wake up to the looming danger of irreversible damages to its environment and public health ecosystem in addition to its other challenges of mobility and public services.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bengaluru - on track to being Unliveable!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As Bengaluru continues to lose its edge in all benchmarks of quality, its fall from the 7th position in the list of clean cities to 38th is an indication of prolonged neglect by the administration. This dubious distinction follows another failure - of not being considered at all in the top 100 smart cities list, not being even eligible to be counted in the competition.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
BENGALURU: Karnataka saw 51,278 trees being illegally axed between April 2013 and March 2016, accounting for 4.7% of the total destruction reported in 15 states and two Union territories (UTs). The state faces a manpower crunch, with just one officer in charge of every 8,000-10,000 acres of forest land.
The maximum trees were chopped in 2013-14 -20,155 -when 5,309 cases were booked. In 2014-15 and 2015-16, 17,917 and 13,206 trees were lost respectively, according to data accessed from the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEF).

Forest officials told TOI the nature of offences ranges from chopping of trees like sandalwood and teak, which fetch smugglers a lot of money , cutting of forest trees for housing needs and razing of trees in urban areas. "Whatever be the nature of tree felling, the loss to the environment remains grave," said additional principal chief conservator of forests (vigilance) Subhash Malkhede.

"A majority of them are native trees like nandi, which are felled to build houses or other domestic needs," he said, adding, "most of the sandalwood trees are outside the forest area and in government-private lands, and many cases of thefts are reported from there. Stealing of teak happens in forest lands," he said.

Of the 13,693 cases booked in Karnataka over the three years, 1,428 are pending. "A majority of these pertain to sandalwood trees," said sources in the forest department. "That is because in cases involving sandalwood, rules mandate that a trained officer needs to identify the wood. A dearth of such officers over the years has led to several people going scot-free and many more getting stuck in courts," said a source.

Another official pointed out that these officers are not just in charge of trees. "They need to curb poaching, encroachment and forest fires among other things," he said.

Dept employing new technology

Malkhede admitted that given the staff shortage, "we cannot say the cases reported are the only cases of illegal tree felling". While he was quick to add that the department is doing everything from employing new technology to enhancing the intelligence network, he added: "Deploying men on the ground is still the most effective way of dealing with this menace."

The figures are a stark reminder of the country's dwindling green cover and call for imposition of stricter penalties on the offenders. Rampant tree felling and poaching are denuding our forests, and concerted efforts are needed to curb them. In Karnataka's case, the shortage of manpower seems to have incapacitated the forest department, and the government must take steps to recruit more staff. Apart from illegal felling, infrastructure projects and encroachments also pose a threat to trees, especially in urban areas.Spreading awareness and adopting a zero-tolerance policy on unauthorized chopping of trees will go a long way in preserving the environmental wealth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Karnataka lost 51,278 trees to illegal felling in 3 years; faces shortage of foresters - Times of India

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BENGALURU: Karnataka saw 51,278 trees being illegally axed between April 2013 and March 2016, accounting for 4.7% of the total destruction reported in 15 states and two Union territories (UTs). The state faces a manpower crunch, with just one officer in charge of every 8,000-10,000 acres of forest land.

# data[].attributes.headline
Discarded medicines are bitter pills for environment

# data[].attributes.subject
Discarded medicines are bitter pills for environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Karnataka is said to generate a whopping 82 tonnes of biomedical waste each day that includes expired, spurious and substandard drugs, and pills, syringes and syrups.

According to the Biomedical Rules 2016, expired or discarded medicines, which include pharmaceutical waste such as antibiotics, cytotoxic drugs and 'contaminated' items (glass or plastic ampoules, among other things) have to be returned to the manufacturer or supplier for incineration or sent to a common biomedical waste treatment facility.

But in reality, they are dumped in drains and water bodies. Discarded medicines that do make it to a scientific disposal facility reach one of three centres in Bengaluru (Kanakapura Road, Hosakote, Dobbaspet), where they are incinerated. B. Ramanath Rai, Minister for Forest, Environment and Ecology, said three more centres will come up in Kolar, Chikkaballapur and Bengaluru Rural.

However, even the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) admits that they are not enough.

Extent of the problem

It was during an inspection of hospitals around the State that the KPSCB realised the extent of the problem. This is why the board has roped in an external agency to help streamline the process.

"As many as 1,000 kg of discarded medicine was collected by the agency in less than four days," said KSPCB Chairman Lakshman.

Shashi Mohan, MD and CEO of Satva Health Solutions Pvt. Ltd., the agency authorised to collect and dispose discarded medicines, said they found, upon interviewing around 1,000 pharmacy outlets in Karnataka, that on an average non-refundable drugs worth Rs. 2,000 expire every month. There are approximately 27,000 pharmacy outlets in Karnataka. What they intend to do is collect discarded medicine, transport to a destruction unit and document the process at a cost of Rs. 1,200 per annum from each outlet. In addition, they also want to explore the possibility of recycling packaging material such as glass, plastic, aluminium and copper, which could be used to manufacture fertilizers and pesticides. At present, such material is being burnt along with the drugs.

Biomedical waste

Karnataka generates

82 tonnes every day

Bengaluru accounts for 50 per cent of this waste

Discarded medicines comprise less than

10 per cent

Three centres in

Bengaluru for disposal

of such waste

Three more are set

to come up

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Discarded medicines are bitter pills for environment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Karnataka is said to generate a whopping 82 tonnes of biomedical waste each day that includes expired, spurious and substandard drugs, and pills, syringes and syrups.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
BENGALURU: A young leopard entered a south-east Bengaluru elite school on Sunday and was tranquillized after a 14-hour long operation, during which it attacked two people.
The security at Vibgyor High, Kundalahalli spotted the leopard entering the school around 4am and flashed the alert. By early morning forest department personnel landed at the spot, armed with dart guns and tranquillizers.

The leopard, which played hide and seek with the forest officials team and a huge number of villagers who were camping on adjacent buildings and tree tops, cut loose during the final stages of the operation to nab it around 6pm and attacked the wildlife expert, Sanjay Gubbi, who was assisting the authorities and the two media persons.

The forest department personnel were closing in on the leopard that had hid in one of the rooms of the school around 6pm when the big cat suddenly sprung out of the room and darted towards the swimming pool.

The leopard attacked an unidentified person first but he managed to ward it off.

Gubbi, who was at the other end of the swimming pool, too was taken by surprise when the leopard turned towards him. He immediately rushed towards the compound wall and tried to scale it. He was pulled down by the leopard, which then attacked him. Gubbi tried to chase away the animal using his binocular. By then it was shot with tranquilizer. The big cat suddenly turned its attention away from Gubbi and it ran towards the restroom inside which it collapsed.

Earlier in the day, the security personnel at the school confirmed the presence of the leopard after going through the CCTV footage showing the leopard walking through the corridors of the school. As the news spread, people from adjoining areas trooped in. Soon police and forest department were called in and the school was cordoned off.

Till afternoon there was no sign of the leopard inside the campus. By afternoon, it was spotted in a bush nearby. As a huge crowd moved towards the bush, it ran back to the school where the entire drama unfolded.

Watch the leopard in Bengaluru school here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Leopard enters school in Bengaluru, tranquillized after 14-hour operation - Times of India ►

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BENGALURU: A young leopard entered a south-east Bengaluru elite school on Sunday and was tranquillized after a 14-hour long operation, during which it attacked two people. The security at Vibgyor High, Kundalahalli spotted the leopard entering the school around 4am and flashed the alert.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The hope for protecting the city's largest wetland - connecting Bellandur, Agara and Varthur lakes - that arose after censure from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) over construction of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) there - surely must be fading.

The latest report by the ENVIS Technical Committee - prepared by scientists of the Energy and Wetlands Research Group of the Indian Institute of Science - notes continuing degradation of the more than 400-hectare wetland, which includes the severely polluted Bellandur and Varthur lakes.

The report notes that since 2013 - when the last technical report was brought out - the storm water canal has narrowed by 1 metre (to 15 metres) at its narrowest point. Apart from this, nearly 74 acres of the SEZ has now been fully walled off while construction - which has not been stayed by the NGT's May 7 order - is in full swing.

With nearly 3.75 acres falling in the lake and the surrounding wetland, the report says that construction, excavation and dumping of debris is affecting the wetland.

"This fragile ecosystem needs to be conserved and brought back to its original form," says T.V. Ramachandra, researcher at the Wetlands Research Group.

An NGT-appointed expert committee was supposed to prepare a report on wetlands and lakes in the city. However, with the three-month time frame being a constraint, members said that they have studied only the Bellandur wetland so far.

The need to protect wetlands - which acts like a filtration system for lakes, a system successfully followed in Jakkur Lake - is unfortunately yet to percolate in the system, says Mr. Ramachandra. In past studies, the group noted that the prevailing laws - all of which are Central legislation - are "ineffective" and have a "fragmented approach", as they indirectly touch the subject of wetland protection.

C. Shivanna, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Lake Development Authority (LDA) said wetlands had not been defined as an entity separate from lakes. "We don't see much of a difference. All lakes should have a wetland, but the definitions revolve around the lake...In many cases, wetlands are in private areas and cannot be conserved," he said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The hope for protecting the city's largest wetland - connecting Bellandur, Agara and Varthur lakes - that arose after censure from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) over construction of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) there - surely must be fading.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bengaluru’s mounting garbage problem a burden on the city

# data[].attributes.subject
Bengaluru’s mounting garbage problem a burden on the city

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
bruhat bangalore mahanagara palike (bbmp)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bengaluru's mounting garbage problem a burden on the city

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bengaluru's mounting garbage problem a burden on the city - Since the garbage is being sent to landfill sites instead of waste processing units, the city's garbage woes are unending.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Flammable foam hits the streets of Bangalore after river has so much sewage pumped into it that it creates a toxic 'clouds' of bubbles

The foam comes from the vast and highly polluted Bellandur Lake

It is caused by ammonia, phosphate and low dissolved oxygen in the water

The white mixture has also been known to catch fire due to the grease in it

Bangalore residents have started up a Facebook page to save the lake

An invasion of toxic waste has floated on to the streets of Bangalore and while it looks like fresh snow there is nothing pleasant about this fluffy white cloud.

Toxic foam from the Indian city's giant Bellandur Lake was made after pollution in the lake was disrupted by rain showers.

Bellandur is highly polluted by a consistent flow of raw sewage and chemical waste which builds up and lays underneath the surface of its water.

The chemicals pumped into the lake include ammonia , phosphate and low dissolved oxygen which mix together and generate the foul foam.

Shockingly the mixture has also been known to ignite due to the detergents, grease and oil that can be found in it.

People in the city have become so concerned about the state of their lake that they have rallied together and set up a Facebook page in order to raise awareness.

Vishruth, who lives next to the lake, told the New Indian Express that the froth can rise up to a metre high on the city's roads.

He said: 'Every time it rains and the water flows, the froth raises and navigating this stretch becomes risky.

'Due to the froth, visibility is reduced and the area also smells bad. Cars and bikes that pass this area get covered with froth.'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A TOXIC foam invasion has hit the streets of Bangalore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The foam comes from the vast and highly polluted Bellandur Lake It is caused by ammonia, phosphate and low dissolved oxygen in the water The white mixture has also been known to catch fire due to the grease in it Bangalore residents have started up a Facebook page to save the lake An invasion of toxic waste has floated on to the streets of Bangalore and while it looks like fresh snow there is nothing pleasant about this fluffy white cloud.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu view the river as a mechanistic producer of water, not as a dynamic life-giving system that is responsive to local and global triggers of use and abuse.

Two days ago, a journalist asked me if the next World War will be over water. That question was triggered by the recent violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supposedly over Cauvery's waters. There is no doubt that water conflicts are set to increase and intensify. But it would be wrong to suggest that the hooligans that engaged in loot and arson on either side of the border were actually soldiers in any World War. I think they had no agenda beyond their love of violence and the sound of breaking glass.

That is not to say that there is no conflict over Cauvery's waters. The conflict is real, and has been since the princely Mysore state began seeking a role in determining how Cauvery's waters were to be shared. If anything, the conflict is only likely to worsen. This instance of violence may have brought out only the hooligans in our midst; the conflicts to come are likely to bring out the hooligan in each one of us.

The possibilities of a de-escalation of conflicts over Cauvery's water are remote given that two principal stakeholders - the River Cauvery and future generations - are not represented in all the negotiations in the tribunal and the Supreme Court. What is being referred to as a water-sharing formula is little more than a loot-sharing formula for divvying up the booty.
Some history
There is more than a century's history to the problem. From medieval times up until the mid-19th century, Tamil Nadu had undisputed access to Cauvery's waters. Early engineers from the Chola era onwards had carved out irrigation tanks, and diverted Cauvery waters through anicuts and canals to irrigate farmlands. Irrigated agriculture in the Cauvery delta was already well-developed centuries before the East India Company swung by Madras.

The upper riparian stretches of the Cauvery, notably the Mysore principality, were late starters in irrigated agriculture. When it did begin in the 19th century, attempts by the Mysore state to divert Cauvery water even with minor structures were viewed with suspicion and indignation by the lower riparian farmers in the then Madras Presidency. They feared a decrease in their own share of the river's waters. Citing historical use, delta farmers claimed prescriptive rights to the river's water.

The first two agreements, of 1892 and 1924, were aimed at ensuring that the upper riparian's right to develop its agriculture is not hindered by delta farmers, and that the latter's historical use is not infringed upon by the water users in Mysore.
Not about farmers
The bus-burning and stone-pelting in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu happens, they say, only during distress years when the two states vie to retain an adequate share of the meagre spoils from the river. Solidarity is quick to coalesce for the Tamils or Kannadigas depending on whose buses are being burnt that season.

Sadly, though, no one weeps for the Cauvery itself. Regardless of whether it is a distress year or a normal year for the people of the two states, every year is a distress year for the river. From Mercara to the Bay of Bengal, Cauvery's journey is fraught with danger and abuse. If stewardship were a pre-condition to enjoying the waters of the river, neither Tamil Nadu nor Karnataka would qualify for even a drop of the river's water. But stewardship is not on anyone's agenda.

It is surprising that after all that hot-blooded South Indians have done to their river, there is still a river left to fight over.

A casual reading of the Cauvery tribunal's 2007 award reveals how the river is viewed as a mechanistic producer of water, not as a dynamic life-giving system that is responsive to local and global triggers of use and abuse.

Demand for water within the basin has grown multi-fold. Simultaneously, degradation of catchments and sand mining have compromised the river's ability to sustainably produce water. The proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs is sick and calling for help. Everyone seems intent on squeezing out the last egg. What about trying to keep the goose alive?
What ails the goose
The Cauvery originates in the Brahmagiri ranges of the Western Ghats in Kodagu. High-range tributaries like Harangi, Suvarnavathi, Hemavathi, Lakshmanathirtha and Kabini join the Cauvery where the ghats flatten out to become the Mysore plateau. In the plateau, or maidan, the rivers Shimsha and Arkavathi join waters with the east flowing Cauvery. Arkavathi is fed by Vrishabhavathi, which drains half of Bengaluru.

In Tamil Nadu, Moyar, which joins Bhavani, Amaravathi and Orathar, which in turn adds to Noyyal, empty into the Cauvery. Kulithalai in Erode is about where the delta begins and the Akhanda Cauvery (or broad Cauvery) starts its slow plod to the sea through seven distributaries with beds of sand - Nandalar, Nattar, Vanjiyar, Noolar, Arasalar, Thirumalairajanar and Puravadaiyanar. (See here for an excellent account on the Cauvery network of rivers.)

The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed massive interventions in the river's hydrology. All major tributaries - Hemavathi, Kabini, Arkavathi, Amravathy, Bhavani - were dammed. New and large reservoirs like Krishnarajasagar, Bhavanisagar and Stanley Reservoir were created. Minor reservoirs over Orathar-Noyyal and Amaravathi came up. New areas were opened up for water-intensive cash crops in Mandya, Hassan, Erode, Salem and Coimbatore aided by canal- and borewell-based irrigation. And the reservoirs attracted water-intensive industries like flies to honey.

Physiographically, the river flows in three parts: the Western Ghats, the Mysore Plateau and the Delta.
The Ghats
The erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore had two natural landscapes - the malnad, or hill country, and the maidan, or the plateau. It is in the hills that South Indian coffee production took root in the 19th century. From being a peasant crop that was grown in every backyard, coffee became a hot commodity and a mixed plantation crop with the worldwide export of the beans grown in the shaded, stream fed forests of Kodagu gathering steam. Today, Kodagu coffee is grown by 42,000 families over 104,000 hectares. Early planters did alter the landscape but preferred the hardy, shade-giving native evergreens such as rosewood, wild fig and jackfruit. Unlike the tea estates that devastated the countryside, Kodagu coffee planters retained enough of the original habitat to nourish biodiversity and maintain the hydrology.

But that habitat has begun to change particularly rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century and then the 21st century. Responding to global market triggers, the area under coffee has expanded at the cost of forests within private landholdings, and agro-forestry lands under cardamom. An assessment by the Coffee Agro-forestry Network in Kodagu of forest-cover change between 1977 and 1997 indicated that it had declined by 28%, from 2,566 km ² to 1,841 km ². Medium elevation evergreen forest, which decreased by 35%, was the most depleted forest type according to the study.

Climate change too was triggering land-use change. Rainfall over the coffee-growing tracts of Kodagu has been erratic over the last three decades, reports environmental journalist Gopikrishna Warrier. CAFNet's study of 60 years of rainfall data from 116 coffee farms revealed that the rainy season had shrunk by 14 days over the last 35 years. Shade-grown coffee requires predictable blossom showers in the early months of the year. With rains becoming increasingly erratic, farmers are finding shade management tiresome; they are switching to irrigation, intensive open cultivation and substituting the native evergreen shade trees for the more exotic, fast-growing and remunerative Silver Oak.

CAFNet concludes that these changes "may affect ecosystem services like water supply, carbon storage and biodiversity."

High range forests are also being cut down for infrastructure development; this also will have a bearing on Cauvery's headwaters. In July 2014, the National Green Tribunal dismissed a petition by the Coorg Wildlife Society challenging a 55-km high-tension electricity transmission corridor that cut a swathe through the womb of the Cauvery in the Brahmagiri ranges. At least 20,000 evergreens were to be sacrificed just in the Brahmagiri and Pushpagiri ranges. The case was dismissed not on merits but on a technical ground that the petitioners did not show sufficient reason for condonation of delay in filing the petition within the period of statutory limitation.
The Mysore plateau and the Maidans
In 1934, construction of the Krishnarajasagar dam was completed; subsequently, reservoirs came up over Hemavathi, Yagachi, Harangi and Vattehole rivers. This led to the development of intensive irrigated agriculture in the Mandya and Hassan districts of Karnataka. The Cauvery basin reservoirs irrigate more than 100,000 hectares in Mandya and 47,000 hectares in Hassan district. With paddy, banana and sugarcane as key cash crops, the agriculture across the Cauvery basin is not just water-intensive but also fertiliser and pesticide intensive.

The assured supply of reservoir water irrespective of seasons also attracted water-intensive industries. The Nanjangud Industrial Area located on the banks of the Kabini houses 83 large, medium and small industries in a 532 acre plot 25 km from Mysore. Predictably, the Kabini leaves Nanjangud loaded with contaminants from the industrial area and domestic sewage.

The Mysore side of the river too has seen a spurt of water-intensive industries. A study by the Karnataka Engineering Research Station at Krishnarajasagara found that polluted wastewater from three industries -a paper mill, a distillery and a fertiliser manufacturer - had rendered stretches of Cauvery near the once-famed Ranganathittoo Bird Sanctuary "unsuitable for drinking, bathing and fish culture."

The once sacred Vrishabhavathi River that runs through south Bengaluru is now a carrier of sewage and industrial effluents from the Peenya Industrial Estate. The city has one of the highest rates of water wastage in the country. According to a 2013 study by the Bengaluru-based Institute of Social and Economic Change, the city wastes 48% of the 1,400 MLD water pumped to the city.

Bengaluru's rise from a sleepy little garrison town to an IT hub has destroyed everything that made the city a paradise. The city's water needs were once met by the large network of lakes, whose spillover would feed the Vrishabhavathi. From 261 in 1961, the number of lakes in this garden city has fallen to just 85 in 2016. Now, the city sends sewage to the Cauvery through the Vrishabhavathi, and pumps up water from the Cauvery 500 feet below.

A study by the Ashoka Trust for Environment and Ecology found high levels of toxic heavy metals, including nickel, copper, chromium and lead in soil and groundwater, and milk and vegetables from the nearby farms. The Vrishabhavathi Sewage Treatment plant that was designed to handle 180 MLD of raw sewage only receives 130 MLD. Of this, only 26 MLD arrives through underground sewers. The remainder is sewage and industrial effluents that flows in the river's course.

Paraphrasing the 1960s singer Tom Lehrer, what they flush out at breakfast in Bengaluru, we drink for dinner in Tamil Nadu. The Karnataka minor irrigation minister is reported to have revealed in the Assembly that more than 1,400 million litres of sewage is discharged daily into Tamil Nadu. That is nearly 20 TMC from one city in one year - three times the allocation for Pondicherry, and twice the allocation for 'environmental protection'.
Some plateau and the delta
Karnataka had only 316 km of the 800 km river to abuse. They have not done too badly, considering that most of it is in inaccessible, difficult-to-pollute hilly terrain. Tamil Nadu is blessed with 416 km of Cauvery, all in gently sloping ground and plains.

The Stanley reservoir, or Mettur dam, is the barometer of tension between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Within two years of the reservoir's construction, the first industry had come up based on water availability. Mettur Chemical and Industrial Corporation was set up in 1936. Within 15 years, it was already identified as a major polluter of the Cauvery and as the cause of mass fish mortality. Discharge of effluents into Cauvery from this company continued for several years after 2007, when the company's successor Chemplast Sanmar announced zero liquid discharge plans.

On one bank of the Stanley reservoir is a mountain of red mud - a toxic residue from years of alumina production by the Madras Aluminium Company, Ltd. Every passing rain washes a little of the poison into the reservoir.

As if that were not enough, tens of small- and medium-scale chemical industries in the SIDCO industrial estate continue to discharge their effluents through natural drains and engineered canals into the Cauvery. Beneath the reservoir, on the banks of the original river course, sits a 1,240-MW water-guzzling coal-fired thermal power plant operated by TANGEDCO. The Mettur Thermal Power Station has permission to draw 184 MLD (2 TMC annually) of river water. Coal ash from the plant is dumped up on a hill, from where it finds its way back to the river.

Roughly 45 km from here is where the Bhavani joins the Cauvery in Erode district. By the time it reaches the Cauvery, the Bhavani carries the effluents from dyeing industries, leather tanneries and pulp and paper mills - all heavy water-users and heavier polluters. The industrial town of Salem discharges about 35 MLD of untreated sewage into the Cauvery through the Thirumanimuthar. This sub-tributary was converted from a river to a concrete lined drain with money borrowed from the World Bank.

The Lower Bhavani river stretch receives about 38,000 cubic meters of effluents and wastewater from the industrial cluster around Mettupalayam town. Additionally, untreated sewage from Mettupalayam, Sathyamangalam, Gobichettipalayam and Bhavani are also discharged into the Bhavani. Pesticide-laden waters from the coffee and tea plantations of the Nilgiris contribute their bit to the Bhavani.

Further east, the Noyyal, with its notorious effluent-filled Orathupalayam dam, joins the Cauvery. This river, once a lifeline for farmers, is now biologically dead, killed by the exports of the dyeing and bleaching industries from western countries to the hosiery town of Tirupur on its banks. In 1980, there were just 26 bleaching and dyeing units in Tirupur. In 2001, there were 700.

Water withdrawals from the Noyyal sub-basin were 4.4 MLD in 1980; one study projected it to increase to more than 115 MLD in 2005. Growth, development and the pursuit of the good life depleted local water sources and polluted what remained. Now, Tirupur draws water from Bhavani's confluence with Cauvery, about 55 km away. A public-private partnership - the New Tirupur Area Development Corporation, Ltd. -was set up to supply 185 MLD (2 TMC) water of which 125 MLD was reserved for the textile industry. About 120 MLD of effluent is released in the basin.

All along the Cauvery's route, it picks up not just industrial effluents but also municipal solid waste and untreated or partially treated urban sewage.

The post-liberalisation construction boom has birthed a new mafia in Tamil Nadu: the sand mafia. Cubic metre for cubic metre, sand has proven to be even more valuable than water. From Kulithalai in Erode, where the Cauvery expands to a breadth of 1.5 km, the river bed is largely sand. The sand is a spongelike storehouse of freshwater that feeds riverside wells and keeps the farmers happy. About 60% of the state's sand requirement is met by sand mined from the Cauvery basin. Legal or illegal, the quantum of sand that is being removed has harmed the ability of the river to remain a river. And sand-mining operators are a ruthless lot with friends in the district administration, assembly and the police.
Root cause is demand
It is surprising that after all that hot-blooded South Indians have done to their river, there is still a river left to fight over.

The scale of abuse is evident. Yet, it has escaped the attention of the members of the tribunal and the Supreme Court. The complexity of river systems, the hydrological dynamics that determine their ebb and flow, and other anthropogenic confounders such as land-use change and climate change have had no influence on the tribunal order.

The 2007 award that was 16 years in the making is meaningless drivel. From its declaration that a "Normal year" will be a year in which the Cauvery yields 740 TMC to divvying up this yield with an arbitrary 10 TMC to spare for "environmental protection", the Tribunal's award exposes its hurry to deploy reductionist arithmetic hydrology rather than confront the confounding elephants in the room - ever-increasing demand, climate change and land-use change.

The inimitable Ramasamy Iyer says it best in his article already cited above:

Finally, interstate or inter-country river-water disputes often arise because the combined water demand of all the co-riparian states or countries exceeds the water that is there in the river in the lean season. The "development" that we have embarked on involves a heavy draft on natural resources as well as the infliction of heavy damage on those resources and on nature itself. In the context of water, this leads to inter-use, inter-sector, inter-area and interstate conflicts. There is ever a demand for more water and still more water; we are asking for water that does not exist. Unless we abandon this competitive, unsustainable demand for water, and learn to use prudently, effectively and harmoniously the water that is available, there will be no end to conflicts. The notions of "development" and "growth" that lead to that kind of demand need to be re-examined.

If tensions rise only in times of scarcity, it is the notion of scarcity and the scarcity itself that need to be addressed. Scarcity is a function of demand and supply. It can be reduced by increasing supply and reducing demand. In the case of the Cauvery, the same policies that increase demand (and trigger growth) - construction boom, infrastructure development, intensification of agriculture - also harm the river system and its ability to produce and carry water. For the Cauvery, and most of India's rivers, available supplies can be enhanced by preventing pollution and safeguarding the river's catchments, banks and riverbeds. Replacing water-intensive agriculture and industrial practices can free up more water than we currently need. Rather than find new uses for it, this water should be reserved for the river. The 10 TMC of water allocated for "environmental protection" by the tribunal is meaningless considering that just one city - Bengaluru - dumps 20 TMC sewage into the Cauvery.

Today's planners try to spare water for ecological flows, not realising that ecological flows are what keep the river a river.

Nityanand Jayaraman is a Chennai-based writer and social activist.

Categories: Environment

Tagged as: Cauvery River, Chemplast, climate change, coffee plantations, ecological flows, Harangi, Hemavathi, hydrology, Kabini, Karnataka, Kodagu, Krishnarajasagar dam, Lakshmanathirtha, MALCO, Mettur dam, Moyar, Nityanand Jayaraman, Noyyal, Orathar, Orathupalayam dam, sand mafia, Sand Mining, silver oak, Stanley Reservoir, Suvarnavathi, Tamil Nadu, untreated sewage, urban sewage, Western Ghats, Yagachi Vattehole

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Soon, We May Not Have a Cauvery River to Fight Over

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Two days ago, a journalist asked me if the next World War will be over water. That question was triggered by the recent violence in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu supposedly over Cauvery's waters. There is no doubt that water conflicts are set to increase and intensify.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The work on rejuvenating a lake at Doddabommasandra in north Bengaluru has itself become a serious threat to the waterbody.

The contractor dredging the lake - spread over 50 hectares - has dumped silt on the adjoining 2.5-acre wetland, resulting in irreparable damage to it.

According to Doddabommasandra residents, the contractor has even levelled the area using road rollers. Such damage to the wetland will also affect the water flow into the lake, even after it is rejuvenated, according to environmentalists.

The destruction of the wetland has triggered a citizens' campaign, including a petition in change.org, to save it from encroachment. Initially, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials had claimed that it was a temporary measure to accommodate earthmovers on the lakebed so that they could take up dredging.

Park, open-air gym

"But when I confronted the local councillor, he claimed that the area was being filled up and levelled to develop a park and set up an open-air gym," said Madhuri Subbarao, a local resident leading the campaign to save the wetland around the lake.

Such facilities are not part of the detailed project report (DPR), and this has lead to allegations of encroachment.

Residents then approached the BBMP Lakes Division, which is overseeing the rejuvenation project; and after visiting the site, officials confirmed that the dumping of silt on wetland was illegal. The contractor was directed to remove the silt, but the work has not yet started. This has only raised fears of lobbies trying to encroach the wetland, residents said.

"Following my complaint to Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force (BMTF), the tahsildar and officials from Karnataka Lake Conservation and Development Authority visited the lake for an inspection. We will fight till the wetland is cleared of the silt and restored," Ms. Subbarao said.

Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation, and a long-time resident of Vidyaranyapura, said the BBMP should come out with the DPR and be more transparent. "It's ironic that the restoration work has itself threatened the lake today," he said.

Though the damage to the wetland is not completely irreversible, it will take multiple monsoons to restore its topography, that too if the silt is scientifically cleared. "It will take at least five monsoons for the undulations and ridges of the wetland to come to a certain stage of normality. To restore its character as a habitat for flora and fauna would take even more time," said Kshitij Urs of Peoples Campaign for Right to Water.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When rejuvenation project almost destroys a lake

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The work on rejuvenating a lake at Doddabommasandra in north Bengaluru has itself become a serious threat to the waterbody. The contractor dredging the lake - spread over 50 hectares - has dumped silt on the adjoining 2.5-acre wetland, resulting in irreparable damage to it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The city of Bangalore (or Bengaluru), in the Indian state of Karnataka, is known as the Silicon Valley of India. Some of India's brightest tech minds go to unwind near the city's Ulsoor lake via picnics and boating. But this past Monday, there was an alarming scene that was anything but relaxing: thousands of dead fish floating on the shores of the Ulsoor lake in a massive die-off. According to locals, there isn't anything fishy about the scene-they know the problems and they're demanding that local authorities fix them now.
Bangalore's Toxic Lakes
The Ulsoor Lake Welfare society president weighed in on the environmental tragedy and explained the disaster as: "The entire sewage has got into the lake and oxygen levels have depleted, as a result of which fish have died," reports The Indian Express. But there's more to the story.

According to locals, the dam that kept toxic sewage water from flowing into the lake has been broken for two whole years. Like one resident tells The Indian Express, "We are not surprised...we have been warning authorities from the last two years..sewage water is getting mixed with the lake water due to a breach in a bund." You'd think that India's greatest IT minds could fix a broken dam, but it hasn't happened in two years.

TV Ramachandra, professor at Bengaluru's Indian Institute of Science, explains to Mashable how the thousands of fish died: "This occurred because of a high amount of organic content in the lake due to untreated sewage. With temperatures rising in the city, there is more biological activity and a reduction of oxygen levels in the water, which caused the deaths."

The professor is quick to add that stagnant lake water is also a factor, as Professor Ramachandra tells Mashable, "Bengaluru's lakes were originally inter-connected. Since all the channels have now been blocked, Ulsoor is a stagnant water body." You see, at one point, Bangalore was rich in lakes and water bodies that were all connected-at its peak, there were 280-285 lakes. Today, because of rampant encroachment, there are more like 17-20 lakes.

Many of these lakes are just as-if not more-toxic than Ulsoor lake. For instance, last year, Bangalore lake made headlines when its toxic foam, which looks like a snowy froth but is filled with chemicals and sewage that stink and irritate the skin- caught on fire...twice. As you'd imagine, this isn't the first massive die-off in the city.

And it won't be the last unless local authorities do something. Sadly, the only plans that the local government announced last year was to build a floating restaurant on Ulsoor lake (priorities, you know), which will probably "further damage the lake's ecological balance," says Mashable.
Take Action!
No matter how nice a floating restaurant is, thousands of dead fish will make any meal unappetizing. Local officials need to get their priorities straight (e.g. fixing a broken dam). Sign and share this petition urging the government of Karnataka to clean up the city's toxic lakes for people and the planet.
Photo Credit: Hobvias Sudoneighm

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Pollution Linked To Fish Die-Off In Bangalore's Ulsoor Lake | Care2 Causes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The city of Bangalore (or Bengaluru), in the Indian state of Karnataka, is known as the Silicon Valley of India. Some of India's brightest tech minds go to unwind near the city's Ulsoor lake via picnics and boating.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every year, the morning after Anant Chaturdashi, Mumbai lies comatose, finally.

After ten days of immoderate celebration welcoming, worshipping and bidding farewell to the beloved elephant-headed Ganesha; after ten days of fervent piousness and excess, the coastline of Mumbai looks battle-struck. Tens of thousands abandoned, suddenly unloved idols of Lord Ganesha decay in a sludge of flowers, incense, coconuts, leaves, stones, clay, jute, bamboo, clothes and food is strewn on the roads in tight plastic bags and otherwise, with a cloud of mosquitoes and flies swarming above it. There are no waves at some beach fronts; a black barrier of stagnant muck lines the shores.

And, if the aesthetic does not shock singly, there are always facts.

This year, in Mumbai alone, 2.25 lakh idols of Lord Ganesha will be immersed between 5-15 September. This includes 250 'big idols' in what can only be called an understatement. Weighing a few tonnes, these idols stand at anywhere between 20-30 feet on an average with elaborate sets and thrones replicating temples and Bollywood scenes, inside massive community pandals , while the smaller household and locality idols can be found in pretty much any size, shape or form. On 9 September alone, 17,696 idols were immersed in Mumbai.

What happens to these fallen Gods, when the celebrations are over and the guests have all gone home? Turns out, these mass-produced, intensely commercialised statues are made months in advance by thousands of murtikars - each in its own right - using Plaster of Paris (PoP), an industrial material used in packaging. It's cheap, easily accessible and works just fine, especially for larger idols.

Here's the trouble: PoP when mixed with water, changes to gypsum - a soft, white, mucky substance - which breaks down painstakingly slowly over up to 17 years, increasing the quantity of both, floating and suspended particulate matter in the water and thereby, its hardness.

Not only did we shift from carefully made miniature Ganesha idols of mud and clay to exhibitionist, ever-expanding statues made of PoP, we also shifted from using organic dyes for colour to using lead and arsenic-based metallic paints. Again, cheaper (on a large scale), easily accessible and in this case, shinier.

These bright, synthetic colours contain heavy metals like lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, zinc oxide and chromium which lead to a decrease in biochemical compounds like oxygen, carbon dioxide, proteins, and lipids in the water, effectively decreasing the life-carrying capacity of water. The brighter the colour (red, blue, orange, green), the higher the toxicity.

And, then there's the oil, grease and polish used to add that extra Godly factor to the idols.

If the trouble seems too far removed - as environmental concerns usually do - consider this: the heavy metals in these paints are bioaccumulative. Once they are inside marine life forms such as fish (those that survive), they pass up the food chain until they end up in the food we eat. They are also neurotoxic and nephrotoxic; ingestion, inhalation or contact with eyes and skin can lead to damages to the nervous and renal system.

To ask a believer if all this is worth the proportionally exponential damage it does to the very ecosystem that nurtures and preserves us - whether God exists, or not - is to tread a fine line between engaging in discourse and trespassing into the domain of personal choice. However, it doesn't take a skeptic to see the very real, tangible environmental destruction that this religious festival asks for from its followers in its current avatar.

In 2010, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) woke up to the rising crescendo of alarm bells of environmental damage caused during and after Ganesh Chaturthi across India, particularly in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. It issued 'guidelines' for immersion of idols which if implemented, could actually improve the situation drastically.

These include earmarking and cordoning off certain ponds and lakes for immersion and notifying the public; constructing artificial tanks with removable synthetic liners to catch and dispose off all waste suitably; encouraging the use of clay over PoP, herbal colors over chemical ones; cleanliness drives after every immersion day within 48 hours to prevent seepage into the soil and the creation of an annual coordination committee by state PCBs consisting of the police, NGOs and members of religious groups.

Six years later, the CPCB guidelines remain what they are: guidelines. There are no requirements and no penalties. Giving the sensitive socio-political basis of Ganesh Chaturthi, especially the immersion process, it is not surprising that the state refrained from imposing any legal basis to its guidelines.

The state's estimation of the religious force of the celebration is correct. Following the CPCB's guidelines, Gujarat banned the use of PoP in making idols, asking murtikars to use "natural materials as described in the holy scripts". A large group of idol makers challenged the ban in front of the National Green Tribunal which found in their favour. Recently, Karnataka has banned the sale of idols made of PoP. A recent survey by Bangalore's Mahanagar Palika, KPCB and idol-makers found 30,000 PoP idols circulating in the city, with more than 70,000 on sale in the state this year.

If the scale and sentiments of the celebrations are too big for the state to meddle with, the environmental repercussions outweigh them comprehensibly- and urgently. To let this ritual grow out of control - as it seems to, with each passing year - for the fear of a two-penny religious backlash these days, only more damage will be done to our waters; the same water which ironically symbolises a returning to the sacred elements and the journey of Lord Ganesha to his heavenly abode, Kailasha, along with all our misfortunes.

(The Quint is now available on Telegram and WhatsApp. For handpicked stories every day, subscribe to our Telegram and WhatsApp channels)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
God, Faith and Bullshit: What Happens When The Revelry Is Over

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Every year, the morning after Anant Chaturdashi, Mumbai lies comatose, finally. After ten days of immoderate celebration welcoming, worshipping and bidding farewell to the beloved elephant-headed Ganesha; after ten days of fervent piousness and excess, the coastline of Mumbai looks battle-struck.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
HYDERABAD: Bats have been taking to the skies in the middle of the day in a worrying sign that has been attributed to the systematic destruction of their habitat. With many denizens sharing bat sightings in the day on social media, experts warn that a change in behavioural patterns of these nocturnal mammals is an indication of a larger crisis.
"With the government pulling down trees mercilessly, these flying foxes are on the lookout for a safe haven," C Srinivasulu, faculty member at the department of zoology, Osmania University, told TOI, while highlighting why bats have been spotted flying in the day.

He said, "The city has thousands of insectivorous bats, hesitating to come out during the night. The lack of green cover has left them vulnerable to larger predators, especially in the case of fruit bats. Which is why they might be choosing to come out during the mid-afternoon or early evening hours."

Over the last 20 years the city's tree cover fell from 2.71 per cent to 1.66 per cent and it is expected to slip to 1.84 per cent of the city's area by the year 2024, statistics with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation's urban biodiversity wing reveal. The impact of such a drastic reduction in green cover is being felt on bats, among many other species.

Not only has the shrinking green cover robbed bats of their habitat, but they are also finding it difficult to forage for food for themselves, Srinivasulu said.

Experts say bats are also escaping upscale parts of the city because of the amount of artifi cial lighting in these areas. According to an ongoing study that is being taken up by the faculty at the Osmania University, many of these winged mammals, have shifted base from places such as Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Masab Tank and Tolichowki, to much quieter and serene environs of the suburbs such as Bowenpally, Tirumalgherry, Army Ordnance Corps area and R K Puram, to name a few.

"With most of their canopy cover diminishing, these bats are left with no place to go, which is why they are shifting base. Earlier, one could spot fruit bats in almost every ficus and jamun tree in the city. But now these have been replaced by gulmohars or have been removed completely. The bats have therefore migrated to areas with moderate greenery," said Ananda Banerjee, an ornithologist and author of Common Birds of the Indian Subcontinent.

In an alarming suggestion ornithologists say that roughly 60 per cent of bats may be moving away from their nocturnal habits. Monitoring this anomaly, they say more bats can be seen out in the day instead of hunting at night.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bats seen in the day? Experts blame habitat loss - Times of India

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
HYDERABAD: Bats have been taking to the skies in the middle of the day in a worrying sign that has been attributed to the systematic destruction of their habitat.

# data[].attributes.headline
Habitat destruction makes rare birds rarer

# data[].attributes.subject
Habitat destruction makes rare birds rarer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
international union for the conservation of nature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bangalore: Habitat destruction makes rare birds rarer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bangalore: Habitat destruction makes rare birds rarer - Development is taking its toll on birds, and it is getting worse every year. Fifteen bird species that are found in India have been declared 'Critically Endangered' in the just released IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Editor's note: This story was first published on September 13, 2015. HT is republishing it following an incident in Bangalore where a leopard strayed into a school
Sunday's leopard incident in Bengaluru has brought the endangered spotted feline back in the spotlight. The animal entered a school premises and attacked half a dozen people as it attempted to escape. It was finally captured after being shot with two tranquillizer darts.
Read more: Captured in pics: When a leopard strolled into a Bengaluru school
A couple of similar incidents have already been reported this year, adding to a growing list of man-animal conflicts, a cause for concern for environmentalists and those in prone areas. The species, which is endangered, is losing its habitat as urban boundaries grow and is likely to come more in contact with humans.

The country's first-ever leopard census was in fact conducted last year to help monitor the animal. The numbers revealed both good and bad news. The good news was that the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) estimated there are 12,000 to 14,000 in the wild - a very healthy number for the endangered spotted big cats. The bad news was that almost half live outside protected areas and are vulnerable to conflict with people.

The damage this is doing to their numbers is borne out by data collected by the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), which stated that 299 leopards had been killed by September; and 329 were killed in 2014. The highest number of deaths was reported in Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

The first-of-its-kind survey by the Dehradun-based WII collected data on leopards while conducting the tiger census in 2014 - the tiger population, incidentally, is at an estimated 2,226, a 30% increase from 2010. Using the same methodology of double sampling - camera traps and scat DNA analysis - and extrapolation, the WII arrived at a leopard population of 7,872 in five landscapes, including the Gangetic plains, central India and the Western and Eastern Ghats. While camera traps covered 9,735 locations across the five major tiger landscapes - spread across 350,000 sq km -- a total of 10,000 surveyors also walked a combined 459,096 sq km across 18 states to gather data. Areas left out include Gujarat, West Bengal, the eight states of the north-east, and the higher reaches of Uttarakhand. "The leopard data gathered in the tiger habitats was extrapolated to arrive at an estimated national leopard population, on the basis of prey populations, the ratio of spotted cats to tigers, and other factors," says YV Jhala, senior biologist with the WII.

Typically, there are five leopards for every tiger in the wild. As with the tiger census, there has been some debate among wildlife experts over the methodology used in the leopard count, and the accuracy of the extrapolation. "The methodology of extrapolation using linear regression is fundamentally flawed and the results are not dependable as the methodology fails to take into account other extraneous factors that impact animal population," says biologist K Ullas Karanth, Padma Shri awardee and director of the Bengaluru-based Wildlife Conservation Society. "Even within the tiger survey region, the basic methodology employed by the WII was flawed statistically. For this reason, I do not think the tiger and leopard numbers it generates for larger landscapes are reliable."

While senior WII biologists Qamar Qureshi and Jhala dispute this claim, PR Sinha, former director of WII and India representative of global wildlife monitoring body International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), vouched for data collected but not the final inference. "To me, the data collected through a long process of field surveys is robust. Scientists can differ on the final statistical inference," says the biologist who introduced the methodology for tiger estimation in India in 2006. Karanth and WII scientists agree on one point - the actual number of leopards in the wild could be much higher, since the survey was restricted to tiger landscapes, which cover just 6% of the country's wildlife areas. "Even presence-absence estimations are vital for conservation strategy, adds Bittu Sahgal, editor of wildlife magazine Sanctuary Asia.
Buffer zone turns conflict zone
The concern being raised now is whether India has a plan to manage these numbers in light of the country's degrading wildlife habitats. Sinha calls this a major worry because the leopard's prey base is extremely poor. The WII survey has revealed that the small wild animals that are the prey for leopards in non-protected areas are in distress because of human encroachment and degradation of forests. As a result, leopards are forced to enter human habitats looking for food and water, especially during summer months. This has been in evidence from Mumbai to Meerut, where scores of leopards have been caught after they ventured into residential areas, some of them killed, others trapped, still others rescued from wells. "The fact is, leopards are more adaptable and therefore able to live in closer proximity to humans, often without people even knowing they are around," Sahgal says. This proximity is becoming increasingly fatal, with the monthly death rate for leopards this year rising to 37, from 27 in 2014. The WII exercise could lead to a better protection and leopard management strategy, since we now know the forest locations with large leopard populations, Sinha says. For that to happen, there will have to be a will among foresters to protect the vulnerable animals, adds Sahgal. "The more natural forests we destroy, the quicker we will push these animals towards extinction."

As the buffer zones have shrunk over the past decade, under the influence of human activity, prey populations have fallen and wild animals have been forced to forage further afield. Here, they are increasingly running into people, fields, wells and construction projects. The impact is clearly visible in the number of casualties - 769 humans, 179 elephants and 110 tigers have been killed around wildlife zones between 2012 and 2014, according to data released by the government. This is about five times the number of these animals killed by poachers during this period.

"It is the rising human population in many of these green corridors that is causing the rise in conflict," says Dipankar Ghose, director of species and landscapes with the advocacy group World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature. The quality of buffer zones is an area of concern and the prey population is not sustainable for the large populations of wildlife residing outside the protected areas, adds a biologist with WII.

About half of the 12,000 to 14,000 leopards in the country, a third of India's 2,226 tigers, and 60% of its 29,000 wild elephants live in the buffer zones outside national parks and sanctuaries. Studies in states with a high density of wildlife, such as Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Assam, show that new conflict zones have been created in such areas over the past decade. The government's response has, in many cases, been counterproductive. Sensing that protecting wild animals will not fetch votes, the environment ministry earlier this year authorised state governments to declare wild animals vermin if they pose a threat to farms.

The vermin tag means that these species can then be hunted or eliminated until their numbers are sufficiently reduced. In a fresh advisory, the ministry recently added that forest departments can allow "elimination" of animals responsible for "habitual crop raiding"... "in rarest of rare cases". 'Rarest of rare' has not been defined. While these options do not apply to endangered species such as the tiger, leopard and elephant, they help explain why prey populations are dwindling in buffer zones, forcing the endangered species into conflict with humans.
Watch | Stray leopard sneaks into Bengaluru school
The union ministry has also asked state governments to adopt Gujarat's volunteer programme to rope in civilians to help protect human habitats from wild animals. In Gujarat, the scheme was used to protect lions in and around the Gir National Park. Experts say people living around Gir have traditionally protected lions, but most of those in tiger and elephant conflict zones will most likely not have the same approach. The truth is, it will be difficult to prevent the conflict unless governments - state and centre - begin to work to fix the root of the problem: protecting and revitalising buffer zones and restoring crucial wildlife corridors between protected areas. The WII study will likely reiterate why this is crucial. It is the government's response that might fall short. Its latest measure, for instance, has been to open up degraded forests to 'private management', a move that wildlife experts say could destroy complex ecosystems altogether.

First Published: Feb 08, 2016 10:18 IST

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In defence of the Bengaluru leopard: Why big cats are entering cities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Editor's note: This story was first published on September 13, 2015. HT is republishing it following an incident in Bangalore where a leopard strayed into a school Sunday's leopard incident in Bengaluru has brought the endangered spotted feline back in the spotlight.

# data[].attributes.headline
7 reasons why there has been a reduction in wildlife@bangalore

# data[].attributes.subject
7 reasons why there has been a reduction in wildlife@bangalore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
To all those who insist on going ahead with the steel bridge... in the hope that good sense prevails:

The issue regarding this bridge is becoming more heated as the days go by. As I see it, the matter will get uglier as both sides have their view points and arguments in place. So the best way to resolve this is to throw up all the pros and cons and see which comes out on top!

The bridge will cut the journey to the airport and from North to South by 20-30mins... one for the pros.

But that is only during rush hours!

I live at Jayamahal, and it sometimes takes me 45-55 minutes to get to MG Road during peak traffic time. Queens Road alone, which is just 1 km long, can take 20-30minutes! Indiranagar 100 feet Road from CMH Road to the Old Airport Road can take 30mins during the same rush hours. Do you plan to build steel bridges there too? If you do then you will get people reaching the next road very quickly but that road will then turn into a car trap! In the same way, building the bridge as planned will create an even worse bottleneck further down at the Hebbal Flyover which is anyway always jammed and that will negate any time you plan to save.

But here are some other points that have obviously not been considered... or maybe they have, but have just been ignored.

1. To build any bridge in the middle of the city would mean boring very deep into the ground. It is common knowledge that there are no proper plans of where water and sewage pipes and electric cables run. Each disruption can add 2-6 months to the completion of the project. Do you still stand guarantee for the cost and time frame for completion?

2. You say that 800 trees will be cut but you will replace them with 10,00,000 trees! Where will these trees be planted? They can only be planted outside the city. These saplings, if given the chance to grow, will take at least 12-15 years to grow. Bangalore is known famously as the "Garden City"... the Ministry of Tourism advertises it as such. But sadly, this will be no more. Our heritage will be lost forever. How do you plan to restore that?

Besides, plants need a plentiful supply of water to grow until they catch root. Unfortunately, water is one commodity we don't have.

3. But I say that there will be many more than 800 trees that will have to be brought down... alongwith lamp posts, traffic lights, internet and TV cables, phone lines, traffic islands and even some private structures just to bring the large sections of steel into the city. Our roads have not been built to take the burden of super large trucks carrying extra heavy loads... they will be totally pot-holed and demolished! If iron sections are being brought in from Sankey Road, the Windsor Manor Bridge is too low and will have to be brought down. If the trucks need to go over any flyover, it will either come down with the load or get very weak and will need major repairs. Have you budgeted to put all this infrastructure back in place?

4. Then there is the dilemma of where these huge sections of steel will be stored. I can only imagine that plans for further destruction of Palace Grounds, Cubbon Park, the Race Course and/or the Golf Course have already been drawn up!

5. Let's just say that the bridge does come up... there will be equal or more traffic under it than on it. By sinking huge support girders into the road below you would have reduced the size of the motorable road below! This will lead to terrible traffic jams under the bridge, thus increasing the pollution and smog levels. Add to this the lack of airflow and the heat radiated by steel above. It will be at least a serious health hazard, if not a death trap!

6. During peak traffic hour there are two main points of constriction on the Airport Road. One is the Hebbal Flyover and the other is the long queues that form at the toll booths. From what I've read, you wish to charge a toll to recover the cost of this structure. This will cause traffic jams on the bridge. Does that not defeat the very purpose of building this bridge??!

7. Here is an example that you should consider... Each year New York City spends an average of US$5 Million on maintaining each of its 1-2km long steel bridges in the interest of public safety. Every 10 years each bridge is closed for safety inspections and overhaul. The cost of this is about US$20-50 Million. The Manhattan Bridge had been relatively neglected and when it was 70 years old they shut it down to replace weak sections, worn out welds and lose bolts. They estimated the timeframe to be 3-5 years and a cost of US$300 Million. The job took over 10 years and cost US $752 Million to complete. Has this contingency been taken into account at all?

Incidentally, the cost of repair as I've mentioned was in 2003!! Today it would probably cost twice as much.

8. Consider an accident on the bridge at 15-20 meters above the ground level. On a normal road all we are capable of doing is moving the vehicle off the road till the police arrives. I wonder if you realize that moving a car off the road can be quite a long drop from a bridge!! We have yet to teach drivers what to do when they hear a siren! Are there any plans, or more importantly funds, to maintain a permanent emergency team on site??!

9. Article in DNA (Mumbai). 3 June, 2016.
Conceived in the year 2000, the plan to have a 4.1km bridge in Peddar Road from Girgaum Chowpatty to Haji Ali Junction has witnessed various flip-flops and stiff opposition from the residents, including Indian Nightingale Lata Mangeshkar, with the state aggressively trying to execute the project. Owing to the opposition and subsequent protests by locals, the cost of the project had risen from Rs160 crore in 2009 to Rs 380 crore till the last assessment.
Moral: It helps to listen to the voice of reason... especially when volumes are so high.

10. One big question arises from the article above. If the Mumbai project was to cost even Rs 400 crore for 4km... that is Rs100 crore per km. How, or why, is this bridge going to cost Rs 1,800 crore?? That's three times the cost!!

So now weigh the pros and the cons... There are some who are pros at being cons and will argue till the cows come home, but the rational, level headed people amongst you will agree that there's more that can be done with ₹1,800 crores. We have many brilliant engineers, town planners, architects, etc. in Bangalore. Why not listen to what they have to say? This is not just about trees anymore... It is to do with the future of a heritage city that is on the verge of destruction, the sight of which will make its original planners cry!

There may be a lot we desire... but how much do we stand to lose in the bargain??! What we lose today, we will never be able to regain... EVER!

Please allow more time to find a proper solution to the traffic problem. Be more inclusive and allow more qualified minds to come together. The few immediate solutions that I, in my humble capacity, can think of are:

1. Instill a sense of lane discipline by empowering the traffic police to fulfill their duties. Especially for autos, taxis and two-wheelers. This will ease a lot of the stress.

2. Widen the Hebbal flyover.

3. Re-audit the cost incurred in building the Airport Road and do away with the toll booth. It's probably fully paid for by now!!

4. As much as possible, plan flights for the early morning or late evening. They are very convenient!!

5. But best of all... if going to the airport, leave 30-45mins earlier than usual!!

Please say NO to the STEEL BRIDGE!!
The opinions expressed here are author's own. Citizen Matters as a news analysis website, makes an attempt to present all sides of the issue, but does not endorse or reject them.
Related Articles
BDA keeps steel flyover on hold after drawing flak from citizens
Steel Flyover issue: Is Bengaluru's Civil Society scoring self goals?
Steel flyover debate: Let a plan drive the city transport
BDA steel flyover tender documents
Open letter to BBPAG members on steel flyover
BDA botches up the steel flyover issue by hiding information
BDA steel flyover Detailed Project Report, traffic simulation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is it going to be only 812 trees? Think again! |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The steel flyover will pass through this road. Pic: Shree D N To all those who insist on going ahead with the steel bridge... in the hope that good sense prevails: The issue regarding this bridge is becoming more heated as the days go by.

# data[].attributes.headline
Kodagu’s dwindling green cover and its impact on Cauvery

# data[].attributes.subject
Kodagu’s dwindling green cover and its impact on Cauvery

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How pollution is taking its toll on Bangalore's traffic policemen

# data[].attributes.headline
India air pollution: The air in Bangalore is dangerously dirty

# data[].attributes.subject
India air pollution: The air in Bangalore is dangerously dirty

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The initiative is actually being rolled out, but there a couple of noteworthy issues with the data being produced.

For one, the government said all cities covered under the NAQI should have at least 6 monitoring stations, but it's nearly six months later and Delhi's the only place meeting that target.

Bangalore, for instance, has just 3 stations capable of putting NAQI data online.

And for two, among Delhi's 10 monitoring stations only 2 are giving real time data - on the 21st of September 4 of them were providing day-old data, 1 was offering data from 2 days earlier, and 3 had figures from months ago.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
India air pollution: The air in Bangalore is dangerously dirty

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The initiative is actually being rolled out, but there a couple of noteworthy issues with the data being produced. For one, the government said all cities covered under the NAQI should have at least 6 monitoring stations, but it's nearly six months later and Delhi's the only place meeting that target.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Estimation of perceptions about pollution in Bangalore. Result of surveys about air pollution, water pollution, greens and parks satisfaction, light and noise pollution, etc.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bangalore ranks second in the list of cities with highest air pollution levels in India

# data[].attributes.subject
Bangalore ranks second in the list of cities with highest air pollution levels in India

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bangalore ranks second in the list of cities with highest air pollution levels in India

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bangalore ranks second in the list of cities with highest air pollution levels in India - As per the survey conducted by Breathe Blue'15, the Garden City has 14% of school-going children suffering because of air pollution.

# data[].attributes.headline
Experts speak out against BDA's steel flyover

# data[].attributes.subject
Experts speak out against BDA's steel flyover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As the government and Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) are keen on going ahead with construction of the 6.9 km steel flyover, there are many voices against it. They opine that the flyover is not the solution as it will shift the problem from one point to another.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Ashish Verma, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering and Associate Faculty at Centre for infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning, IISc, said any large scale infrastructure project like road widening, grade separators (flyovers/ underpasses) are generally short-term solutions and only help in shifting the point of congestion from one place to other rather than eliminating the congestion.

They should be undertaken only after a good planning and after a clear understanding of its implications on overall present and future mobility within the city. This is important because implementing such projects involves huge financial burden at the cost of public money as well as very high social, environmental and economic impacts.

Besides these, such projects also make substantial impact on overall aesthetics and living environment of the city. Often, those living close to such project locations (especially, flyovers and underpasses) are not the beneficiaries rather they are the recipients of all negative impacts like, increase in air and noise pollution, loss of accessibility and loss of aesthetics. Such project cannot be justified where space is a constraint, he added.

G Ramesh, Associate Professor, Centre for Public Policy, IIMB, was keen to know the opinion of the advisory committee and policy makers on the design and need. Railway or Metro connectivity should have been provided at the time when the airport was constructed. Now with all these projects, they are preemiting Metro. The government's planning has been just catching up for the last 20 years and not for 20 years ahead. Instead of improving public transport, government is going the American way of putting all this on road, he said.

Bangalore Political Action Committee Vice President T V Mohandas Pai said the flyover will only shift congestion from one place to another and will mess up the Central Business District (CBD) area. There is a need for networked traffic across the city through elevated corridors connecting the four sides.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
construction of the 6.9 km steel flyover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Experts speak out against BDA's steel flyover

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the government and Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) are keen on going ahead with construction of the 6.9 km steel flyover, there are many voices against it. They opine that the flyover is not the solution as it will shift the problem from one point to another.

# data[].attributes.headline
Climate change in Bengaluru - Lessons to be learnt

# data[].attributes.subject
Climate change in Bengaluru - Lessons to be learnt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
, 27 May 2016 , Citizen Matters

The rocky plateau of Bengaluru was originally a combination of grassland and scrub and thorn forest, with small trees. We don't know have a historical record of the original climate. But was it likely to have been warm and dry, just like the other districts nearby, namely Kolar and Chikballapur, possibly receiving only about 300-400mm of rain, with the temperatures somewhere in the mid-thirties? We don't know, but that's just a wild guess.

Bengaluru's first man-made climate change

Though the city originally had a few tanks as water sources, around which settlements were built, those who ruled Bangalore, including Cholas and Hoysalas, created the tank culture and lake chains to help the growing population with water, thereby also cooling the city.

Did Bengaluru always have trees? The available images from 18th century show very few trees. It is said that the historical archives talk about a massive afforestation drive in mid-18th century because the city was heating up. Hence it can be safely said that there were two different climates were created in Bengaluru, by man.

In 1537, it is said that Kempe Gauda I started to work on his dream - a new fortified city. A regular dream - ambitious ruling class members always dream of expanding territory, erecting victory towers, building a walled city by a river or port. But Kempe Gauda's vision was difficult: to build a city from the scratch. To achieve his dream he had to first create all the resources the city would need.

Lakes as the foundation

A city cannot exist without water, and Bengaluru did not have a river. Kempe Gauda started on his vision by creating a supply of water, a perennial supply.

Kempe Gauda and successors continued to build on this vision. Hundreds of more tanks were built and an incredible network of kaluves (canals) was built to connect them all. Work on this design followed for generations of rulers; the Wodeyars in the last century continued to build kaluves and tanks and a couple of lakes were even added by influential citizens and farming communities. It was India's famous tank culture on steroids. The lakes of Bengaluru have always attracted attention, but it is the kaluves that make them work. Over 800 kilometers of these lake-connectors ensured that not a drop of rain left Bengaluru's three valleys until all tanks were filled.

A water culture was created. Everyone knows water is life, but to conserve and protect it became Bengaluru's religion. For centuries the lakes remained pure and one could drink from them because nobody would let any waste enter the lake system.

But the problem shifted from water storage to water itself - there was not enough rain to satiate a growing population.

The world's first air-conditioned city

How can we attract rain? Kempe Gauda and his successors knew that if Bengaluru grew a forest, it would rain.

And so a major investment into tree planting was made. It was an activity that continued for centuries. As the forest grew, its breath became bigger and started influencing the climate. The water released from the trees as transpiration and from the lakes as evaporation formed low-lying clouds and then came down as gentle showers.

The temperature dropped. Bengaluru became the coolest city in the south and later the coolest in the summer across India.

This attracted more rain from the monsoons that earlier would pass by without interest. Now the monsoon clouds, lightened after crossing the western ghats, dipped lower due to the cooler climate and shed some more of their weight - rainfall more than doubled.

The world's first fully air-conditioned city was born. This AC needed no energy and was almost zero maintenance.

The problem of water scarcity was solved. The Vrishabhāvati started flowing out of the city perenially. Other side-effect such as the creation of a rich layer of topsoil that remained moist and a high water table also created lasting benefits in food security and livelihoods.

Economics for cooling - Kempegaudanomics

Economics is a social creation. We will refer to the economic system used in South India five centuries ago as kempegaudanomics and today's system as smithanomics, just for the sake of this article.

In kempegaudanomics, there was no GDP number to grow, no single number to worship. Thus, kempegaudanomics did not reduce other sacred beliefs, it retained and strengthened the religious beliefs. Land, water - all of nature - had social and spiritual value and connections with them were not broken. Rather relationships with them were nurtured and even revered. A culture that involved sacred relationships with water (all rivers were named after goddesses) and actively demanded conservation could flourish. The commons and the common good had status in kempegaudanomics, and improving both, created value.

A most attractive city (with limits)

The salubrious climate of Bengaluru attracted many rulers and it was exchanged several times. 1n 1806, the British made it their military cantonment - a city-state inside the expanding boundaries. It attracted many Europeans, Anglo-Indians and missionaries.

The sacred water culture gave way to an engineered water culture. There were more tanks to store more water to satisfy rising demand. A demand fueled by a growing population and a new lifestyle of consumption.

Water was brought from new reservoirs farther and farther away as electricity and motors made their way into the planner's hands.

In as early as 1923, planners documented that: "[Bangalore] is unsuitable for development as an industrial center on a large scale."

When the British left, the city still continued to grow, especially in scientific research and aeronautics. While Bangalore's reputation as the Garden City remained intact, sustainability indicators started moving off the charts and some foresaw water issues.

Bangalore's second man-made climate change

While we do not have any solid historical proof for the first man-made climate change in Bengaluru, the second is fact. Experienced palpably by all the residents. In the 1960s Bengaluru started getting transformed. Ironically, it was the reverse transformation of Singapore. Singapore recognised its cesspool conditions and started cleaning up and creating lakes for water security. Bengaluru's lakes were destroyed and the remaining ones converted to sewage-fed cesspools.

The great transformation took off with the complete adoption of smithanomics in the 1990s. It was to transform this cool city back to a warm dry place and, even beyond, into a hothouse.

'Calakes' - the new lakes of Bangalore

To warm up a cool city takes a lot of heat. How do you generate massive amounts of heat?

Bengaluru had two big coolers - trees and lakes.

The groves of trees, hundreds of years old, with trunks as wide as cars were axed. In smithanomics, the value of a living tree is zero, but the activity of cutting down trees and the resources from their chopped-up state both add measurable increase to the economy. With such a system, it is easy to build momentum and about 85% of the vegetation was lost between 1992-2009 as per a study by Dr. T V Ramachandra and Dr. Bharath H Aithal from Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

Cutting trees, that slow down rainwater flow and created moisture both in the root zone and in the air above, is not enough, you have to replace them with heaters. Thousands of 'calakes' - oncrete and sphalt (which include roads, parking lots, malls, and office complexes) come into being at faster and faster rates.

Trees use solar energy to produce oxygen, moisture, and fruits while providing shade and soil and slowing down the rain. In contrast, the 'calakes' use solar energy to only produce heat, perfectly and efficiently. They heat up quickly, stay warm, and release the heat later, both into the ground and the air.

Flyovers take this heat generation to new levels of efficiency. A flyover basks in the sun, is dark in color, and thus can easily become hot enough to cook on.

Lakes of water keep the ground and air cool and moist. So we replace water bodies with ' calakes' too. While it is not possible to own lakes privately in India, by exasperating the normal dry cycles of Bangalore's lake system allowed them to look like unoccupied and unsold land. The conversion (destruction) of lakes created much financial activity for builders, bureaucrats, politicians, and banks. And consumers and investors flocked in to own homes (and offices). In addition, since a quality water supply became absent, tankers and household filters become prominent. Amazing progress when calculated in smithanomics terms.

Kempe Gauda remains Bangalore's hero; his name is kept alive even in creations that dismantle his vision. Bangalore's largest heater, close to Kempe Gauda's hometown, is named after him. Larger than all the remaining lakes of Bangalore combined, this 'calake' is well over 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) in size, much more if you consider the elevated highway to get to it. It is the Kempegowda International Airport.

Heating appliances galore

The second source of heating comes from all our appliances. Cars, trucks, diesel gensets (DGs), refrigerators, outdoor lights, and other big items of course generate the most heat. But millions of smaller appliances such as set-top boxes, microwaves... all the way down to chargers also end up contributing to local heating.

The laws of thermodynamics inform us that all appliances that use the transformation of energy will generate more heat than the actual work performed. So refrigerators generate around four times as much heat as they cool.

We love our cars, which are truly efficient heaters. Modern gasoline engines have a maximum theoretical efficiency of about 25% to 30%. In other words, even when the engine is operating at maximum efficiency (which requires beautiful design, quality construction, good lubrication, and steady operation at high speeds), about 70-75% is sent out as heat - energy not used for turning the crankshaft (note there is further energy loss in turning tires, which also need to be properly inflated, balanced, aligned, etc.). In Bangalore traffic, only a couple of percent of the fuel burnt in the engine goes towards transportation. Heating efficiency is more than 90%. More if the car has an AC.

The particulates in the emissions also impact climate. They coat the leaves of the remaining trees reducing their vital functions. Haze also retains heat compared to clean air.

Air-conditioners have to be highlighted for two reasons. They are the most efficient heating appliances made - well over 90% of energy goes towards heat. For every unit of personal cooling created, around 99 units of heat are sent outside. One way to state is that for very short-term cooling 1% of the population, 99% (actually 100% in the long-term) have to warm up. ACs are also the main reason why state power generation cannot keep up with demand and thus DGs are required: efficient heaters plus airborne particle generators.

Economics of heating - Smithanomics

The head of Harvard's Anthropology department, David Maybury-Lewis, eloquently stated: " The driven economy is accompanied by a restless and driven society. The educational system teaches children to be competitive and tries to instill in them the hunger for personal achievement. Drive is esteemed and required of business executives and even anthropologists if they want to be promoted. "

Smithanomics makes countries measure their economy by a single indicator of increasing financial activity. Personal wealth is made the goal for individuals with the means of acquiring the wealth as unimportant. This breaks all links to religious beliefs and the sacred. Unbridled drive (greed) is unleashed as the necessary driving force of society.

In smithanomics, personal consumption (strongly linked to the term 'personal freedom') drives the economy, so creating more devices for individual is highly valued. In addition to being touted as a solution to commuting problems, private cars have high status. If the side-effects, in heat or pollution, are bad, it actually increases the economy, for example, as more people install personal ACs and start using air filters.

Since the focus is to sell more appliances and, as a result, even more energy will be consumed, our make-in-India heating effect will only increase. New technology like led lights, solar panels, and lithium batteries promise more efficiency but in a smithanomics system of perpetual growth, they can only marginally slow down further heating - they cannot reverse the trend.

A public AC, especially a free one such as old Bengaluru's, would not generate enough economic activity and would be labelled backward, as many of our historically sound personal and social practices.

Man is seen as a one-dimensional being - homo economicus - and as Maybury-Lewis continued: "Other human capabilities - for kindness, generosity, patience, tolerance, cooperation, compassion - all the qualities one might wish for in one's family and friends, are literally undervalued."

The Oven City

Bangalore not only becomes hot, it also becomes dry.

With the removal of cooling lakes and trees and replacing them with highly efficient large heaters - the 'calakes' - and the addition of billions of smaller heaters, a towering pillar of heat emanates from the new city. This ferocious pillar pushes monsoon clouds higher and to the side. So rainfall events start getting reduced.

The monsoon is still mighty. Once in a while it will overpower the pillar of heat and heavy clouds will descend. And it will rain heavily. Intensely. Precipitation that took hours can happen in minutes.

Instead of regular gentle showers we will see a few of these heavy downpours resulting in floods and very little capture into the little left of Kempe Gauda's system.

Now Bangalore is hot and dry and extremely dusty. We have transformed the Garden City into the Oven City. Rapidly. The first climate transformation for Bengaluru started took at least three centuries; the second transformation for Bangalore took only a few decades.

Entirely man-made. Local make-in-Bangalore, no credit given to global warming.

We don't have a visionary for this new Bangalore to give credit to. To work on the common good is being socialist. To work on improving the commons is for NGOs. So current leaders will hesitate in taking credit in these areas. Of course, while it is said that destroying the commons is the price of progress, no leader wants that deed on their record.

What's next for Bangalore?

Current leaders want it to become a 'smart city'. That might mean having lots more sensors to track temperature and then visualise the heat on smartphones (a smart oven!). Great for the smithanomics fans; for the majority of humans, it's like boiling in a cooker.

In cooking, the flame is hot instantly, but a pot of water takes a while to boil. Similarly, while we turned on heaters in Bangalore a couple of decades ago, climate change took a bit of time. That lag is over. Bangalore's climate in 2016 has reached the boiling point. Breaking all its records and showing higher temperatures in April than Chennai, Goa, and Mumbai.

The residents complain helplessly as they see the future snatched out of the present. It is not nostalgia that makes people lament the transformation of the places they call home. It is the conversion of life-affirming visionary cities to something with skin-deep beauty that does not support life. The replacement of a cool home surrounded by lakes with fish and trees with birds and inhabited by a connected community that reveres the space with a hot concrete structure in a cesspool filled with plastic waste and sewage, engulfed by sooty air inhabited by burnt-out, worried, isolated people is bound to make everyone unhappy and angry.

The same fate awaits every Indian city. Even if it has a river going through it.

The folks building the new capital of Andhra Pradesh are visionaries, but of which kind is the question. Riding on the momentum of smithanomics and led by foreign consultants, they are unlikely to see Kempe Gauda as their role model. The result there is likely to be the same as the new Bangalore.

Heat pollution ranks far behind all the other pollutions in people's eyes, until now. In 2016, it has made a noticeable impact, whether it is enough to act on is the question.

There is a movement in Bangalore to stop further destruction of the few remaining lakes and last few meters of kaluves. But there is no movement to reduce the total heat generated. To actually increase cooling. In kempegaudanomics, we would follow Will Rogers' advice: "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging." In smithanomics, that would be against the system and labelled anti-progress. Instead we dig faster. Maybe we can reach 45℃ in 2017. Why not try to win the gold in the climate change olympics with 50℃?

Of course, we could always choose to move to a new economic system, kempegaudanomics or another modern avatar, where people and nature matter, under which we could create a city with a pleasant and cool climate for the benefit of all.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bengaluru's climate change history and lessons to learn: Rajesh S - Citizen Matters, Bangalore News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
27 May 2016 , Citizen Matters The rocky plateau of Bengaluru was originally a combination of grassland and scrub and thorn forest, with small trees. We don't know have a historical record of the original climate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Naveen Menezes, Bengaluru, May 2, 2016, DHNS: 1:51 IST

Exponential and unbridled growth in real estate in Bengaluru has a direct bearing on environment and human health. Buildings have come up in places where there were once trees or open spaces. What if this continues to happen even on the periphery of Namma Bengaluru? What are its long-term implications on the ecosystem?
A study conducted by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) presents an alarming picture. It shows 525% growth in built-up area in the last four decades, 78% decline in vegetation 79% decline in water bodies. These are not just figures, but the lakes and trees that surrounded you have quietly disappeared as a result of the urban sprawl.
'Senseless growth'
Prof T V Ramachandra of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the IISc calls it 'senseless growth.

What's the point earning better when the food that you eat is adulterated? As a result of unplanned urbanisation, Bengaluru is going to be an unliveable and dead city in the next five years, he said.

It was not the same case before. Bengaluru was the most sought-after among big cities given its pleasant climate and the easy availability of land, a decent economy and low-key politics.

Urban expert Ashwin Mahesh blames the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) for not coming out with a sectoral plan.

"The BDA has become an agency which facilitates land deals for the benefit of corrupt politicians. People feel it should be closed down," he said.

Environmentalist Yellappa Reddy said, "The government is not competent enough to foresee the future implications of the present growth. There is no proper policy on land use and water. Land is being exploited on the whims and fancies of the politicians."

He urged the government to use 40,000 acres of evicted land for community benefits such as creating lung space, water bodies and playgrounds.
How to decongest
Prof Ramachandra said the government must take necessary steps to decongest Bengaluru. Besides banning new industries in the city, the government should make sure other districts get these economic benefits, he added.
'Government must act'
"It's disturbing to see private developers dominate government decisions. The norm to keep at least 15-20 % of the city as open space is ignored, stormwater drains and water bodies have been narrowed. At least now, the government should wake up and get is priorities right to make Bengaluru a sustainable city," he said.

Architect Najeeb Khan is of the opinion that the government should create enough facilities in villages to minimise migration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Bengaluru will be an unliveable, dead city in 5 years'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Exponential and unbridled growth in real estate in Bengaluru has a direct bearing on environment and human health. Buildings have come up in places where there were once trees or open spaces. What if this continues to happen even on the periphery of Namma Bengaluru? What are its long-term implications on the ecosystem?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
BENGALURU: The city has put up a poor show in 'Benchmarking Bangalore City for Sustainability,' a study which looked at how sustainable a rapidly-growing city like it is, and is ranked fourth among five cities. The analysis by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, shows that in the urban sustainability index, where five cities were compared, Bengaluru (0.658) and Mumbai (0.590) have the least sustainable urban system. Singapore (0.773) emerged as the most sustainable urban system, followed by London (0.771) and Shanghai (0.669).

"The expansion of a city devours acres of land and materials for infrastructure like highways, water supply and power. It intensifies traffic problems on commuting roads from a city's central location to suburban areas. So, it's important to study the rapid urban change that is likely to take place in developing countries that are least equipped with the means to invest in basic urban infrastructure, and are unable to provide vital economic opportunities for urban residents," one of the principle researchers of the study, Balachandra Patil from the department of management studies & centre for sustainable technologies at IISc, said.

He further said, "The low score for urban green spaces is one of the contributors for lowering the environmental sustainability index value. Bengaluru has low sustainability scores for water pollution. It has obtained the last position for water pollution. It needs to make targeted interventions with respect to indicator categories where they have got low normalised scores."
Concerns Alarming growth
* Bengaluru has witnessed an alarming growth of built-up area in the last 40 years. The growth has been a phenomenal 525%. The vegetation of the once Green City has seen a decline of 78%.
Disappearing lakes
* The city has lost 79% of its water bodies during the same period because of the urban sprawl.

* 54% of lakes are encroached by illegal buildings. Nearly 66% of lakes are sewage fed, 14% surrounded by slums and 72% showed loss of catchment area.

* There is no proper policy on land use and water. Land is being exploited on the whims and fancies of politicians.

* Dumping of construction debris and sewage, and pollution from vehicular emissions remain the biggest concerns.

* BBMP spends huge amounts on solid waste management; `415 crore was reportedly allocated in the budget for 2015-16 but Bengaluru continues to face a garbage crisis.

* Depleting drainage network is only adding to the problem, making Bangalore more unlivable and prone to floods

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
IISc report says Bengaluru has a 'bleak future' - Times of India

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BENGALURU: The city has put up a poor show in 'Benchmarking Bangalore City for Sustainability,' a study which looked at how sustainable a rapidly-growing city like it is, and is ranked fourth among five cities.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bengaluru fares worse than Delhi in air quality

# data[].attributes.subject
Bengaluru fares worse than Delhi in air quality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Delhi's severely high pollution levels during the winter months drives it to India's worst annual air quality levels, but on individual days, several Indian cities often experience worse air quality. For the first week of April, for example, the urban area with the worst air quality of 17 locations analysed by The Hindu was the BTM Layout region of south Bangalore. The new National Air Quality Index gives current as well as 24-hour average data on particulate matter - PM2.5 or very fine particles smaller than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, and PM 10 which are less than 10 micrometers in diameter - as well as other pollutants including nitrogen dioxide, ozone and carbon monoxide. PM 2.5 levels are commonly used as the best indicator of severe air pollution, while PM 10 particles are also a cause of public health concern, but less lethal. India now grades air quality along a colour-coded chart based on pollutant levels.

Using data from the new Index, as well as data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and state pollution control boards, The Hindu found that Bangalore's BTM Layout area has had only one "moderate" air quality day in the last ten days, while all the rest were "poor" or "very poor". Other parts of the city did far better.Delhi, the focus of global attention for its consistently poor air quality, on the other hand, had "moderate" air quality over the first week of April for the three monitoring stations for which PM 2.5 was available - Dilshad Gardens, Dwarka and Shadipur. Dwarka was the only location with more "poor" or "very poor" days than "good" or "satisfactory" ones.

CPCB officials warned that the quality of monitoring stations was mixed across the country, and Delhi was likely to have the most rigorous data. "There is still a lot of standardisation work we need to do to get all cities and all monitoring stations comparable. The new index should be seen as indicative," the official said, asking not to be named. Moreover, while comparable data for these 17 locations is available only for the last few weeks, particulate matter is heavily influenced by weather patterns. Anumita Roychowdhury, head of the Centre for Science and Environment's air pollution and clean transportation programmes, compiled data for Delhi from October 2014 onwards. The data shows that while there were "moderate" days in October, February and March, the second halves of November and December, and the first half of January were consistently "very poor".

In 2014, the World Health Organisation compiled average annual PM 2.5 numbers for over 1600 cities across the world, including 124 from India. Delhi had the worst air quality in the world by that estimate, but 12 other Indian cities were among the world's worst 20 - Patna, Gwalior, Raipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Firozabad, Kanpur, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Allahabad, Agra and Khanna.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bengaluru fares worse than Delhi in air quality

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Delhi's severely high pollution levels during the winter months drives it to India's worst annual air quality levels, but on individual days, several Indian cities often experience worse air quality. For the first week of April, for example, the urban area with the worst air quality of 17 locations analysed by The Hindu was the BTM Layout region of south Bangalore.

# data[].attributes.headline
Air pollution level very high in Bengaluru, walkers and open vehicles worst hit 

# data[].attributes.subject
Air pollution level very high in Bengaluru, walkers and open vehicles worst hit 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bengaluru is in the grip of rising air pollution. Official ambient air quality monitoring has already shown 57% increase in particulate matter in just 4 years (2010-2014) and 23% (2013-14- 2014-15). In more than 85% of monitoring locations the levels have exceeded standards.

CSE exposure monitoring has provided clinching evidence of alarming dose that an average Bangalorean breathes on a daily basis in different parts of the city - 3 to 12 times higher than the ambient level recorded by official monitors.

With growing vehicle numbers and resultant congestion and dieselisation, air pollution is a growing concern in the city. The city is losing its inherent advantage of dominant commuting practices - use of bus and walking at the cost of clean air and public health.

Bangalore needs stringent measures including leapfrogging emissions standards to Euro VI, curbing dieselisation, scaling up of integrated public transport, car restraints and walking for clean air.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released its results from its recent analysis of the official ambient air quality monitoring in Bengaluru as well as its own exposure monitoring in Bengaluru. This has exposed very high level of pollution within the breathing zone of people. This indicates serious public health risk.

The relatively lower ambient levels as compared to northern cities like Delhi should not breed complacency, as most of the health effects occur at a level much lower from the current standards. Moreover, direct exposure to toxic fumes is very high in the city. Improving urban air quality and protecting the sustainable urban commuting practices are some of the toughest challenges. "Bengaluru, while having made some significant strides in meeting air quality challenges, faces newer challenges. It needs technology leapfrog, scaling up of public transport, integrated multi-modal transport options, car restraints and walking for clean air," said Anumita Roy Chowdhury, Executive Director, CSE.

This emerged out of the media workshop conducted in Bangalore by the New Delhi-based research and advocacy organisation, CSE. It was organised to share concerns and find solutions to the daunting air pollution and mobility challenges facing our cities. Half of the urban population breathes air laced with particulate pollution that has exceeded the standards. The dialogue unveiled the unique challenges and the emerging good practices to draw lessons for the roadmap for the country.

What has CSE done?

CSE has analysed the ambient air quality data from official monitoring stations of KSPCB, to understand the real time trend over time in Bengaluru.

In addition, using its realtime and portable monitor, CSE has also carried out a rapid diagnostic exposure monitoring in different locations of Bengaluru to understand what level of pollution people are exposed to on a daily basis.

What does official ambient monitoring show?

Among the key southern cities that are monitored by Central Pollution Control Board, Bangalore has recorded 57% increase in PM10 between 2010 and 2014, highest amongst southern cities just in four years . Only - 2013-14 and 2014-15, the levels have increased by 23%. At the same time, NOx levels, though generally low, have also begun to increase.

Analysis of the air quality data between and later part of November, 2015 shows rapid build-up of pollution in the city. It increased several fold. "This demands immediate intervention to prevent further worsening and reversal of the trend to protect public health," said Roy Chowdhury.

The CPCB data shows that in 85% of location the levels have begun to exceed the standards. The worst hit pollution hotspots include Graphite India Whitefield; AMCO battery Mysore Road; Silk Board Hosur; and Victoria hospital.

Results of CSE's exposure monitoring: High exposure to toxic fumes

CSE has used a state of the art portable air quality monitoring equipment to track how much pollution an individual in Bengaluru is exposed to while travelling. Dustrak Aerosol monitor measures the mass and size fraction of the particulate matter. The monitoring was done in various land use areas including sensitive areas like hospitals (Fortis, Manipal Hospital), Schools (Bishop Cotton boys and girls), industrial area (Peenya), Electronic city, and residential areas. The monitoring was also done on different transport modes including walking, bus, car and auto. This exposure has also been compared with the background ambient levels monitored by the Central pollution control board for the city.

It may be noted that the official ambient air quality monitoring indicates the overall air quality of the city and change over time. This is different from exposure monitoring that captures the level of pollution that people are exposed to due to closeness to different pollution sources in their immediate surrounding. This has a direct influence on public health. This has thrown up stunning results. A recent draft report of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on air pollution and health has emphasized on the importance of addressing direct exposure to air pollution in micro environment.

Very high personal exposures

CSE monitoring during second week of December 2015 has found extremely high levels of exposure even when overall ambient pollution in the background has been relatively low. On days when CPCB data shows an average ambient PM2.5 levels in the city in the range of 27 to 55 microgramme per cum - the actual exposure levels in the city were three to 12 times higher than the background ambient levels.

The pollution hotspots inside the cities paint the crisis: The annual average and city average trends do not adequately capture the pollution hotspots inside the city and are not a good proxy for how much we are exposed to on a daily basis. Several localities inside the cities show hot spot trends. The worst area was the Peenya industrial area with highest peak followed by K R Road and Manipal hospital. The CPCB value for Peenya during the same duration was 75 microgram/cubic metre while the real time exposure for that 1 hour was 400 microgram/cubic metre. This also shows air pollution is high across all neighbourhoods exposing both poor and the rich to toxic effects.

Walkers and public transport users are inhaling very high pollution in Bengaluru. AC car users are also not safe: There is a strong variation in exposure depending on the mode of transport. The open modes like walking, open buses and autos show very high level of exposure than ambient levels. The actual exposure is in the range between 139-260 microgramme per cubic metre. It is also the dominant approach. Even AC cars with windows rolled up have as high as 125 microgramme per cum. Commuters on sustainable modes are more at risk. This wars against WHO's advice on active transportation of walking and cycling needed for both clean air and health security.

Particulate levels in southern cities are generally lower than other regions. But a cause of concern

Though the overall particulate levels are comparatively lower than the other regions in the country, the levels are much above the WHO guidelines. Also the global assessments that are now available from the Global Burden of Disease estimates show that the most of the health effects occur at lower levels. Also the cities have several local pollution hotspots, and road side exposures are also high.

Annual averages do not help to address the risks. Air quality monitoring would need to address these challenges and issue health advisory to people. There is absolutely no reason to think that the risk in southern cities is lower than other cities. In fact, health study released by the Health Effect Institute in Chennai and Delhi in 2011 demonstrates this. In Chennai 0.4% increase in risk per 10-µg/m3 increase in PM10 concentration. But in Delhi it is 0.15% increase in risk per 10-µg/m3 increase in PM10 concentration.

Health concerns

It may be noted that over the last two decade efforts have been made at local levels to assess the health impacts of air pollution. There is enough evidence to act urgently to reduce the public health risks to children, elderly, poor and all. India will have to take action now to reverse the trend of short-term effects as well as the long-term toxic effects. For toxic effects to surface there is a long latency period therefore exposure will have to be reduced today. Addressing air pollution and health risk has assumed greater importance after the release of the global burden of disease that has ranked air pollution as the fifth largest killer in India.

Studies in Bengaluru show health impacts of air pollution, especially on children. Stunning evidences are available on health impacts on traffic policemen who are directly exposed to traffic pollution in these cities.

What is the problem?

Cities have many sources of outdoor air pollution and all require mitigation action. But vehicles pose a special challenge. In the future cities will witness rapid increase in vehicular traffic. Cities are not expected to locate new industry or power plants inside the city. This means in terms actual exposure people will be more vulnerable to vehicular fume while Pollution concentration in our breath is 3-4 times higher than the ambient air concentration. In densely-populated cities more than 50 - 60% of the population lives or works near roadside where levels are much higher.

Vehicles contribute hugely to air pollution in Bengaluru: Vehicles contribute 42% of the particulate and 67% of nitrogen oxides, according to the National assessment of air pollution put out by Ministry of Environment and Forests based on six city source apportionment study in 2010.

Concern over dieselisation: India has experienced rapid dieselisation of the car segment and significant increase in road based freight share. There are special concerns about growing use of poor quality diesel fuel and technology. The WHO has classified diesel exhaust class I carcinogen for strong link with lung cancer. Diesel exhaust includes a large number of toxic compounds that cause cancer, reproductive abnormalities and other toxic impacts. Current emissions standards allow diesel cars to emit three times more NOx and seven times more particulate than petrol cars.

The Supreme Court of India has recently cracked down on diesel emissions. Pre-Bharat Stage III trucks are barred in Delhi. Environment Compensation charge on trucks has been doubled. All taxis in entire National Capital Region are to move to CNG. Registration of luxury sedan and SUVs on diesel has been banned in the entire NCR. Bengaluru would need similar measures to reduce diesel emissions and quickly leapfrog to Euro VI norms when the gap between diesel and petrol emissions begin to close. Bengaluru will also need a toxic risk reduction programme for diesel transport. The new access to CNG in Bengaluru opens up new opportunities to side step toxic diesel and move to cleaner fuel. CNG programme has shown substantial decline from bus and auto fleet after they moved to CNG.

Need stringent technology roadmap: It is extremely worrying that even after the implementation of the Auto Fuel Policy in 2010 which introduced Bharat Stage III in the country and Bharat Stage IV in few cities, the government of India has not set the next target for moving quickly to Euro VI emissions standards. New automobile production and investments in the country are not even linked to any further commitment to improving vehicle technology and fuel quality. This will significantly delay adoption of clean diesel technology in the country and add to the toxic risk. Cities need early timeline for introduction of Euro VI emissions standards. It is important to note that only at Euro VI level diesel and petrol emissions begin to close gaps. Introduce Bharat Stage IV nationwide immediately so that all trucks can move to Bharat Stage IV and leapfrog quickly to Euro VI emission standards.

Avert mobility crisis and pollution: Cities are paying a very high price for congestion. Traffic jams lead to fuel wastage, more pollution and serious economic losses. Usual commuting time has increased significantly during peak hours. On many arterial roads the traffic volume has exceeded the designed capacity and the service level of the road. A quick glance at the city development plans and other sources bring out the nature of mobility crisis in Bengaluru.

As of now, there are approximately 58 lakh vehicles in Bangalore, this is 2nd highest after Delhi. For every 2 people, there is 1 vehicle (1:2 ratio). There are almost 1,25,000 trips everyday of which 45% are using public transport. 50 lakhs people travel using BMTC while 7-8 lakhs travel using auto. More than 1300 vehicles are registered every day, two-wheelers and cars are 90% of the total registered vehicles. Travel speed has dropped to 15 kmph during the peak hours, there is no parking spaces left for vehicles and public transport vehicles vying for road space. An average citizen of Bengaluru spends more than 240 hours stuck in traffic each year resulting in loss of productivity, reduced air quality, reduced quality of life, and increased costs of goods and services. About 120 lakh person trips by mechanical modes are estimated to be generated in 2025 in Bengaluru. Present modal split of 54% in favor of public transport is estimated to fall to 49% by 2025, says CSE analysis.

Not only the vehicles taking over road but also the urban space to meet the insatiable demand for parking. In Bengaluru the numbers of car and two-wheelers have already crossed the numbers of walk and cycle trips. In Bengaluru the average distance is 10 km. This emerges from the analysis of the data from the study on 'traffic and transportation policies and strategies in urban areas', a study conducted by Wilbur Smith Associates for Ministry of Urban Development. Car centric infrastructure - signal free and one-way corridors are facilitating more car movement and locking in enormous pollution.

Learn from Delhi

Even after putting 23 per cent of its geographical area under road network and building more than 70 flyovers Delhi is the most polluted and gridlocked city today. Delhi is now forced to take pollution action measures like odd and even formula for personal vehicles so that at a time at least 50 per cent of the vehicles can be taken off the road. More steps are on cards - parking policy as a car restraint measures, fiscal disincentives, scaled up public transport system, walking and cycling infrastructure among others. These are the signs on the wall for other cities to know and understand.

Clean air is non-negotiable

Our cities still have the chance to plan its future growth differently and avoid the path of pollution, congestion and energy guzzling. More road space is not the answer. Cities need to make maximum investment in redesigning their existing road space and travel pattern and achieve compact urban form to provide the majority of the people affordable and efficient mode of public transport that can be an alternative to personal vehicles, says CSE analysis.

If cities do not want to wheeze, choke and sneeze then they have to act now. It is time to set new terms of action. Soft options have all been exhausted. Reducing personal vehicle usage, upgrading public transport, walking and cycling, and leapfrogging vehicle technology and fuel quality to Euro VI, curbing dieselization are the key options left for us. Plan cities for people not vehicles. Design roads for public transport, cycling and walking. Not cars. This will have to be supported by action in sectors of pollution including industry, power plants, trash burning and dust sources. "These are the options for the city to cut killer pollution, crippling congestion, expensive oil guzzling and global warming impacts of vehicles," said Roy Chowdhury.
This is a press release by Centre for Science and Environment, published with minimal edits.
Related Articles
How you can contribute to reducing air pollution in Bengaluru
Garbage burning: Disposing waste, or polluting the air?
Pollution in Bangalore less during monsoons, says KSPCB data

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Air pollution level very high in Bengaluru, walkers and open vehicles worst hit |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bengaluru is in the grip of rising air pollution. Official ambient air quality monitoring has already shown 57% increase in particulate matter in just 4 years (2010-2014) and 23% in one year (2013-14- 2014-15). In more than 85% of monitoring locations the levels have exceeded standards.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bengaluru: With pollution leading to snowy froth that has troubled commuters and buzzed across social media, Bengaluru's Bellandur Lake has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Officials from the pollution and water boards inspected the lake on Wednesday.

The Chairperson of the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, Mr Lakshman said, "For the first time from the Pollution Control Board, they already allotted, the Government has permitted to allot 100 crores to improve the basic minimum things for the restoration for this lake. And other agencies, other stake holders they are also sharing. I think we have to plan a comprehensive design to eradicate all these problems."

But people living here are not holding their breath, unless it is to avoid the smell. They say they have heard promises before.

One resident, Praveen said, "I do not expect anything from them. Recently I read that they have allocated some 200 crores to clean up this lake. Because all the drainages from Kormanangala and Bellandur and different places are connected to this lake, even if they clean up this lake, it will be a one-time solution. Over a long period of time, the waste from Bellandur and Koramangala will end up in this lake and it is still going to be the same."

Clearly, promises need to be made of more than just froth for this polluted city lake to be restored.

Get the latest election news, live updates and election schedule for Lok Sabha Elections 2019 on ndtv.com/elections. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates from each of the 543 parliamentary seats for the 2019 Indian general elections.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Authorities Inspect Bengaluru's Polluted Bellandur Lake

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Bengaluru: With pollution leading to snowy froth that has troubled commuters and buzzed across social media, Bengaluru's Bellandur Lake has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Officials from the pollution and water boards inspected the lake on Wednesday.

# data[].attributes.headline
Steel road that will rip out Bengaluru's heart 

# data[].attributes.subject
Steel road that will rip out Bengaluru's heart 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Imagine an elevated road scything through, and scything down, the shaded promenades of Lutyens' Delhi, fording Rajpath, as its pylons demolish parts of the Delhi Golf Club, The National Gallery of Modern Art (formerly Jaipur House), the National Stadium, other iconic buildings, and hundreds of dense rai-jamun, or myrtle trees, legacies of the Raj that now define modern Delhi.

How about a similar elevated road smashing its way through south Mumbai, knocking off portions of the Brabourne Stadium, the Oval maidan, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya and taking with it, among others, hundreds of fine mahogany and almond trees planted a few decades before I was born.

It is hard to imagine how anyone, government or people, would permit such defilement - don't forget Lata Mangeshkar's opposition was enough to stop the Peddar Road flyover in Mumbai - of buildings and trees nurtured over a human lifespan and etched in our collective cultural memories and conscience.

The green heart of Bengaluru with the golf course on the right. (Photo credit: Lawrence Sinclair/Flickr Creative Commons).

Needless defilement

Yet, this is what the Congress' last government in a major Indian state has just cleared, in dubious haste, say local media, in Bengaluru: A 6.7-km long elevated road that will rip out the city's heart, all to speed a few thousand cars towards the airport for a limited time. The operative word is "towards" because this Rs 1,791-crore road to be built within two years atop what the government calls India's longest "steel bridge" will only ease a few jams and link up with a clogged intersection that marks the start of the highway to the airport.

This is not an unusual situation for urban India, defined by patchwork solutions and temporary reprieves. It is definitely not an unusual situation for Bengaluru, which is littered with badly-designed flyovers and underpasses that swept away trees and are now obstacles to traffic. What is unusual is the haste around this project (more on that later), and the permanent damage it will cause to an area that defines the city.

In no particular order, here is some of what the proposed bridge will damage or displace: Balabrooie (christened thus by Sir Mark Cubbon, a British-era city commissioner, after similar homes in his native Isle of Man in the Irish Sea) - a 150-year-old state guesthouse, which once hosted Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, home to many chief ministers and trees a century old; the Indira Gandhi musical fountain, among India's largest and most advanced; five holes of a 139-year-old golf course, a sprawling green lung in the heart of the city; the main planetarium; and more than 800 of Bengaluru's oldest trees.

The historic Balabrooie guest house in Bengaluru. (Photo credit: Facebook/Siddaramaiah: Save the Historic Balabrooie Guest House).

Green cover lost

The loss of trees will be particularly damaging. Bengaluru has lost more than 50,000 trees since 2010, and there is now 0.1 tree for each resident, about a tenth of what it should be to absorb the carbon dioxide from the city's growing tide of vehicles - 1,600 are registered every day - I wrote recently in this column.

One of Bengaluru's wide-canopied gulmohar trees. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

Anecdotally, anyone who has experienced Bengaluru over the past two or four decades - two to relative newcomers, four to older residents, such as I - knows that no fans were needed in May, that Decembers were close to freezing.

Trees have a widespread cooling effect, as anyone who drives by a park in warm weather can testify. In the tropics, a loss of trees affects rainfall, which could be up to 18% lower over India, according to this 2014 study by scientists at Bengaluru's Divecha Centre For Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science.

Deforestation is evident nationwide, with 25,000 hectares, an area twice the size of Chandigarh, diverted every year for non-forestry activity, which includes dams, factories and roads. As IndiaSpend reported earlier this year, 23,716 such projects replaced forests over the last 30 years.

So, chopping trees is always a bad idea, especially in a burgeoning city like Bengaluru. The government insists it will plant 20 trees for each tree felled, but it emerges that these trees will be seedlings planted on the city's outskirts, leaving the city centre - which has already lost hundreds of trees to road widening and the Bengaluru metro - a hot house. Chopping trees and destroying the places that give the city its identity all for a smoother commute over 6.7 km for a few months before traffic again floods the elevated road is a really bad idea.

'Uncharacteristic urgency'

If this willful devastation wasn't bad enough, worse was the manner in which the elevated road was pushed through. Stopped in July this year after public protests and disapproval from experts, the proposal resurfaced this month and was pushed through the Congress' state cabinet almost overnight.

"The uncharacteristic urgency...has left everyone baffled," commented the Times of India. Its sister paper, the Bangalore Mirror, was less circumspect, alleging: "The Rs 1,800-crore steel flyover project has a lot of players involved with their share of the pie already decided."

Quite apart from the fact that this kind of political manoeuvring to the detriment of public interest explains, in part, why the Congress lost India, the steel flyover, if built, will establish a model for other states to rip into relatively pristine city centres.

Over the decades, Bengaluru has set many precedents for India. Some, mostly in the past, displayed the city's creative side, including meticulously-planned neighbourhoods, flower-bedecked boulevards, shimmering lakes, public-sector factories and their quiet, housing colonies, scientific research centres, the software revolution, pubs and app-based taxi services. Other precedents have not been as happy: the destruction of by-laws, trees and lakes, the loss of control over garbage and the abandonment of planning. Would a destructive new flyover really make that much of a difference?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The steel road that will rip out Bengaluru's heart - and set a dangerous urban precedent

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Imagine an elevated road scything through, and scything down, the shaded promenades of Lutyens' Delhi, fording Rajpath, as its pylons demolish parts of the Delhi Golf Club, The National Gallery of Modern Art (formerly Jaipur House), the National Stadium, other iconic buildings, and hundreds of dense rai-jamun, or myrtle trees, legacies of the Raj that now define modern Delhi.

# data[].attributes.headline
Biodiversity in peril; birds to lose nests

# data[].attributes.subject
Biodiversity in peril; birds to lose nests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
BENGALURU: Ever since the government made its intentions on building the steel flyover from Chalukya Circle to Hebbal public, the one detail that has left the citizens of Bengaluru perturbed is the possible loss of a whopping 812 trees along this stretch. Apart from playing a vital role in checking temperature and air pollution, a multitude of birds, insects and animals call these leafy trees their home, and the proposed flyover could sound the death knell to the thriving biodiversity on Ballari Road. The 60,000 ornamental plants promised by the government as compensation for the trees that will be felled cannot undo the colossal damage, opine environmentalists.

Head of partnerships and projects with SayTrees, which has been creating mini-forests in the city, Durgesh Agrahari said, "If 800-odd trees are cut, the temperature is surely going to increase, but that is not all. What about the innumerable birds, squirrels and other insects? How are they going to compensate for that? They will replace the trees with landscape grass and bushes or ornamental plants, which will take a long time to grow."

The gigantic heritage trees that line Ballari Road play a vital role in checking air pollution. "The small shrubs that will be planted will only compensate for the dust particles. Let's just admit it. The steel flyover has more drawbacks than benefits," he added.

Birdwatchers in the city are horrified at the prospect of a steel flyover replacing trees such as sandalwood, tamarind, In ose nests dian oak, mulberry , neem, etc, many of which date back to more than a hundred years.

Birdwatcher and naturalist TS Srinivasa observed that birds were short of trees to nest and roost. "The loss will be in terms of roosting, nesting and food habits. On that road, the birds we find are chick barbet, bulbul, white eye among others. We also spot migratory birds on this stretch such as oriole and greenish warbler. If these trees are replaced with exotic ones, food will be hard to come by for them. In the long term, birds are going to find it hard to survive here," he said.

Abhisheka Krishnagopal, a naturalist who studies migratory bird patterns, said, "Have they considered the wildlife residing here? This is the migratory season, and birds such as rosy starling will be visiting these trees soon. Even tiny insects will lose their habitat. The loss of flowering trees means no honey bees.None of the saplings they plant will be able to compensate for the loss."

An avid bird watcher, Shubha Navakanta Bhat said, "Birds depend on the dew drops on the leaves in the winter. They don't venture into the lakes, since some of them would be too deep for the birds. We cannot afford to lose more trees."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Biodiversity in peril; birds to lose nests - Times of India

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BENGALURU: Ever since the government made its intentions on building the steel flyover from Chalukya Circle to Hebbal public, the one detail that has left the citizens of Bengaluru perturbed is the possible loss of a whopping 812 trees along this stretch.