From Pristine To Polluted

Some days back, a Twitterati posted, "How beautiful flowers! How delightful it could be if the stream was also clean? The stream below the blooming plants is a fecal sludge emanating horrible stench!" This X (formerly Twitter) post was made along with a photo taken from a bridge over the Dhobikhola, one of the major streams in the Kathmandu Valley. As the post said, the Dhobikhola is so reeking that anyone passing by the riverside is forced to scrunch their nose in sheer disgust. The river is no longer moving but an open sewage- the bodily waste emptied on it from every settlement from both sides. 

The Dhobikhola corridor is nowadays a popular route, as travelers get huge relief from the hassles of traffic congestion and the dirty and muddy roads. In other routes, you are fed up with trailing behind fuming heavy vehicles, but it is not so here. I also prefer this route for Pathao rides and sometimes suggest others to use this track if they are traveling to places in its vicinity. 

I had once read that it took 20 years to construct the 20-km-long Dhobikhola corridor! I wonder: What had hindered the timely construction of such a popular alternative way in the valley; why was it begun so late? Irrespective of these points, the dirty, reeking stream is a horrible reminder of how our urbanisation is! How do foreign visitors comment on it? It is fair to say that it is a sheer disgrace of our urban planning. Preservation of pristine rivers and streams in the capital city is grossly neglected. Who is responsible for such a mess? 

It is not only the case of Dhobikhola but of all other streams and rivers in the Kathmandu Valley- they lost their original state long ago. Even the holy Bagmati River flowing by the Pashupatinath Temple, a top religious destination of world Hindus, is so polluted that initiatives taken so far to clean it have not yielded success.

Periodic clean-up campaigns, which were initially launched by the government, are run by volunteers to date. They especially pick up plastics, one of the necessary evils of the modern society, during the sanitation campaign. It must be lauded that some people are still volunteering. But, substantial efforts are elusive to realize meaningful change.

It was so ironic that a high-level government official had once announced that the Bagmati River would be made so clean within six months of a cleaning campaign that it would be inhabitable for fish. Even the bathing was orchestrated on the river bank! It was a mere reflection of being smart without solid groundwork. 

By the way, who is responsible for such assault on the pristine streams and rivers in the valley? The policymakers - the political and bureaucratic leadership are chiefly culpable, while commoners, too, cannot be spared. With egregious neglect to river's right to flow in its course and form, the human right was given much attention, to the extent that the oversight agencies not only remained mute to emptying drainpipes in the streams but also endorsed it.

At a time when we Nepalis, government agencies, civil society, and media alike have been whetting discussions in national and internal forums on urban planning and management focusing on the value of liveable cities, doesn't this atrocity to city rivers click on the minds of those in authority?