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During Chaat, it is customary to visit nearby rivers, ponds and lakes to offer prayers to the sun and to the goddess celebrated during the festival. Unfortunately, people forget to clean up after themselves after the prayers are done. So the water body remains littered with flowers and various food offerings.
The country’s rivers and water bodies are being damaged beyond repair, and the result could be catastrophic to the wildlife and the people.
Kathmandu’s historic Rani Pokhari, a pond in the center of the city, was opened to devotees celebrating Chaat. Needless to say, at the end of the day, the fragile ecosystem was disturbed and damaged. A couple of years back, due to lowering water levels and pollution, Rani Pokhari’s fish were dying at an alarming rate. You could see the surface of the pond covered with dead fish from a distance. And yet the local authorities continued to open the pond up to hundreds of visitors who, despite good intentions, damaged the city’s historic and natural asset.
During Dashain, some communities take an idol of the goddess Durga to a nearby water body and “fuse” it with the water to signify the end of that year’s celebration. Now think, year after year, hundreds of idols painted with toxic chemicals accumulating in a river or a pond. The damage done to the fish, the water system and the environment is beyond repair.
Festivals are not the only culprit behind water pollution in Nepal, and Rani Pokhari is certainly not the only victim. Around Kathmandu, you can see rivers being used as dumping sites, as free waste management systems.
The Bagmati River, considered holy by Hindus, has been turned into a giant sewage system. If you take a stroll around the Chabahil and Mitrapark areas in the city, you can see raw sewage from area homes being directly dumped into the river without any treatment.
The Bagmati is also being abused by cities’ factories, as their chemical waste goes directly into the river. While all this is happening, Kathmandu’s residents strangely don’t seem to care. There are some organizations and activists trying to clean up the Bagmati, but their efforts cannot match the large-scale pollution that is taking place.
Rivers outside Kathmandu, even in rural areas, are also facing decline. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the paper industry and pesticides from agriculture are polluting Nepal’s rivers, making it difficult for fish and the ecosystem to survive. River pollution is causing a decline in the population of the endangered Gharial crocodile and the Gangetic river dolphin found in Nepal’s Karnali River.
For a country like Nepal, which lacks natural resources other than its rivers, wildlife and beautiful landscapes, it is sad and mystifying to see that protecting those precious resources is not prioritized by the government or the people. There are some local and international organizations and activists working to protect Nepal’s environment, but their efforts, though heroic, are inadequate to cope with the size of the problem.
The government has not shown any interest in formulating laws and regulations to punish those who pollute water bodies. The Environment Ministry is an agency founded to create a smokescreen so that donor agencies keep investing in protecting Nepal’s environment while the nation’s government sits still, doing nothing.
What about the people? Bless the activists trying to protect Nepal’s environment. In their honor, I will refrain from criticizing Nepal’s people who think it is other people’s jobs to clean up their mess.
It is not the government’s job to clean the rivers, but it is its job to make laws to punish those who pollute them. It is not the people’s job to wait for the government to save nature, but it is their job to demand laws to protect the environment and natural resources.
In the case of Nepal, sadly, both the government and the people have failed. Let us hope that all the Durga idols lying deep in the country’s rivers and the Chaat prayer offerings floating in Rani Pokhari bring in divine intervention to save the country’s precious water bodies.
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(Bhumika Ghimire is a freelance reporter. Her articles have been published at OhMyNews, NepalNews, Toward Freedom, Telegraph Nepal, Himal South Asian and ACM Ubiquity. She is also a regular contributor to News Front Weekly, in Kathmandu, and Nepal Abroad, in Washington D.C. She can be reached at bhumika_g@yahoo.com. ©Copyright Bhumika Ghimire.)
