Delhi has had more than its share of it. During the last monsoon it had gastroenteritis for a starter, newer and more dangerous forms of hepatitis, garnished with cerebral malaria for the main course, and Dengue fever for dessert. Winter is now round the corner and with it the thermal inversions will start. Air pollution will mount. Then it will be the turn of asthma and tuberculosis. None of these diseases is unavoidable. All are assuming an epidemic form because of deteriorating living conditions in the cities. Gastroenteritis is caused by contaminated drinking water; malaria by a lack of drainage and the neglect of fumigation, and Dengue fever, like the hundreds of other viral epidemics that sweep Delhi every year, is spread by congested living conditions. Asthma is a special gift of obsolete underpowered, poorly maintained diesel engines, and the ubiquitous two-stroke engines that power Indias two-wheelers. Most other cities are even more severely afflicted only their epidemics do not make the capitals headlines.
It is easy to adopt a fatalistic attitude, lay the blame for the miserable quality of life on the poverty of the citizens, the city authorities, the government and the country in short blame it all on underdevelopment . But this excuse is hollow. A lack of money is not Delhis problem any more than it is that of other cities. In the early 80s, Malyasias per capita income was certainly no higher than Indias is today, and Kuala Lumpur was growing even more rapidly that Delhi or Bangalore are today. This did not prevent it from turning into one of the most beautiful and well-serviced cities in Asia. What Indian cities have never had is care.
Lacking the settled urban populations of the older metropoli of Europe to act as the guardians of their civic interests, their fate rests solely on bureaucrats, who with rare exceptions, only flirt with their jobs as they lobby to move to one of the truly prestigious ministries like home, finance, defence and commerce.
As a result no one spares the time or the energy to care for them. This does not mean that nothing is attempted. Only that whatever is tried is haphazard and ill thought out, and therefore foredoomed to failure. Take Delhis water problem: the city depends almost entirely on the Yamuna. From October to July, the flow in the Yamuna steadily diminishes as the demand, especially after March, steadily increases. Delhi then begs for water from UP, which parts with it grudgingly because more water for the Capital means less for its farmers. Delhis answer to this problem is to sink tube wells, both private and municipal, to augment supply, and to send water tankers to the worst-affected areas. But year after year the level of subsoil water has sunk lower and more and more of what is brought up is brackish.
In May, June and July, the low pressure at the Wazirabad waterworks, sometimes causes a back flow that sucks sewage into the system. Needless to say the waterworks are not equipped to deal with this problem. Yet the obvious answer to both problems does not seem even to have occurred to the authorities concerned. Barely half a mile below the Wazirabad plant, the city releases 60 per cent of the water it consumes as raw sewage into the Yamuna river bed. In the lean season, therefore, from there till Mathura the Yamuna is pure sewage in which even fish do not survive. If the sewage is given primary treatment only (which is very inexpensive) pumped back upriver in pipes and released into the river 10 or more kilometres above the Wazirabad plant, the oxidation that the water will be subjected to as it flows down to the waterworks will kill the minute proportions of bacteria left in it.
The system would need no external inputs because the power it needs could be generated by the methane released by the primary treatment. The additional revenue from the sale of 400 million gallons or so of treated water would not only pay for the project, but leave a huge surplus of Rs 50 and 100 crore for the city. This would not only make the project extremely profitable but also finance the much needed upgrading of the waterworks to international standards. Lest this sound utopian it is worth mentioning that 10 years ago, the Thames Valley Authority in England, which does exactly this for 18 cities on that river, was earning a net profit of 90 million pounds. The water-starved cities of the south and west