Sreelatha Menon: Music of the rivers

Comfort is deeply disturbing and dissent is deeply comforting. If not for dissent, the world would be an island of lotus-eaters too drunk with lethargy to care even if heavens were to fall.

So even as each of us go to our workplaces in buses and cars, ignoring the stench that wafts over rivers turned into cess pools, in our respective towns, cities and hamlets, there are pockets of disturbance making feeble and often gagged noises of outrage.

Rajender Singh was one such voice trying to revive dead rivers till the Magsaysay award magnified his profile before the country's eyes. Has anyone heard of Pushpender? Unlikely. He has not won a Magsaysay award.

He is a waterkeeper and stands guard over the Ken river, which the government proudly projects as its first achievement in its dream to link every river in the country. He stands guard against linking it to the Betwa river, which has three waterkeepers.

They are all in partnership with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who was declared as one of the Heroes for the Planet by the Time magazine for his work to save rivers through a unique movement called Waterkeepers Alliance. The US-based alliance aims to give a voice to waterways and their communities worldwide.

Each waterkeeper programme is independent and raises its own funds, reflecting the needs of the water body and the community it represents. Each waterkeeper serves as the public advocate for that body of water.

There are 11 sentinels in India who are a part of the alliance. They stand guard over parts of the Yamuna, Ganga, Betwa and Ken rivers. They are all members of another group of organisations called Friends of Rivers.

The friends joined hands with Kennedy's alliance this week. Spearheading the friends and the merger is Vandana Shiva, known for her high-pitched campaigns against foreign direct investment in retail and the genetically modified M seed companies of the US.

Steve Edwards, who is mentoring new waterkeepers from India and China, says he is fighting at least two cases against US President George Bush on violation of the Clean Air Act and several others.

Kennedy, the chairman of the alliance, besides being a lawyer and a teacher in New York, has run successful campaigns against effluents from power plants killing fish in rivers.

The alliance has 162 waterkeepers in six continents, says Edward. Jiang of Beijing is the only waterkeeper in China and he admits he cannot adopt the vocal strategies of Manoj Mishra and SA Naqvi, waterkeepers of the Yamuna river, who have been stirring up agitations against the hosting of the Commonwealth Games on the river basin.

In Beijing, he gets into a more tactful dialogue with the authorities, says Jiang. Other river sentinels in India are Judaram and Kailash Chaudhuri. They have to their credit revival of three dead river streams, Arvari, Bhagani and Jahajwali. They also monitor the rivers through a parliament of people under the leadership of Rajender Singh. We may be mad, but we are trying to breathe life into dead rivers, says Singh.

At a time the Himalayan glaciers are threatening to disappear, the Waterkeeper Alliance finds sense in linking with the waterkeepers in the sub-continent. In the words of Chairman Kennedy: "To have the waterkeeper movement cast off into India and Asia reflects the belief of many people that advocacy on the grassroots, waterkeeper advocacy, is the premier model to effectively clean up and protect our waterways and communities."

So as one bites into the lotus of another humdrum morning, drop it if your river stinks. It is awaiting a waterkeeper, with or without the Kennedy seal.