Punjab might have a reputation for being a prosperous state, but the state of sanitation affairs in Jai Kumar’s community left him the lucky survivor of a bout of gastroenteritis, leaving a trail of death and despair in its wake. What it also left behind was ‘Gastroenteritis Plagues Ludhiana’s Poor’, Jai’s IndiaUnheard video that prompted district health official to send…
In Punjab, Buddha Nullah channel is highly polluted and threatens the health of the people living on its banks.
Due to rapid industrialization, lack of a sewage system, increasing use of fertilizers and chemicals in agriculture, pollution has reached alarming levels in Buddha Nullah.
Punjab Government has set up water treatment plants but they are often mismanaged, curbing their the potential of their purifying capacity. Besides, recent studies have underlined that the number of water-treatment plants should at least double to actually treat the amount of waste water that flows into Buddha Nullah.
This situation adversely impacts the lives and health of people staying on the banks of the channel. An increasing number of them suffer from breathing diseases, or skin problems, and the number will continue to go up if no action is taken. “The pollution of the river is dangerous for people around it. The smell is bad, the color is suspicious. People are afraid of drinking the water now but they have no other solution,” said Jai Kumar.
Recent studies have shown that Buddha Nullah water has a high concentration of chemicals and heavy metals and heavy microbiological load in the form of bacteria, an indicator of faecal contamination, and there is absence of aquatic flora and fauna. All these are the signs that the water is now unfit for consumption.
Jai Kumar hopes that his video will urge the Punjab Government to take action, to prevent the environmental and human catastrophe in making.
No Cards
The article argues that systematically ignoring and silencing the voices of the poor and marginalized worldwide does not serve society or democracy well and must be countered. While new technologies such as AI could provide an opportunity for change, we contend that these technologies need to account more effectively for...
Impact Story
When the staff at Gannett newspapers in the US coined the term MOJO (Mobile Journalism) to describe new ways of gathering and distributing news using emerging technologies in 2005, they would not have imagined its virality and use ten years later. Ask new media journalists and our Community Correspondents Shah...