Facts about the pollution in India

The main reason why India is today experiencing huge pollution problem is its rapid economic development based on highly polluting coal powered plants.

India is rapidly becoming one of world's largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters and CO2 is the greenhouse gas mostly responsible for climate change. Two main factors that contributed to massive growth of CO2 emissions in the last couple of years were building of giant coal powered plants and increased number of cars in the roads.

India's rivers are among the most polluted in the entire world. This is because around 80 % of urban waste in India ends up in its rivers. One of the best examples of this excessive river pollution is the pollution of Ganges, India's holy river, where in some areas researchers found the level of pollution 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing.

Massive coal power plants and large number of new cars in the roads will soon create excessive air pollution issue in much of the India. Many environmentalists fear that large Indian cities will soon experience the fate similar to large Chinese cities because smog has already become a frequent sight in many cities in India.

The Indian government cares very little for environmental issues. The Environmental Ministry of India had no problem whatsoever in giving green light to several environmentally destructive projects because they value economy much more than environment and ecology.

India is also experiencing a growing toxic pollution issue. The infamous pesticide “Endosulfan” which has been banned by the UN and most countries in the world has killed over 1000 and crippled around 10000 people in Kasgorod.

The main problem about the environmental pollution in India is the fact that Indian government has pretty much accepted it as some sort of attachment to a greed based economy and is willing to sacrifice both natural resources as well as human health to maintain rapid economic development.

Pollution in India - River and air pollution

India just like China too has serious problem with pollution. Unfortunately not only country's economy has growing trend but also country's pollution and mostly affected are rivers as they have almost become garbage dumps.

About 80 % of urban waste in India ends up in rivers where it destroys river ecosystems and it also makes bodies of water unfit for human use, not to mention the fact that many river species population are falling rapidly and if this trend continues this rivers could soon become dead rivers.

Untreated sewage often ends up in rivers and testing of the water from the Ganges River near Varanasi showed that levels of fecal coliform, a dangerous bacterium that comes from untreated sewage, were about 3,000 percent higher than what is considered safe for bathing. This is of course causing many illnesses. It also has to be said that India invested lots of money in clean-up efforts, especially in area of New Delhi, but that isn't enough considering rapid growth of population in India and it hasn't resulted with cleaner water. The worst fact is that water-borne diseases are India's leading cause of child mortality

Air is also polluted in India almost as much as in China and some experts believe that smog from India and China could even change weather patterns in North America. Even the famous Taj Mahal is becoming more and more yellow because of tremendous air pollution.

India is already facing massive environmental damage and environment isn't the only victim of this story. Many deaths and diseases of human population are already caused as the result of air and water pollution and many more will follow unless something is done. But what can be done, what is the right solution? Hard to say, maybe to try lifting ecological conscience and awareness of population, but that's very hard to achieve among rural and uneducated population. It's really now or never for Indian government to come up with the plan to save something before it goes out of their reach. But that is unfortunately almost an impossible mission.

Pollution grows in India