It often billows with white foam, and facilities processing drinking water from the river for Delhi's 20 million people regularly shut down because of dangerous ammonia levels.ĭespite some bright spots, as well as efforts to plant more trees alongside rivers, the situation elsewhere is often no better in big cities including Mumbai and Chennai. The Yamuna in Delhi is one of the world's filthiest rivers and is considered ecologically dead in places, although people still wash clothes and take ritual baths in it.

More than 55,000 children under five died of diarrhea across India in 2019, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal BMC Public Health. Many of the sewage treatment plants in operation don't comply with standards, including 26 out of Delhi's 35 facilities, according to media reports.Ĭoupled with huge volumes of industrial effluent, the sewage is causing disease, polluting India's waterways, killing wildlife and seeping into groundwater.Īlthough India has made major progress in reducing child mortality, diarrhea - caused mostly by contaminated water and food - remains a leading killer. India's sewerage system does not connect to about two-thirds of its urban homes, according to the National Fecal Sludge and Septage Management Alliance (NFSSM). Its urban population is predicted to explode in the coming decades, with over 270 million more people forecast to live in its cities by 2040.īut of the 72 billion liters of sewage currently generated in urban centers every day, 45 billion liters - enough to fill 18,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools - aren't treated, according to government figures for 2020-21. India at the end of April was projected to have overtaken China as the world's most populous country, according to the United Nations, with almost 1.43 billion people. We catch diseases and the kids keep falling sick,' he added. We fall sick if we go out,' the 21-year-old told AFP in the Delhi neighborhood of Seelampur, where open gutters packed with plastic and sickly greyish water flow alongside the narrow lanes. Mohammed Azhar holds his baby niece next to a storm drain full of plastic and stinking black sludge, testament to India's failure to treat nearly two-thirds of its urban sewage.

Dead is the new black series