New Delhi's Dark Side

2.Electricity

Severe power shortages often result in the power going out for several days which is a nightmare is Summer.

It's not just trash. Human waste is a big problem in a city where millions of people have no access to toilets. In the poorest slums, streets serve as open-air toilets, and even in the nicest neighborhoods some street corners, long used as public urinals, can choke passers-by.

Every day, more than 1,000 more people move to the city, many fleeing poverty-ravaged villages. And every weekday sees a million or more people come in for work from surrounding towns.

The result is a city where normally genteel people find themselves turning to four-letter descriptives.

"We're drowning in (feces)," said Sunita Narain, who heads the New Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, India's most prominent environmental organization. "Delhi is becoming a modern city, and with a modern city goes a lot of garbage and waste."

In December 2000, there was a mass exodus of poor people on trains and buses out of Delhi. Hundreds of factories closed down, their owners manipulated thousands of workers to protest, riots ensued, some of these workers died. The factory owners did not care, nor did Delhi's population, who suffered inconveniences to and back from work and wondered why. The reason was a Supreme Court directive which called for "all polluting industries of whatever category operating in residential areas" to be shut down. Over the last year, over 15,000 jhuggies, with an approximate total of 75,000 residents, were demolished. The jhuggies were mowed down, smashed beyond repair or burnt and these operations continue. The reasons were, as usual, pollution, beautification of Delhi and the "illegal" occupation of land. Public transport prices increased, even as the government actively supports the car and two-wheeler industry and cuts down on public transport.

What do these three indicators say? That Delhi as a city is bent on throwing out its poor, destroying them and building a city just for the rich and the affluent. Walk down the streets of Delhi in the middle of the night and you will see thousands of workers, dead with exhaustion, sleeping on the roads, on pavements, on carts. There are hardly any shelters in Delhi. At signals, women with drugged, near-dead babies slung across their pregnant bellies, beg with glazed eyes. There is not a single night shelter for women in the wh*** of Delhi. People live in slums in the most deplorable conditions of sanitation, electricity, water, quality of shelter. The homeless have only Delhi's harsh weather, the boots of drunk policemen and sexual abuse, especially for the women and children.

5.Water Crisis

Delhi Jal Board is the main supplier of drinking water in the capital. It is, however, learnt that only 18 out of the 33 tests for safe drinking water prescribed by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) are being carried by DJB. Two surveys conducted by the Hindustan Times last year revealed that the drinking water across the city had a high count of total dissolved solid, bacterial content and hardness. This was serious enough to account for stomach and liver disorders.

The use of pesticides by farmers that enter surface and groundwater as runoff from crops pollute the lakes, rivers and estuaries. According to experts, pesticides are the most difficult to remove. Again, paper, sugar industries, distilleries besides glass, nickel and chromium plants along the river also add to the pollution of the river, further contaminating the drinking water.

Dr R.K. Khandal, director, Shriram Institute for Industrial Research, says: ‘‘The quality of drinking water in Delhi is steadily declining. Samples often have high content of some pollutant or the other including residual pesticide, heavy metals, organic matter like hydrocarbons, microbial and bacterial content.’’

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6.Road Accidents

With a manifold increase in road traffic, the Capital has seen the maximum number of road accidents among metropolitan cities in the country, according to the data in 2006 collated by the Ministry of Urban Development and tabled to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Transport.

The report, which was placed at the 14th Lok Sabha, states that a total of 5,796 people were killed in accidents across the six major Indian metros: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad in 2006, a sharp rise from 4,672 in 2005.

The study shows Delhi high up in the chart with 2,169 deaths, while Chennai was second, recording a death toll of 1,136 in 2006.

Accounting for this sharp rise is an increase in ownership of private vehicles and simultaneously, the

increased use of cars and two-wheelers in the city. The increase is being seen as a fallout of the public transport system in the city, stated the report.

7.Media and Crisis Awareness