A river lost

Unchecked discharge of industrial effluents and inadequate sewage treatment facilities have turned the Hindon water toxic. ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY tracks the river's journey though seven Uttar Pradesh districts, starting from its origin in Saharanpur

WHEN DIVYA Shikhawal developed a fever in June 2023, her parents consulted a private hospital near their village, Shimlana Mu. But the doctors were unable to diagnose the ailment. With her blood platelet count plummeting, Shikhawal’s parents, who run a grocery shop in the village, located in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district, took her to aiims Delhi, where tests revealed that the 17-year-old had blood cancer.

While Shikhawal survived, Satpal Singh, a sugarcane farmer in the same village, had to deal with a loss. Four years ago, his wife died due to liver cancer when she was 40 years old. Singh says the village has seen more than 100 cancer deaths in the last decade. With a population of about 7,700, as per the 2011 census, the village’s cancer incidence rate is 1.3 per cent, while the average incidence of cancer in India in 2022, as per a paper published the same year in Indian Journal of Medical Research, was roughly seven times lower at 0.1 per cent .

Both Singh and the Shikhawal family say that the source of their health problems is the Hindon, a 400-km rain-fed river emerging from the Shivalik Hills in Saharanpur. “Factories in Saharanpur release effluents into the river, especially during the rains, which contaminate the groundwater that we rely on for drinking and for all our domestic needs,” says Singh. Households in Shimlana Mu do not have piped water connection and most use hand pumps. A 2007 study by Janhit Foundation, a non-profit based in Meerut district, found lead and chromium in the village groundwater (see ‘Research so far’, p19). When Down To Earth (dte) visited the village in September, roads were being dug to instal pipes.