This environment story is from Guruvayoor. For us in Kerala, the Guruvayoor Sri Krishna Temple is our pride and Krishna Kanhaiyya our pet deity…But Guruvayoor manages its share of controversies every now and then. Remember the Churidhar ban? We had discussed it in the blog http://blogs.4indianwoman.com/2007/11/10/when-god-decides-what-you-wear-when-you-go-to-see-him--by-suneetha-trivandrum-india.aspx Then we had the temple authorities having a ‘cleansing’ session after a Central Minister’s son born from a Hindu-Christian marriage visited the temple for a function. The playback singer K J Jesudas is a regular devotee who has to stay outside the premises to worship and hold his divine concerts because he is a Christian by birth. The temple harps on the purity factor…It holds a ‘punyaham’ or cleansing ceremony as soon as a baby urinates or a devotee tired out from standing in the queue throws up inside the temple walls, equally held unclean is the temple premises when a visitor inside the temple premises is a non-Hindu.…Not the cleaning with broom and water that you see in mind but an elaborate mantra-chanting sessions using the holy water from the temple tank. We all abide by it and swear by the customs of the temple. But now, the devotees of Krishna are shocked to hear of how polluted the temple premises themselves are and how much untreated sewage it generates, rendering a whole neighbourhood town its septic tank and the recipient of the human waste flowing from the town. The environment department of an engineering college in the neighbourhood Thrissur town conducted a study which revealed that the coliform MPN count in the temple tank is a shocking 1100 per 100 ml of water. Coliform is the bacterium found in human excreta, and the high count indicates how impure the water is. The Pollution Control Board says the permissible limit (ugh! Is there a ‘permissible’ limit here?) is 50 per 100 ml for water used for drinking and 500 for water used for other daily routine in human activity. The students also recorded something called the BOD Count of the temple tank water as 22.8 mg/liter. BOD is bio-chemical oxygen demand and is a key indicator of whether water is pure or not. The permissible limit here is 2 mg/liter for drinking and 3 for others. Ok, so this is what is happening to the temple tank and people who suffer are those who choose to go there. But if the benevolent deity’s devotees are hell bent on polluting the neighbouring villages? And that too with their body wastes? Chakkamkandam is a backwater village in a low lying area adjacent to the Guruvayoor temple town. There is a canal flowing from Guruvayoor straight to Chakkamkandam, Valiyathodu, which was once a bearer of fresh water which the Chakkamkandam residents used for all their needs including drinking water. Valiyathodu is now literally a sewage line. It carries almost all the sewage generated in the township directly to this village. Consequently the streams have blackened, the drinking water sources polluted and the stench in the area in unbearable. The social and economical scenario of the village has collapsed as a result of this ‘stinking’ situation. Nobody visits them in Chakkamkandam anymore, no one wants to marry into the area, in fact no one even mentions that he or she hails from the place, it has such an unseemly association. The livelihoods of Chakkamkandam were based on a rich fishing resource and coir. Rare varieties of sea fish once came into the brackish water area nearer the sea for breeding. The fish have long since fled the turbid waters, the people dare not venture into the water to soak and process their coir raw materials, which is coconut husk. The incidence of skin and intestinal diseases is at an all time high and employment at a similar low. Apart from the pollution, the rich mangroves of the area are dying out. The growth of the mosquito population is the least of their concerns, there is a literal army out there day in and day out. The Chickun Guniya epidemic in Kerala was of course quite strong here, no small wonder! How does this much pollution take place in a sacred geographical area? Guruvayoor has a flush of floating population in all seasons, apart from a high population rate. The temple premises have a crowded cluster of lodgings and marriage halls, and millions of devotees throng the premises. Naturally the lodging conveniences that have mushroomed in the township do roaring business. This is where the problems start. The lodgings of the area are said to have septic tanks with insufficient capacity and some are said to have none at all, so the waste is said to flow straight to the canal through the old rain water drainage systems in place. The locals have not been quiet on the issue. As far back as in 1975, the noise made by the locals on the issue brought up a sewage treatment system and it was against a projected population of 2001 that a 4.4 million project was started by a government agency. The project has spent 5.5 million to date and is at a stand still. You can imagine the condition of the pipes which usually have a life span of 30 years! It has not been used or maintained while the 3000 odd families suffer every minute of their lives born into a sewage gutter. The Guruvayoor Township is flush with money. In fact the eye-wash of their buying a backwater area – a residential area OUTSIDE their jurisdiction- and filling it (against all dictates of good environment policies) to plan a sewage treatment plant and that too not materializing even after three and a half decades is the height of cruelty to humanity. The lives of a whole generation born to the stench and unhealthy environment have not got the public interest it deserves and a solution is not really in the pipeline. Independent fact finding teams consisting of social and environmental workers are trying to make a case, but who will pay for this? The courts decree in previous cases that “the polluter should pay”. Will the polluters in this case pay? Or should we have to look to the all-knowing merciful Krishna to come out in another avatar to wipe away their tears?