The Art of Living’s gigantic event at the Yamuna floodplain has not damaged the river or the floodplains in any tangible way, let alone in the long term. This statement comes from Dr Rakesh Kumar, environmental scientist, and head of the Mumbai office of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute.

Dr Kumar’s statement assumes great significance as the National Green Tribunal has criticised the World Culture Festival of the Art of Living (AoL) Foundation in its orders largely on the basis of expert opinion. The order had claimed that the floodplains and the natural flow of the river have been adversely affected. In fact, Jairam Ramesh had been quoted in The Indian Express as speculating if some ‘higher-ups’ had ‘made phone calls to the NGT’ to ensure that the World Culture Festival (WCF) went ahead.

Nevertheless, Dr Kumar had surveyed the WCF, organised by the AoL in Delhi to assess the environmental situation on the ground. He says he had had a good look at the event from both sides of the Yamuna and though he did not tour the entire area used for the WCF, he could safely say that it is unlikely that the floodplains were going to be affected in any way by the event.

Coming as it does in the middle of a controversy over the alleged environmental damage caused by the AoL on the Yamuna floodplains, Dr Kumar’s statements stand out.

Far from criticising the event, Dr Kumar, who is also a respected name in environmental engineering and water-related issues, says, “It’s required to hold more non-polluting events to bring attention to the Yamuna and help people connect with the river banks”, which is otherwise being condemned to being an illegal squatters’ paradise full of filth and muck.

Dr Kumar elaborates on his many reasons for coming back without a murmur against the organisers. At the outset, he clarifies that he is not an AoL follower and his only interest in the event was professional. “On the second day of the three-day festival (12 March), I moved around the area, crossed the pontoon bridge and came to the other side of the river. So I got a reasonable decent overall glimpse of everything,” he says.

“There were around 10 to 15 gates, which kept the flow of people comfortable. The entire layout was very well mapped. There were more than adequate toilets (650 chemical toilets to dissolve the waste and leave no residue on the ground), plenty of litter bins, and the participants were very disciplined. This was unlike many other events that I have seen.“

As for the pontoon bridges, he says those were necessary in case of the need of sudden evacuation. “I didn’t see any damage to the river due to the pontoon bridge,” he says. In any case, pontoon bridges are very common in the north. On the issue of the use of the army, the AoL has already said the army was requisitioned by the Delhi government to ensure safety of the participants.

On the claim made by some environmentalists that the compaction of the ground would destroy the floodplains, Dr Kumar explains the process. “Compaction of the ground is done to keep it stable. It is not critical to the environment unless it’s done for, say, water tanks holding lakhs of litres or a reservoir. Any real compaction would require two of three layers of material, which is pressured into place by road rollers. However, at the WCF, I did not see any construction-related compaction.”

In fact, he says, there were no semi-permanent structures anywhere. “Everything built was temporary and that could be easily dismantled,” he says. “I visited the venue on the second day in a police vehicle and even though it was an SUV, the tyres sank in the mud due to the rain. There was no compaction of the kind that could have a lasting effect. They would have perhaps laid some rubble where vehicular movement was anticipated but even at those places, the ground was very muddy beyond a point.”

Dr Kumar’s contentions bear out what AoL has maintained all along — that they have used eco-friendly materials like wood, mud and cloth. For instance, the ramp to the stage was made of mud, as was the pathway. No cement or concrete was used in any form. Not a single tree was cut. The wetland was covered with construction debris and weeds; they remained untouched except that the debris and weeds were removed.

The most intriguing part of the WCF architecture was its seven-acre dais. It was resting on itself; it had no foundation whatsoever dug in the river or the riverbed. Nothing was embedded in the river, a fact that led to concern among some sections of the media that the stage would cave under the weight of thousands of performing artists and attendees. Built entirely above the ground, it was built of scaffolding material, with a shuttering plate beneath each scaffolding and wooden boards on top. The stage held through for the three days.

Because no digging was done underground, Dr Kumar says, the dais too has been environment-safe. He disagrees that the venue was a site for sore eyes the day after the event as alleged in some sections of the media. When Dr Kumar visited the venue on 14 March, he found “volunteers were doing a wonderful job” of cleaning up the site.

Although he is uninterested in stepping into the minefield of a controversy that the event has been rigged up to become, he maintains that on the basis of whatever he has seen — which is pretty much everything — no real damage has been done to the river of the floodplains in any way.

Insisting that it is important to keep the spotlight on the Yamuna, he cites the example of Mithi river in Mumbai. “The reason Mithi could not really be salvaged is because everyone had made it their backyard. Now that there are bridges connecting the river, you can see what people are doing to it. This exposure is important.” It’s not as if the Yamuna is being taken care of otherwise – quite the opposite in fact, he says. “The banks of Yamuna are perpetually being abused all through the year by many…with garbage, illegal activities, gambling, unauthorised hutments, etc.”

ncidentally, the AoL Foundation had taken up the task of cleaning the Yamuna in 2010 in a campaign they called ‘Meri Dilli, Meri Yamuna’. It had cleared 512 tonnes of garbage and toxic debris. One of the key reasons AOL could mount such a gigantic event on the Yamuna floodplains was its confidence derived from having competently revived 17 rivers in India. Two years ago, the Karnataka High Court had acknowledged its work in river rejuvenation as a role model for the rest of the state.

Last year, when AOL decided to host the WCF near the Yamuna, the land was far from a green paradise that many environmentalists have been projecting it to be. More than 20 acres of the site was filled with debris from Delhi’s construction sites.

Clearing and cleaning a land that is filled with rotting garbage and debris was not their only challenge. The next one came from the river — how to get rid of the foul stench from the Yamuna. Toxic waste was being dumped in the river for years through the drains that made it impossible for anyone to stand on the river bank for two minutes.

The organisers came up with a novel idea of releasing enzymes made from raw kitchen waste from thousands of households. After six months, the number of pollutants in the water had decreased; it had got back its limpidness to a reasonable extent.

At the heart of the problem is perhaps the ease with which a gigantic event captures public and media imagination, and the fact that the Yamuna floodplain finds no mention in the land use plan of a city that is starved of space.