A group of people from various walks of life who had gathered for the eighth edition of Odisha Manaska circle at Saheed Nagar to discuss about dying rivers and dying traditions in Odisha lent their voice to support “Save Gangua” and decided to form a pressure group to work towards saving, reviving and rejuvenating dying rivers in Odisha with the initial focus being on the historic Gangua river, which has been relegated to a nullah filled with dirt and sewerage.
As All Things Odisha hosted its March session of Odisha Manaska circle at the collaborative space of ‘ExtraOdiNari’ and ‘Safe Odisha For Her’ in Saheed Nagar, participants got nostalgic reminiscing the role and significance of rivers in their life.
The theme for the evening session was “Dying Rivers, Dying Traditions: Can We Save Odisha’s Socio-Cultural identity Without Saving Its Rivers?”
The discourse panned from the importance of rivers in shaping civilisations and evolving socio-cultural milieu along their banks, to the bad, good and ugly aspects of rivers in each one’s life, from the findings of ruins of heritages along the of dying river Prachi and the Great Mahandi to what can be done to save, revive and rejuvenate ancient but dying rivers like Gangua and so many others. Not only the rivers but also the waterbodies that have been encroached upon by rapid urbanisation and polluted drastically to not being able to sustain aquatic life, the curious debaters shared their views while patiently and respectfully listened to the opinions of others.
To add to the collective wisdom of the gathering, Sudarsan Das, a save the rivers activist from Odisha known for his exemplary works in carrying out campaigns to save and revive rivers like Gangua and Anil Dhir, a save heritage activist and member of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) Odisha chapter shared a lot of anecdotes from their works around rivers.
Sudarsan Das narrated the plights of rivers like Mahanadi, Baitarani, Gangua (its historic name was Gandhavati), Prachi, and lakes like Chilika and Anshupa which have been badly affected by the human activities and are slowly dying with some of them on the verge of complete extinction. He attended the session coming directly from a campaign in Ganjam district to save the Rushikulya river.
“Odisha Manaska is a great platform to discuss pertinent issues relevant to Odisha and the discussion around rivers is close to the heart for many of us, who love our rivers. Gangua which is called a nullah these days, was the Gandhavati river that had sustained civilisation on its bank. But, it’s grasping for survival in modern Bhubaneswar,” said Das.
Anil Dhir, who has worked extensively on mapping heritage sites along river Prachi and currently undertaking mapping of heritage sites along the mighty Mahanadi, explained how rivers have been the sites for cultural formations and evolution.
“With modern urban settlements and rampant encroachments on the rivers and riverbanks, many of these rivers are almost dead. Despite having huge socio-cultural significance, no one bothers about saving and reviving these rivers. Neither the governments of the day nor the people nor any stakeholder are concerned about the life of these rivers that had sustained their ancestors. We are trying to create awareness among people and putting pressure on authorities to take necessary and timely steps to save their waterbodies,” cited Dhir.
While many participants shared their bittersweet experience with rivers, some were more nostalgic and some recounted the horrors of human-animal tussle and vagaries of climate change. However everyone agreed upon the need for creating massive awareness campaign to educate common people about the historic and socio-economic as well as socio-cultural significance of rivers and the need for their survival and revival.
Besides, the community decided to take it up as an advocacy campaign to insist the government to make plans and implement such plans to revive and rejuvenate the dying rivers involving all the stakeholders. Participants also highlighted the government needs to form a river mission like the existing water mission to work for the survival, revival of rivers. Similarly, there were demands for releasing a river catalogue detailing about existing rivers in the state.
While the Odisha Manaska session was hailed for being a outcome-oriented and fruitful event, the community hoped for the sustained effort would bring out some positive results in the coming days.
