Rally for Rivers: initiative to rejuvenate rivers in the country

Thiruvananthapuram: The spiritual guru Jaggi Vasudev has launched a ‘Rally for Rivers’ initiative to rejuvenate rivers in the country. The initiative was flagged off in Coimbatore in presence of Union environment, forest and climate change minister Harsh Vardhan Singh, cricketers Virender Sehwag, Mithali Raj and car racer Narain Karthikeyan.

“A comprehensive policy to revitalise and sustain rivers in the country is needed and a draft policy resolution over it will be submitted to the Centre at Delhi on October 2 at the conclusion of ‘Rally of Rivers”, said Isha foundation head, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

“We do not have a comprehensive policy to revitalise and sustain the rivers, which are in peril. It is the time we take steps to ensure that rivers continue to flow, which means life will continue to happen”, he said.

“The draft policy would address all stakeholders– Rivers, farmers, Larger Community and state and central governments. We are demonstrating economic models where farmers income can be raised from three to eight times by moving from crop-based agriculture to tree-based agriculture. The cycle of drought and floods across the country was due to the fact that water bodies are not able to retain water and suggested that fruit and medicinal trees be grown in around one km of land in catchment areas on either side of rivers. Fortunately, 25 percent of the land was with the government and they should be converted into forests”, he said.

“There are policies and policies on how to use and share the waters. Since rivers are a concurrent subject, the aim of the rally was to bring concurrence in all states. This was the first time that governments across the political spectrum had concurred with one single movement. This concurrence was vital for the Central government to make a policy”, he said.

The next challenge was to get industries to invest in putting up the infrastructure for necessary value addition of the farmers produce, he said.