COVID 19 in Delhi: Lockdown has made Yamuna water so clean

Though a health and economic disaster, the COVID 19 pandemic has a lot of lessons for policy makers in Delhi as well as throughout the world.

It's like a fairy tale for a whole generation. Today, the children and youths are seeing the form of nature, their parents had learned through stories. 

Yes. The air in Delhi has become pollution-free and breathable. The water flowing in the Yamuna is now as clean and transparent. This is an achievement, successive governments could not achieve despite expanding thousands of crores through several schemes. However, within about 10 days of complete lockdown in the country, the river water is clean and fresh like never before. 

This video of the Yamuna river was recorded by a local person from the bank of the river on Saturday, April 4, 2020 from near ITO bridge and sent to us. In his life, the person has never seen such fresh and transparent water in the river. You yourself can see the water. Though Delhi announced the curfew in continuation with the Janata Curfew on March 22, the national capital city is implementing complete lockdown since March 25.

In the pre-COVID 19 days, the water of Yamuna river was so dirty and polluted that the odour used to block the nostrils of passengers sitting in the trains passing through the railway bridge. In those days, if a train was halted on Yamuna bridge, the breathing used to become problematic for passengers particularly for the elderly, children and sick. The passengers were forced to shut the windows and pray the train to move at the earliest.  

Now, the air quality index of Delhi is below 100 at almost all the pollution observing stations. In some areas, the air quality index is below 50 (Green Area) which never had happened in Delhi for such a long period since the air pollution data are being recorded.

It seems nature is providing clues to the policymakers on how to implement measures to control air and water pollution in Delhi for post-COVID 19 pandemic days.

The reports are also coming from several other cities regarding fresh and clean air and fresh water in rivers and water bodies. 

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