When National Environmental Engineering Research Institute’s Dr Rakesh Kumar said to Firstpost that Art of Living’s World Culture Festival had not damaged the Yamuna or its floodplains, many minds boggled. After all the finger-wagging from the National Green Tribunal and therighteous outrage from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Yamuna was doing fine? All that construction, the garbage that had been generated during the event and the impact of thousands of people tramping around the area had not had any impact upon the floodplains? Then what on earth were the environmentalists going on about?

Dr Kumar is the head of NEERI’s Mumbai Zonal Laboratory. He said he had visited the site of the festival and it was his expert opinion that the banks of the river had not been adversely affected by the construction and activity of World Culture Festival. The immediate assumption was that Kumar was speaking in an official capacity and that his expert opinion should therefore be trusted. For the first time, it seemed that the environmentalists may have overreacted.

However, unfortunately for AoL, Kumar’s opinion doesn’t count for much because NEERI has publicly distanced itself from him. The acting director of NEERI, Dr Tapas Nandy, has made it very clear that the institute did not have a clean chit for World Culture Festival. “CSIR-NEERI has not carried out any such study at the site in question,” Nandy wrote in an email. He further added that, “The opinion expressed by Dr Rakesh Kumar is in his personal capacity and his opinion does not reflect the view of CSIR-NEERI. Dr. Rakesh Kumar was not authorized by CSIR-NEERI for the same.” Nandy has made a similar statement to Firstpost, which carried the contrarian report quoting Kumar. This suggests that we shouldn’t take Kumar’s pronouncements too seriously. After all, his own organisation is planning to take “necessary steps” against him.

Soon after the AoL event ended, reports came in that local farmers were complaining that the festival had caused extensive damage to the banks and according to their estimates, it would take two years to revive the soil for cultivation. “They destroyed the vegetables which were ready to be harvested for building access roads to the event venue,” said one farmer, who wanted more compensation from AoL. Environmentalist Anand Arya pointed out that poles had been driven into the ground and the material packed into the sand on the banks had hardened it, which meant the land in that area would not be able to recharge its water table.

AoL maintains that there was no environmental damage done to the Yamuna by the World Culture Festival. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has said the clean-up will take a month.