Most of us know how messy a house gets after a party, or a banquet hall after hosting a wedding. Now imagine the same for a river floodplain, which – unlike a banquet hall – isn’t meant to host grand parties, let alone a World Cultural Festival (WCF) with a footfall going into millions.

However, the Art of Living foundation (AoL), is hell bent on making everyone believe that its mega event has not harmed the Yamuna floodplain. Not one single bit. 

In fact, AoL chief Sri Sri Ravishankar, or Guruji as he is referred to by his followers, has outright rejected the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT)principal committee report on the impact of WCF on the Yamuna floodplain. Ironically, Guruji is the same gent who launched the singularly unsuccessful campaign, “Meri Yamuna, meri Dilli” back in 2010 to clean the Yamuna.  

AoL’s lawyer Advocate Kedar Desai and Dr B Prabhakar Rao, trustee of the Sri Sri Institute of Agriculture Sciences and Technology Trust, have pointed out loopholes in the report and to clear the confusion, Newslaundry decided to go through their arguments and see if they hold water when placed next to facts.

Ummm, no. The report has no cost estimation because the principal committee did not have a monetary estimate for the logistics of removing the debris and foreign material dumped by AoL in the floodplain. The report is pretty clear about the environmental damage. In fact, the reason why there’s no a monetary estimate is the first thing mentioned in the committee’s report: “The cost of restoration would also involve removal of debris/foreign material, its transportation to dumping site, cost of deploying plantation material, cost of plantation etc which were not available to the committee.”

This is partly true. One road leading to the floodplain, turning left on Mahatma Gandhi Marg, just after Gurudwara Bala Sahib bus stop, near the Barapulla nallah, was indeed there. It was constructed for the Times Global Village shopping festival, another controversial event in legal terms.

Manish Sharma, owner of Inder Kanta (weighbridge) which is right next to this road, said that while it has been there, the allegations against AoL aren’t entirely baseless. “This road was not so wide,” said Sharma. “It had a lot of vegetation. It was worked upon for the (AoL) event.”

Aside from this widening, AoL constructed the path leading to the floodplain. It’s right next to where Banda Bahadur Setu meets Mahatma Gandhi Marg, if you’re coming from Sarai Kale Khan and towards Ashram. The road leads directly to where the parking lot for the WCF was, on the right bank of Yamuna.

Local farmers too say that the road was created by AoL. “Hamre khet the yahan, uss baba ne sab jutwa diye, rasta aur parking banane ke liye(We had our farms here, that baba ploughed them all to construct a pathway and a parking lot),” said Jeet Singh, a farmer who lives near Kale Sarai Khan and had fields next to Barapullah drain.

AoL also created many pathways from the river leading to the stage, a point made by the principal committee report as well. “The criss-cross lines across the area between the river and the stage location clearly indicate consolidation for making temporary paths and by movement of heavy vehicles,” it says.   

Seasonal agriculture on patches of the floodplain is natural and not as environmentally degrading as a million people thronging around the largest stage in the world (1,200 feet x 200 feet x 40 feet). “There cannot be environmental damage from growing plants,” environmentalist Vimlendu Jha told Newslaundry and added, “Since when has Google images become the sole criterion for making environmental evaluations?”

Google Earth images from the year 2000 (Open Google Earth, Click View > Historical Imagery) shows different areas of the floodplain under cultivation, with no specific plantation pattern, showing the temporary nature of the agriculture here.   

The principal committee report clearly states that there were “trees and shrubs, tall reeds, cattails sedges and other aquatic vegetation along with water hyacinth. “The report also states that the construction activity on the floodplain has damaged the “invisible” biodiversity of the area and it is not easy to assess the loss.

Managing Floodplains of River Yamuna in Delhi, a study by Wetland International South Asia, an international non-governmental organisation working for the conservation and wise use of wetlands, also supports the argument about rich bio diversity. It shows the presence of microorganisms like phytoplankton and zooplankton in that stretch of the Yamuna floodplain.

Whether the area is a wetland or not is just legal dodge-balling. Floodplains are a very important part of a river –so much so that they are called the lungs of the river – and wetlands are part of it. There are deep and shallow depressions in a floodplain, containing clay. During a flood these depressions retain water which slowly percolates water to the ground.   “Floodplains have very important roles like ground water recharge, flood bearing capacity,” said Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia network on Dams, Rivers and People.  It’s not important if it is a wetland or not. They need protection.”

Jha pointed out that the question of whether or not the area is a wetland is related to biodiversity, while “the crime of AoL is levelling and compacting of the area that has killed the floodplain’s water recharge and flood bearing capacity.”

That said, AoL’s argument might hold some water, legally, since wetland is not technically the same as a floodplain. However, this isn’t exactly the kind of legal loophole you expect someone who professes to care about the Yamuna to use.

Let’s just take you through how the area was prepped for WCF. The floodplain was compacted with rollers and debris from other areas were dumped on it. This was then levelled using “heavy vehicles like JCBs, trucks, dumpers and cars” (as per the report). The soil of a floodplain is too soft and unlevelled for any construction. It needs to be porous so that it can recharge groundwater and have flood-bearing capacity. What the floodplain had to bear during WCF, however, were a stage and crowds. After the levelling done by AoL, the floodplain is now as solid as rock.

And then there’s the loss of vegetation and fauna. To prepare the site for the event, AoL cleared much of the vegetative growth. Take a look.

Does that look like no damage to you?

Actually, the principal committee report has 27 pictures in the annexure. Six of these are satellite images that show the stage site, next to the Delhi Noida Delhi flyway. These satellite images are corroborated by the other 21 pictures, taken of the site before, during and after the construction of the stage.  

That’s from an AoL Press Release. Leaving aside how pouty that sounds, let’s take a look at the members of the principal committee.

1) Shashi Shekhar, Secretary, Water Resources

2) Nitin K Labhasetwar, nominated by Council of Scientific & Industrial Research – National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI).

3) Rajinder Mohan Liberhan, former Central Defence Accountant

4) Prof AK Gosain, IIT Delhi.

5) Prof Brij Gopal

6) Prof AA Kazmi

7) Prof CR Babu

Nitin K Labhasetwar, Rajinder Mohan Liberhan and Prof AA Azmi were included in the committee by NGT on June 3, after AoL complained that the committee was biased.

Of these seven, AoL has a problem with Prof Brij Gopal and Prof CR Babu. The foundation maintains that both are close to the petitioner in the case, Manoj Mishra. Even if it is true that Mishra’s closeness to the two deviated them from the righteous path of truth, wouldn’t they be outnumbered by the other five experts? Or is the AoL saying that none of these experts have respectable credentials?

While the earlier committee was stopped by AoL volunteers from investigating the damage on April 16, CSIR-NEERI director Rakesh Kumar visited the site on March 12 and gave a clean chit to AoL. In the report, however, all the members, including Labhasetwar of CSIR-NEERI, have unanimously found the floodplain to be damaged.

According to the principal committee’s report the damage on the Yamuna floodplain will have long term impacts on “all forms of life and quality of water”. Now, Ravishankar and company can go on picking on the legal loopholes in the system, as they are doing now. However, that won’t change the fact that their 35th birthday bash, the World Cultural Festival, has caused much harm to the environment, the river Yamuna and the livelihood of people. Ironically, for an organisation that prides itself on knowing some secret art of living, AoL could perhaps start by not trying to cover up how it destroyed an ecosystem.