Today, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has been forced to place the river, so beloved of Gandhiji, in the `E' category of polluted river systems. Large stretches of the river are dry almost the whole year round, but it is not uncommon to find the 80-km stretch between Gandhinagar and Vautha covered with pink foam. Part of the scum comes from the industrial effluents illegally let into storm-water drains -- meant to carry only rain water -- by chemical units. But what is more worrying is that some of it comes from the Pirana Sewerage Treatment Plant of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) itself.

The plant is meant to handle only domestic sewage and treated waste from industries. But many chemical units also discharge toxins into the AMC sewage lines. This damages the plant. Worse, itpollutes the river.

Moreover, the AMC itself discharges some amount of untreated domestic sewage through storm-water drains. At least one-third of the untreated domestic-waste water is directly flushed into Sabarmati.

The river, which caters to the drinking water needs of over 3.5 million people in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and nearby villages, has innumerable illegal drainage connections, installed either by industries situated in its periphery or even by the AMC and local municipalities.

In 1995, the high court (see box) ordered factory owners to clean up their act. Today, three years later, the 11 villages mentioned in the order remain in a pitiable condition. People living on the river's banks constantly complain of getting contaminated water. To add to this, many living in areas like the Gulbai Tekra, Paldi and Shahwadi Gram Panchayat face a serious drinking-water shortage.

P.V. Swaminathan, the chairman of the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB), points out that his organisation had recentlyissued a notice to the AMC. According to pollution-control norms, domestic sewage as well as industrial waste should not be released into a river without proper treatment. However, of the 70 million gallons of domestic sewage (MGD) generated in the city per day, at least 24 MGD of untreated water finds its way into the river.

A senior government official acknowledges that the AMC has played a major part in polluting the river. According to him, the Central Water Commission (CWC) tested the water samples of the Sabarmati and found that it contained ammonia and nitrate, as well as domestic sewage.

One of the problems seems to be the inefficiency of the pumping stations at Jamalpur, Behrampura, Maninagar and Sabarmati. Clearly, they are not adequate to tackle the quantity of sewage received.

The haphazard growth of urban pockets has not helped. It's only recently that the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority started thinking about proper sewage disposal and has attempted some forward planning. Thecorporation has issued circulars asking all heads of departments to identify illegal connections and remove them immediately.

Fixing an illegal connection is easy. A group of 25-odd industrial units just organise themselves and arrange a common line to a manhole, where all the waste is dumped. Says an official: ``Although the connection may appear to be just one, the quantity of water discharged into it is usually much more than the quantity of water used by a single industry.''

The Pirana Sewerage Treatment Plant and the Vasna Sewerage Water Treatment Plant were set up at a cost of Rs 13 crore. Together, they have a capacity to treat 180 million litres a day. But the Pirana plant alone receives something like 350 million litres per day about 20 per cent of which is highly acidic.

The AMC is now planning to augment its treatment capacity by installing three new plants, at Pirana, Vasna and Vasna-Sarkhej. Says N.P. Patel, Deputy Municipal Commissioner, Engineering: ``The installation of the newtreatment plants was covered under the National River Conservation project, which is likely to be complete by the year 2001.''

These new treatment plants are a part of the Sabarmati River Cleaning project, which is in turn a part of the National River Conservation Plan of the Central Government.

Under the project, the corporation will clean the entire river for about Rs 98.60 crore.

The clean-up will include installation of drainage lines in areas which do not have them, improvement of existing sewerage lines and storm-water drains as also augmentation of existing treatment plants and construction of a new one.

The AMC also plans to lay pipelines running parallel to the municipal drainage lines in collaboration with the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation. Industrial waste water then would be mixed with domestic sewage, treated and used for irrigation purposes, instead of making its way to the river.

But the sewerage problem is only going to grow with further urbanisation. As things stand,several small villages and towns which lie on the banks of the Sabarmati do not have basic drainage, leave alone treatment plants.As the towns mushroom, so also do industrial units. In 1995, the court identified 756 industries in and around Ahmedabad. Their number has crossed the 1,200 mark today.

Gandhiji's eco-friendly philosophy only exists in the realm of imagination in these parts. In actual fact, his river is today being polluted by some of the dirtiest industries in the world.