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The problem of river pollution in India continues to take humongous dimensions, despite huge investments by the government over the last three decades, to abate pollution. The failure of the Ganga and Yamuna action plans to meet the desired objectives, has been attributed primarily to the top-down technical approach taken by the government, to address the problem. It has been inferred from the literature that anthropogenic activities are the main cause of river pollution and a bottom-up approach, with full public participation, can boost the efficacy of river water quality management projects. However, understanding of the public perception of the issue and the socio-cultural context becomes imperative to define the scope and scale of participation. Further, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the past has been successful in bringing transformative behavioural change towards issues related to health and agriculture and can be used for enabling public participation in river water quality management.
The study is exploratory in nature and is based on a structured face to face questionnaire survey, focused group discussions (FGDs) and semi-structured interviews. Data was collected to quantify the public perception of river water quality, their bases of perception, perception about sources of pollution, significance of the river and risk perception, water related behaviours, drivers of behavioural change, readiness of public to use ICT tools, the type of ICT tool that would be most effective for public engagement, and the drivers of willingness to participate in water quality improvement programmes. This data was analyzed with respect to independent variables which are gender, income and education for each stretch.
A 360 km stretch in the mid segment of the River Yamuna was selected for the study. The stretch was selected primarily because it included, the critically polluted 22 km stretch of Delhi segment and several attempts to clean the river had not yielded encouraging results. The findings suggest that unlike experts who estimate water quality based on scientific parameters, a common man perceives it based on sensorial and contextual parameters. Perception on sources of pollution is shaped by personal experiences and people are unable to perceive diffused sources of pollution that affect river water quality. Respondents attributed the pollution in the river to anthropogenic activities and their risk perception was based on their personal experience and their water quality perception. The study suggests behavioural change strategies to focus on social, governance, and technological drivers. Finally, a suggestive framework is proposed for using ICT for stakeholder engagement in river water quality management
Shodhganga Link (Update by October 2020)
