India has been placed under lockdown since March 24 with its huge 1.3 billion populace mandated to quarantine themselves in view of the COVID-19 outbreak worldwide, till now 4337 lives have gone and buried so far and over 152K people in the country got infected which is a huge number.
This outbreak is unfavorable for humans as it led to us to quarantine ourselves and it’s difficult for many people because of increased anxiety in most of the people, most of the population can’t handle the stress and likely to fall in depression whereas it happens to be a curse for daily wages workers, who can’t even go to work and didn’t have enough funds to sit back and take rest but it can be observed that it turns to be an elixir for the environment as many events have been reported related curing of environment. Many unseen species of birds and reptiles have been seen back to cities, Birds like sparrow and cuckoo can be seen in cities now whereas animals such as Nilgai, Spotted dear, and dolphins catching sights of local people in different cities of India. The robustness of Ganga river has seen impressive improvement since enforcement of the nationwide lockdown from last few months, there are numerous amount of pictures that are circulating on the internet stating that Ganga’s water is much cleaner now.
The water of the river Ganga has been found fit enough for drinking and bathing purposes after decades, at 27 out of 36 monitoring units placed at miscellaneous points of Ganga river across the country, The Central Pollution Control Board data showed on their website.
An experiment conducted by the panel of scientists & experts stated that the findings indicate that there are no bacteria in terms of MPN/100ml which identifies the number of bacteria commonly mentioned as Fecal coliform which is an indicator for contamination in the water. Also, biochemical oxygen level cut down to 3 mg/liters which is a benchmark of good quality water after ages.
However, in areas near the settlement where drains continue to discharge wastewater and in many points without properly treated, no significant upgrading has been noted and there are still pollutants in the water. Nature has can restore itself within a few years if we let it happen. The various projects on Ganga can’t approach these results which have been achieved by the lockdown. Still, experts suggest to contaminate the water before drinking.
