Fishing in the Yamuna River has been going on for centuries and it has been passed down from generation to generation. However, the fishing community is now facing serious threat due to increasing water pollution and restrictions imposed by the government.
The Yamuna now lies desolated, bringing untreated sewage, plastics and other hazardous waste from nearby industries and suburbs. This poses a serious health threat for the fishing community. Pollution is causing severe damage to the river and fish stocks are on the decline. Many fishermen have left the area since the government imposed the ban on fishing in June 2021 and are left pondering about their future.
Babu Lal (52) is a fisherman from Rai Bareli, Uttar Pradesh. Every morning, he throws his net into Yamuna’s toxic foam and prays for some kind of catch from the perished flora and fauna. After travelling 25kms from his makeshift home, he states that the catch is no longer good. According to him, the government has abandoned its duties by choosing to steal a poor community’s livelihood instead of cleaning a river.
While trying to catch fish one afternoon, he observes the water flow is lower than usual. “Fish have declined, especially golden ones, which are now rare in the Yamuna. “We used to catch 20 to 30 kg fish in a day but now we rarely catch 7 to 10 kg fish. You can see a lot of dead fish in the river, which is the bitter reality of Jumna,”says Babu Lal.
A sad generational shift, Raj Kumar (24), works as a delivery boy in the evening shift at Zomato. He fishes with his father Babu Lal in the morning but says that the declining fish population has forced many to change their profession. “Only traditional old people like my father who have been fishing since they were born are still relying on the same”, he says, looking at the now polluted sacred river. Thousands of crores of rupees have been spent on various projects to clean the river; however, pollution is still on the rise, making Yamuna more poisonous day by day.