Week after fest, scars remain on floodplain
ART OF LIVING EVENT Workers say they need 7 more days to clear mess, farmers claim heavy damage to fertile land
NEW DELHI: Scars of the three-day Art of Living festival still remain visible on the Yamuna’s floodplain. On Saturday, a week after the festival ended, hundreds of workers were still working on different sections.
A few cranes and bulldozers were uprooting the bases for floodlights. “We had to dig around 10ft. Boulders were placed to keep the floodlights steady. The foundation was further strengthened with iron mould,” said Raj Kumar Sharma, one of the workers.
Around 100 men and machinery will take another week to remove all the iron and boulders buried in the floodplain. PLASTIC IN SOIL
When rain played spoilsport on the opening day, huge sheets of plastic were placed on the ground in front of the stage to keep the muck away. Now, these have become a part of the soil and at several spots, it is difficult to differentiate the plastic from the ground.
A three-member team with a small tempo was collecting garbage. “We are not supposed to remove the plastic. We will collect the garbage and take it to the Okhla landfill site,” said Harish Kumar Bhatt, employee of the waste management agency Pom Pom, said. FARMLAND BULLDOZED, RUBBLE DUMPED
On the other side of the Yamuna, a mud road, which now has its fair share of rubble, ends abruptly just metres before the river. A farmer is crouching on the ground nearby. “I am trying to restore the farmland. There is rubble everywhere. My 12-bigha plot was bulldozed and a road was made on it. They gave me ` 6,000 as compensation after killing six months of my work,” Inder Deb Sharma said. Both sides of the road, which leads to a pontoon bridge, is now a remnant of a farm where vegetables grew.
It’s a loss of around ` 3 lakh, Sharma claims. “Guruji had sent rice and solar lights for us. But we didn’t get anything,” Sharma says with a wry smile.
The Art of Living Foundation said that it had compensated all the ‘rightful owners’ ` 20,000 per acre. “We have taken land from 60 farmers. We have distributed 180 solar lamps and 10,000kg of rice among farmers. We have not paid people who are illegally using UP government’s land. They are making a hue and cry as they are scared of losing their land,” Vinay Sukhija, an AOL spokesperson, said.
He added that whole waste was being segregated on the basis of being dry or wet. Care had also been taken to serve only packed food in the venue so that minimal wet waste was generated. The festival was held from March 11 to 13 and lakhs of people from more than 150 countries participated in it.