It is a humid day in the last week of June and a group of volunteers is hard at work in an open space next to the Sultanpur Lodhi railway station, planting two-year-old saplings. Unmindful of the punishing heat, they have cleaned a kilometre-long stretch, ridding it of solid human waste accumulated over the years, levelled the area and created tracks for walking and running. Sewage from nearby homes has been diverted to a low-cost treatment plant built on the site and the treated water is used for the saplings.

Towards the evening, groups of people arrive to walk and jog in this freshly reclaimed space. “Until even a few weeks ago, this place was so dirty that you couldn’t stand here for the smell; human waste and dirt had piled up over the years and tractors dumped rubbish carted from the town,” says Balbir Singh Seenchewal, a resident of Seenchewal village in Kapurthala district, Punjab.

His Ek Onkar Charitable Trust is behind the clean-up at Sultanpur Lodhi railway station and 81 villages in Kapurthala district, as also, most notably, the Kali Bein river, a 160-km tributary of the Sutlej. His methods have proved so successful and inspiring that this community initiative is now famous as the ‘Seenchewal model’.

What exactly is the Seenchewal model and why does the Central government want to use it to clean the Ganga, even as the Delhi government hopes it can bring the Yamuna to a pristine state?

Minister for Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti came to Seenchewal to learn from the results first-hand, while Delhi Jal Board Minister Kapil Mishra asked Balbir Seenchewal for assistance in replicating his model for the Yamuna.

At its root, the model is one of honest work and community service, while using practical wisdom to guarantee results. In the process, it has taken on industry, government, vested interests among the public, and corruption.

The headwaters of a movement

The Kali Bein river in Jalandhar district springs from an underground source in the Doab region; its waters have always flowed slow and dark. By 2000, however, it was severely polluted with human waste from the surrounding villages and towns, as also industrial effluents. Upstream the ground was waterlogged, even as silt, garbage and water hyacinth choked the riverbed; fields had encroached right onto the riverbed.

Downstream, on the other hand, the area was fast drying up — alongside the non-stop pumping of groundwater, the underground aquifers failed to recharge as they were blocked by silt.

On July 15, 2000, speakers at a meeting in Jalandhar discussed all evening about the condition of the river and what should be done to clean it. It was dark by the time Seenchewal rose to speak. “We will gain nothing by eating pakoras (snacks) here,” he said, “if you really want to do something, let’s go and start work tonight.” The buzz of chatter rose momentarily, but soon most people slunk away.

The handful who remained headed straight towards the dirty, foul-smelling water body and began work on the night of July 16. They started by clearing the plants and garbage, then arranged for donated tractors and earthmovers, which worked day and night to cart away the rubbish. By laying pipes for an underground sewerage system in the villages and installing sewage treatment plants on the riverbanks, the drainage emptying into the river was diverted and turned into ‘liquid manure’ for use in the fields. This, in turn, helped preserve millions of litres of clean groundwater. “Organic waste from villages and towns too can be treated and used in the fields,” explains Seenchewal.

A river is recharged

As the silt and vegetation was removed, the water started flowing again, plants and fish appeared and nature slowly got to work repairing the damage.

As the results became visible, more and more villages joined in the efforts in a spirit of ‘kar seva’ — a community service model promoted by the Sikh gurus. (Incidentally, the Kali Bein river was where Guru Nanak, the first Sikh guru, composed the first verses of the holy book Guru Bani.)

The water table started rising and the water became usable for agriculture and even bathing and drinking. After almost a year of non-stop work, the river was flowing clean again. The Kali Bein’s water, like its name suggests, is still dark, but it is clean. Seenchewal’s eyes twinkle with pride as he cups his palms to drink a handful straight from the river. There is a cemented bathing ghat now and paths leading down to the river. The tree-lined walkways on both sides of the river are ideal for a stroll,a quick nap in the shade, or to relish the jamun, mango and other fruits weighing down the branches of the trees.

Stagnating pools of inefficiency

When Seenchewal first attempted to build sewage lines, the sub-standard pipes bought from the market broke under the weight of the covering earth. This led him to set up a factory to manufacture high-quality pipes and these continue to be used in all their projects.

Thanks to the quality of the materials, all the sewage treatment plants set up by Seenchewal still work; government initiatives, on the other hand, have shown to be ineffective even with much higher fund outlays.

In Tashpur village, barely two kilometres from Seenchewal, a state government-built sewage treatment plant stands as a clear example of mismanagement and corruption. A board proudly declares the cost: ₹1.39 crore. The farmers working nearby say it eats up space, but rarely works, even as borewells pump precious groundwater right next to it.

Seated next to the plant, Shigara Singh watches his fields and complains about the waste he sees. “We wanted the ‘baba’ model but the sarpanch and others in the village wanted this,” he rues. The lanes in his village overflow with sewage. A few of the residents who were paving the streets with bricks under a NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) scheme complained of sewage overflows whenever it rains.

“The government uses small pipes, which cannot handle the waste. In Punjab, animal and agricultural waste also flows into the gutters, so we have to prepare for that. When it rains, a pump is needed to carry away the extra water,” explains Seenchwal, contrasting the government model with his gravity fed model.

Meanwhile, scores of treatment plants built by the Punjab government are idling. “Treatment plants, with equipment costing hundreds of crores, are set up by the government; they have high running costs, fuel and electricity bills, they need engineers to man them, and when the authorities do not cater to this fund, the entire money literally goes down the drain,” Seenchewal fumes.

In December 2015, The Tribune reported that during surprise inspections of sewage treatment plants in Jalandhar and Kapurthala, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) Member Secretary Babu Ram found four plants idling in two districts. Large amounts of untreated water from the chemical and leather industry was flowing into drains. Industrial effluent needs expensive treatment, which only the government can fund. The PPCB has set up four treatment plants for chemical effluents and 47 for sewage.

A clear winner

At the Seenchewal-built treatment plants, paddy fields within a radius of 5-13 km use only the ‘liquid manure’ generated by it; the tube wells are given a rest, while the village streets appear clean. To top it all, there is just a faint odour, not the suffocating, foul stench that I encountered during past visits to multiple sewage treatment plants.

In Seenchewal’s piped sewage model, there are overflow traps built every few hundred metres to facilitate regular maintenance work. This ensures that none of the 81 plants, some running for 15-odd years, faces any blockage. Work is currently on in five more villages.

“There has been a u-turn in how we think, people are getting angry with the inaction of the government,” Seenchewal says.

His model works at one-fourth the cost of a government-led sewage treatment project, with results that have stunned scientists, students, researchers and policymakers.

“Based on how much money the village wants to spend,we can build a treatment plant at the lowest cost. For example, at Sultanpur Lodhi we have used just five pipes and earthmovers. The government was not helping and the locals had no money, so it was built at the lowest possible cost. “My motive is to solve the problem with the least amount of money, using people’s effort instead. We recently showed our treatment plants to sarpanches belonging to 1,600 villages near the Ganga,” he says.

If even a handful of those leaders can replicate the Seenchewal brand of dedication, the Ganga will perhaps flow mighty once again.