How to Steal a River

How to Steal a River
Singh said that Most important,
An oversilted river — a river with too much sand — is also prone to flooding and changing course, and strategic sand mining can help keep it on track.
"I believe in the power of the people," Singh told me on my last day in the New Delhi suburbs, just before we
got into his pristine white Hindustan Ambassador to go talk to the villagers of Jhatta about sand mining.
"If the district magistrate told me to stop wearing clothes," he asked, "should I take off my shirt?" Rollo Romig is a journalist based in New York.
His previous posting was in Shamli district, which also lies on the Yamuna, and it was said
that he put a complete stop to sand mining there — the first I had heard of any such success anywhere in India.
But it’s especially difficult to single out the effects of sand mining on the Yamuna because the river is troubled in so many different ways.
The truth is that with the exception of a couple of months during monsoon season,
by the time the Yamuna River reaches Greater Noida, there is no river at all.