Rivers in India are being exploited in the name of development.

Globally, three rivers have been revived to internationally approved scientific and  ecological standards - Hudson River (USA); Thames River (UK) and Rhine River (EU). In each case the absolute scientific fact is that their DO reading (the verifiable measure of Dissolved Oxygen content in river water) had fallen below the minimum healthy norm of 2 ppm, 5 ppm & 3 ppm, respectively. The healthy norm is 8 ppm (parts per million). It took all the above three river basin populations 30 to 40 years of river basin wide vision and discipline to restore the DO reading of the river waters to 8 ppm.

https://www.lenntech.de/periodic/water/oxygen/why_the_oxygen_dissolved_is_important.htm

It can be done. Your honour, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, you must suo moto lay down the directive that no

• river development project,
• river beautification project,
• river-side development project,
• river sewage treatment project

in India must be allowed to be initiated into a budgeting level of decision unless there is a study of the above three rivers (Hudson, Thames, Rhine) and that study is compared and contrasted with a matching scientific study of the Indian river where the local, state or central government has announced any project that meddles with the river, river bed, river banks and river basin inclusive of catchment area highlands of the river.

Any Detailed Project Report (DPR) of any river project - which meddles with the river and river ecology - must include a major portion (90% of the DPR) expressing the DO reading history of the river going back 100 years and the state of the DO reading of the river today (with weekly DO monitoring at every point source of sewage into the river being imposed on the local-government proposing the river project) and absolutely any river-project DPR must include how and when the Dissolved Oxygen reading of the river water went below 4 ppm, how the species of original fish died out because of reduced DO, and how and who will fetch the river water DO reading back to match with 8 ppm. This was achieved by three river basin populations. Why should India have lower standards and only pretend to 'develop' the river with no reference, of even one strong legally-imperative paragraph regarding the international norm of regaining and maintaining 8 ppm DO in the river.

From 1964 to 1980 the depleted total of only 2 fish species left in the Thames river were increased to 90 species ! In only 16 years.

https://storage.googleapis.com/carnegie-dge-scope-mirror/SCOPE_22/SCOPE_22_2.2_Andrews_195-228.pdf  (page 12)

Any and every Indian river-project must also plan at this level. In Pune city, Maharashtra State, India, the fishermen tell us the Mutha river used to have 70 species of fish. Now there are only 2 species left.

Your Excellency Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India - do we want our rivers to be rivers without fish? When the DO reading of the river water falls below 4 ppm, most fish species die for want of Oxygen. Shall every Indian citizen be known as a hypocrite who calls a river as Mother but one who is ignorant of international ecological standards of river water DO norms - or worse - knows the river water DO norm and ignores it because he thinks he and his country are too weak to rise to international standards?

Save our rivers ! Bring strict imperatives on local to district to state to central governments, ministries and departments in India - to include DO revival and fish species revival in all the rivers of India where the government at any level announces any project that meddles with the river and makes a change of any kind at all, in the existing river.

The easy way to word the imperative is: "Every river development and river cleaning and river beautification and river-side beautification project must include an integrated solid waste and liquid waste management plan that involves educating and mobilizing and strictly and legally demanding and commanding that the entire population of the river basin - every family - and all the local & and regional and overarching government who are decision-makers and project-implementers inclusive of all elected and un-elected politicians and all bureaucrats from all departments and ministries to bring back the DO of the river to 8 ppm and to bring back the original number of species of fish that once existed in the river.

Match up Indian river-project standards to the best  International standards. No compromise on the "DO should be equal to 8 ppm" and "bring the fish species back to original norms". Here ~eight is equal to infinity~  because maintaining the DO norm of a river at 8 ppm, of dissolved oxygen content in the river-water, is an infinitely important life and death matter for the very survival of the fish in the river and therefore an infinitely important matter of life and death of the river too. Is a river, in which fish cannot survive, a river at all? Is it not a dead river then - a river without fish? Do we want the Indian fishermen to tell their children - this Indian river used to have fish in it? Do we want to be a nation which does not know how to set standards for serving our mother-rivers?