Headless Durga sculptures standing in the morning sun welcomed visitors to the private hut of artist Ganesh Chitrakar. They looked harmless, even though they are at the center of an environmental dispute between government officials and traditional artists.

Chitrakar came to New Delhi 20 years ago from West Bengal to make the Durga figures, following a tradition a family tradition spanning generations. Once a year, the statues, mostly of female dieties, feature prominently in the Durga Puja festival, one of the most important Hindu holidays in India. Chitrakar and other artists count heavily on profits from the sale of sculptures. As for the figures themselves, most are dumped into rivers after the festivities end.

"There is profit," he conceded, "but it comes only after deducting the payments made to the artisans I bring from West Bengal to Delhi. I also have to look for decoration and ornaments of the idols from Kolkata, which leaves us with very less amount of profit. There are other festivals too but Durga Puja guarantees that all of our work will be bought. We are artisans from many generations and our livelihood depends on it."

While the festival is a time for celebration, it is now also a cause for controversy. Government officials and some national media have blamed chronic water pollution on the dumping of statues and other festival-generated trash.

Every year about 1,000 clay idols of different shapes and sizes are thrown into the section of the Yamuna River running through Delhi. Lead-based paints and other chemicals used for coloring the statues' fabric along with other material add unmeasured quantities of toxins to the already polluted water.

A Times of India article reported a huge fish kill in the Yamuna River behind the Taj Mahal at Agra about a week before the end of this year's festival. The newspaper quoted an environmentalist as saying a shortage of oxygen in the muddy water may have been a cause but it also noted the river's normal polluted condition.

A Web site managed by the Center for Science and Environment said the Delhi stretch of the river is badly contaminated and is also teeming with disease-causing bacteria. This continues despite a government plan inaugurated in 1993 to clean up the river. A government report earlier this year called the Delhi portion of the river a sewage drain, with municipal, industrial and agricultural runoff listed as other pollution sources.

The 40-mile stretch of the Yamuna, barely 2 percent of its total length, is estimated to contribute more than 80 percent of the pollution load in the 850-mile-long river.

For Chitrakar, it's a simple case of officials seeking scapegoats instead of solutions.

"I have been making idols since childhood and we never faced these problems then," he said. "Factory waste hasn’t been even looked upon by the government but still we are being (accused) first. It’s the industries which are polluting Yamuna."

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