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| - Fact Check: Garbage-filled stream in Philippines passed off as Mumbai's Mithi river
Two images of a sparkling clean river and a trash-choked river are circulating on social media, with the claim that the former is Ahmedabad's Sabarmati riverfront and the latter is Mumbai's Mithi river.
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India Today Fact Check
While the first image is indeed of the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, the garbage-filled stream is in Manila, Philippines.
Two pictures one of a sparkling clean river and the other garbage-choked are circulating on social media. Netizens claim that while the former is the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, the other is Mithi river in Mumbai.
BJP Mahila Morcha social media in-charge Priti Gandhi also tweeted the comparison, claiming that this is the situation despite similar budgets for cleaning up both rivers.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that while the first picture is actually of the Sabarmati riverfront, the other is from Manila in Philippines.
Similar posts are also circulating on Facebook that can be seen here and here. The archived version of Gandhi’s tweet can be seen here.
AFWA probe
Reverse-searching the image of the garbage-filled river, we found it in the iStock website. The picture was taken on January 6, 2008.
“A river of garbage clogs a creek in Manila. Poverty and garbage disposal are major problems in the Philippines,” reads the caption. The picture was credited to Tony Oquias, a freelance photographer from the Philippines, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The same picture was carried in some websites as well, where it was described as a polluted river in the Philippines.
On the other hand, the picture of the clean river is indeed of Sabarmati as claimed in the viral posts. Reverse-searching the image, we found it in a 2013 report in “The Economic Times”. Several Gujarati websites also carried the picture in reports related to the Sabarmati riverfront development project.
Mithi vs Sabarmati
As reported by “Hindustan Times” in June 2017, the water at the mouth of Mithi river and at Versova beach was found to be the dirtiest, with pollution levels almost 13 times above the safety limit. The assessment was made by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Bound.
In February 2019, “The Hindu” reported about some volunteers who had removed over 1 lakh kg of plastic and a similar amount of hyacinth from a 350-metre patch of Mithi river.
In another report published in January this year, “The Hindu” quotes environment and forest ministry data to say that Sabarmati is among the most polluted rivers in the country.
We are not detailing the budget outlay for cleaning up Sabarmati and Mithi rivers, but it can be said with certainty that the image of the garbage-choked river in the viral post is from the Philippines and not Mumbai.
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