Dead Rivers, Flaming Lakes: India’s Sewage Failure
Mohammed Azhar holds his baby niece next to a storm drain full of plastic and stinking black sludge, testament to India's failure to treat nearly two-thirds of its urban sewage. "We stay inside our homes. We fall sick if we go out," the 21-year-old told AFP in the Delhi neighborhood of Seelampur, where open gutters packed with plastic and sickly greyish water flow alongside the narrow lanes. "It stinks. It attracts mosquitoes. We catch diseases and the kids keep falling sick," he added. "There is no one to clean the filth." India at the end of April was projected to have overtaken China as the world's most populous country, according to the United Nations, with almost 1.43 billion people. Its urban population is predicted to explode in the coming decades,…