The Supreme Court asked the government not to give a bureaucratic answer about its plan to clean up the Ganga and instead unveil a stage-by-stage timeline for effective monitoring. Telling Kumar that the government had given a “very bureaucratic answer” to its query, the court said it wanted to know how much will be achieved in the five years this government will be in office. During the last hearing on Aug 13, the court had sought the status report on the government’s action plan to clean the Ganga along with a roadmap. India’s new government has launched an ambitious mission to clean up the mighty Ganges River, worshipped by Hindus for centuries, ironically, for its mythical ability to cleanse the sins of humans. Supreme Court asked government, can you indicate the stages through which this plan has to move and the time involved in each stage? The court wanted to be enlightened by “someone who has a comprehensive view of how Ganga would be made pollution free, nitty-gritty of the plan, and how the milestone can be achieved”. The 2,525-km long Ganga, which originates in the Himalayas, is considered the holiest of all rivers by Hindus.
How and in what way Modi government is planning to achieve this is yet not known to people. But otherwise, unless we change our religious traditions, we cannot clean up our rivers. Our religious rituals is the major cause of this pollution. By terming Ganga as a holy river, by believing and preaching that a dip in Ganga river will cleanse you of all your sins, we Hindus caused great damage to Ganga. The sin we created is in our mind, not in our skin. One cannot wash away one sin by simply washing ourselves in Ganga, the dirty mind will remain dirty even after that. People should be banned from taking bath in the river in the name of rituals. If any Hindu considers Ganga as his/her mother, then please do not pollute her with your body excretions.
Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal accused BJP leader Narendra Modi of making false promises of cleaning the Ganga if he wins the parliamentary election from Varanasi. It was promised by Rajiv Gandhi during his campaign for the Prime Minister as well. Also, then Minister for Environment Jayanti Natarajan has said the pollution of Yamuna and Ganga is a disgrace in Parliament. UPA government did nothing to restore Ganga its pride. Gandhi family has not been able to fulfill the promise made by Rajiv Gandhi for 25 years.
One of South Asia’s longest rivers, the holy Ganges – or Mother Ganga as revered by Indians – is also counted today among the world’s most polluted rivers, sullied by the reckless discharge of effluents into it over the decades. Billions of rupees have been washed away since the 1980s as government and non-government groups have struggled, and failed, to restore the purity of the water of river Ganges. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi has listed the task as a pet project and hopes to showcase a clean and pristine Ganges as one of the achievements of his Bharatiya Janata Party government. Last week, an inter-ministerial panel was formed to oversee the task held its first meeting with government and private bodies linked to the effort and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave it 20 billion rupees (S$411 million) for the financial year ending March 31. Experts say that while the goal is not impossible, there has never been a shortage of money or ideas. Nothing is impossible if the will is there and the plan is well-conceived and fool-proof. S.N. Upadhyay, a founder member and director of the Sankat Mochan Foundation, formed in the northern city of Varanasi in 1982 to campaign for a clean Ganges. If we can reach the moon, why can’t we manage to separate waste water from the Ganges and make it clean like it was several decades ago? The problem is there has not been convergence of effort.
The Ganges originates in the Himalayas and passes through the states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal before ending its 2,525km journey in the Bay of Bengal. There are 50 cities along its banks and they account for more than three quarters of the pollutants entering the river. Together, they generate 2,723 million litres a day (MLD) of sewage. Of that, only 1,209 MLD is treated before entering the Ganges, according to a 2013 estimate by India’s pollution watchdog. Much of the remaining toxic pollutants are generated by industries – pulp and paper, chemical, sugar, distillery, tannery and food and beverage. Images and reports of the impact of this pollution, however, make for more shocking reading. Witnesses and experts have for years highlighted the muck entering the Ganges in different colors at different places – from the dark brown filth of domestic sewage from the cities and towns to the toxic black, blue, green and yellow liquids, some of them carcinogenic, discharged by industries. The stark images also include those of Hindus cremating the dead on the banks of the river, particularly in the holy city of Varanasi – Modi’s parliamentary constituency – and dispersing the ashes in the water.
Worse still, it is not uncommon to find human bodies and animal carcasses bobbing in the water or people defecating in the open beside the river. Although these activities account for only a small portion of the overall pollution, experts say they indicate how Indians have taken the Ganges for granted.
The impact of such large-scale pollution is equally horrifying. The 2013 report by the Central Pollution Control Board said that levels of fecal coliform – a disease-causing bacterium – in the Ganges are above acceptable limits except in the mountains where it originates. Some prized varieties of fishes are said to be rarely found in stretches in West Bengal and fishermen have been reported to claim that they catch more plastic bags than fishes these days. With studies finding a high rate of water-borne diseases among residents of Varanasi who regularly bathe in the Ganges, people have become reluctant to use the water for bathing, let alone for drinking or cooking. Experts say efforts to clean the Ganges have failed as a result of poor planning and execution.
