GANGA

River Ganga is now a ‘national’ river. The Prime minister of India announced this on November 4, 2008 after a meeting, with the ministers for water resources, environment and forests and urban development, to discuss how to bring the river back to life. Though a very important step, it is too early to predict what this ‘national status’ would actually mean to India’s most revered river and its people.

What gives us hope is the fact that government has accepted that all is not well with the Ganga Action Plan (GAP)—a dedicated programme launched in 1985 to restore the river back to bathing water quality. This certainly is winning half the battle. Press communiqué from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) reads:“there is a need to replace the current piecemeal efforts taken up in a fragmented manner in select cities with an integrated approach that sees the river as an ecological entity and addresses issues of quantity in terms of water flows along with issues of quality.” Under GAP so far Rs 1,400 crore have been spent in creating sewage conveyance and treatment facilities, crematoria etc on the Ganga and its tributaries. But the fact is that the river still remains polluted and GAP is still chasing the target—with over 45 per cent sewage generated in the basin undergoes no treatment. As a result the pollution levels have only increased—the coliform levels (count of pathogenic micro-organisms) in the river at all places (except Rishikesh upstream) make the river unfit human interaction forget consumption. Challenges are many:
We must understand that the constant meddling with the river hydrology have made things worse. Today, flows have reduced and the rivers crave for water. From hydel projects to drinking water schemes our planners have started mindlessly mining the precious waters of the river Ganga. All this is done without any assessment of the impacts on the river, its flow, its ecosystem and the livelihood of the people who are dependant on it. Bad planning based on bad data made things worse. The 10,000 megawatt capacity hydel projects in Uttaranchal, in different stages of construction, in the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi (after confluence they become the Ganga) is just a case in point.