Revered by millions and integral to India’s civilisational history, Ganga has become a victim of poor management, bad policies and lack of will. The river is slowly dying
The state of India’s main rivers reflects the callousness and ineptitude with which we approach the issue of managing our natural resources. Thanks to a lack of long-term river conservation or water management policy, several rivers across the country have either dried up or resemble rivulets. And, those which still flow fine are wracked by pollution, and often resemble giant drains.
After a quarter century of trying, and constantly failing, to clean up the river, the UPA Government in the recent past wiped clean the old slate and decided to start afresh. The result was the establishment of the National Ganga River Basin Authority in February 2009, which is responsible for cleaning and conserving the river. Populated by several top leaders, including the Chief Ministers of States which comprise the sprawling Ganga river basin as well as the Prime Minister as its chairman, the high-powered NGRBA has a specific mid-term goal: To stop untreated municipal or industrial waste from being drained into the river.
The NGRBA was formed after protests that Ganga Action Plan failed to clean up the river. It has been constituted under Section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, as an empowered, planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating, authority with the objective to ensure effective abatement of pollution and conservation of the river Ganga by adopting a holistic river basin approach.
The NGRBA in its first meeting resolved that, under ‘Mission Clean Ganga’, by 2020 no untreated municipal sewage and industrial effluents will flow into the Ganga and the investments required to create the necessary treatment and sewage infrastructure will be shared suitably between the Union and the State Governments. So far, projects amounting to Rs 2,600 crore have been sanctioned under the NGRBA programme.
The much awaited last meeting on April 17, which took place only under pressure from activists and media, came a cropper with no seemingly decisive action-plan or even a date for the next meeting. Due to such neglect, non-Governmental members including Rashid Hyatt Siddiqui and Magsaysay award winner Rajendra Singh had last month tendered their resignation to the Prime Minister. The meeting last week was apparently a result of pressure created due to 80-year old noted environmentalist GD Agrawal’s fast.
The Ganga, revered by the Hindus and intrinsic to its lore and literature, while providing water to over 40 per cent of India’s population, has become a victim of poor management, bad policy and sheer lack of will by the Union Government to the save the river in the last 25 years.
Ganga river basin is the largest river basin in India and the fourth-largest in the world, with a catchment area covering a sprawling 8,61,404 sq km. The 2,525 km long river flows through nine States of India. The WWF has marked Ganga among the 10 most endangered rivers in the world.
Nearly all the untreated sewage, waste water from tanneries distilleries, paper mills, industrial effluent, runoff from chemical fertilisers and pesticides used in agriculture within the basin, and large quantities of solid waste are dumped in the river every day. On top of that, certain practices followed by the people in the name of religion like throwing holy offerings, often packaged in non-biodegradable plastics also add to the muck of the river. Almost 75 per cent of Ganga’s pollution is due to municipal sewage and 25 per cent because of industrial effluents.
Ironically, the river is dirtier now than in 1985, when the plan to clean up the Ganga was operationalised. Between 1985 and 2009, the Union Government has spent Rs 916 crore to clean up the river. The river now has much bacteria because of the increasing discharge of untreated domestic and industrial effluents. Also, the flow of the river has become sluggish at several locations due to dams and growing habitat pressure.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his two-day visit to BHU in Varanasi in March 2008, had promised that the Government would accelerate the pace of cleaning the Ganga and inject new vigour. But, the promise remained unfulfilled even after four years. In fact, situation has since turned from bad to worse during this period. The only ‘developments’ during the time had been that the Ganga was declared the National River and the NGRBA was formed to clean it up.
The NGRBA brought the curtains down on both GAP-I and GAP-II, in which an amount of Rs 822 crore was spent. GAP-I was launched in 1985 an GAP-II in stages between 1993 and 1996.
The Union Government’s apathy can be seen from the fact that NGRBA has met only thrice since its inception. Activists now wonder if the NGRBA will meet the same fate as the ambitious Ganga Action Plan undertaken in 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi did. Crores of rupees spent on the GAP actually went down the drain due to poor planning and misappropriation of funds by various agencies. Voicing disappointment over such lack of ‘sense of urgency’ in saving the Ganga river, Mr Siddiqui said that he would most probably not continue in the panel anymore as he is not hopeful of any concrete action. He went further opining that the Prime Minister’s declaration of Ganga as National River is ‘nothing but an exercise of tokenism’. last June, Swami Nigamanand gave up his life while fasting for over 75 days in Haridwar against rising pollution in the Ganga.
Admitting that their past efforts have not been very successful, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said that saving river Ganga ‘is a top priority’. “We must find the right balance between the need for environmental and ecological conservation of the Ganga and its basin on one hand and the imperatives of growth and development on the other”, said Mr Singh last week.
As of April 2011, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had approved a Rs 7,000 crore project to clean the Ganga. The Union Government’s share will be Rs 5,100 crore and that of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, Rs 1,900 crore.
An estimated investment of around Rs 15,000 crore will be required in the next 10 years to meet the ‘Mission Clean Ganga’. The Centre is now heavily dependent on the World Bank’s financial assistance of US$1 billion.
The World Bank’s approval is surely a boost to authorities. But there is no doubt that without proper monitoring and close scrutiny, the bank’s generous loan is bound to be squandered and the project will meet the same fate as of GAP.
Every day about 2,900 million litres of sewage is discharged into the river. But, the Prime Minister admitted that the existing infrastructure has a capacity to treat only 1,100 million litres per day, leaving a huge deficit.
The Planning Commission, in its latest report to the Supreme Court, makes the alarming conclusion that, even if 100 per cent utilisation of funds were to be achieved in all sewage treatment plants along the river, Ganga would only be rid of one-third of the total waste generated in the river’s basin. Commenting on the health of the river, the commission states that Ganga downstream Haridwar fails practically all standards of purity, whether it is the ‘biochemical oxygen demand’ figure, ‘dissolved oxygen’ value or the ‘faecal coliform’ count. For this deplorable state of affairs, the commission blames faulty planning of capacities despite satisfactory utilisation of funds. As a result, there is a huge gap between the amount of sewage that is being generated all along the Ganga basin and the amount of waste being treated by the installed sewage treatment plants.
At the heart of the problem lies our piecemeal approach to treating effluents flowing into not just the Ganga but practically every river in this country. We simply have not been able to develop a holistic system to preserve our rivers. Unless the Government is serious about punishing those responsible for polluting the river, no action plan would succeed in restoring the Ganga’s pristine glory.
It goes without saying that the Government should formulate strict pollution norms for industries that are situated on river banks and enforce them, as well as boost sewage treatment capacities along the course of these rivers. On our part, we would do well to stop treating our rivers and other water resources as garbage dumps. There are examples from around the world where active public-private partnerships have dying rivers back to life.
Unless a drastic change is effected in our river conservation methods, we would be doing a great insult to the embodiment of faith that is our rivers. This is our last chance to save the sacred river. Failing to do so will have catastrophic consequences.
