Modi hopes to duplicate his Sabarmati success
Reports that Mr Narendra Modi will make rejuvenation of the Ganga river a ‘national project' if he becomes Prime Minister are heartening. Given his track record of successfully reclaiming the Sabarmati river in Gujarat, there is now a fresh ray of hope that the Ganga too will be restored to its pristine glory. According to Mr Modi's close aide Amit Shah, the plan to revive the Ganga will be a Union Government project and it will be linked to the development of Varanasi. This is as it should be. Varanasi is the spiritual capital of India whose destiny has been eternally intertwined with the flow of the Ganga. It is also the constituency from where Mr Modi has contested the lok Sabha election. It will be in the fitness of things if Mr Modi, as the Prime Minister of India and MP from Varanasi, can revitalise the Ganga and clean up Kashi even as he leads the country into a new era of economic growth, social development and material prosperity.
For decades, there have been ‘Ganga actions plans’ and ‘save Ganga projects’ galore; each has subsumed hundreds of crorers of taxpayer rupee. Yet, with each passing rescue mission, the situation has only become worse. The Ganga as it flows through Varanasi is downright filthy and could be fatal. Faecal coliform count of the river at Assi Ghat, where the Ganga enters the city, is 60,000 per 100ml, which then climbs up to 1.5 million per 100ml by the time it leaves Varanasi. Compare this to the standards set by National River Conservation Directorate, which says that ideally FCC should only be around 500 per 100ml; if it crosses 2,500 per 100ml, then the water is unfit for human contact. The reasons behind the Ganga's dirty flow are well known: Every year, 33,000 dead bodies, 300 tonnes of half-burnt bodies and 16,000 tonnes of ash are dumped into the river; Varanasi alone puts an estimated 300-350 million litres of sewage into the river everyday and just about 100 million litres of that is treated, with obsolete technology that too; an equally alarming amount of industrial waste, again mostly untreated, also goes into the river. And then there are the dams and reservoirs built all along the Ganga's path that divert water from the mainstream.
Several leaders prior to Mr Modi have sought to clean the Ganga or promised to do so, but with little success. The first Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1986 to cover 25 towns and cities across three States. It was shut down in 2000 after it had gulped down more than Rs 462 crore. An even more ambitious second version of the GAP, covering almost 100 settlements, came into effect in 2001. More than Rs 2,285 crore was sanctioned for the project which was eventually declared a failure in 2004. In 2009, the Rs 7,000 crore-National Ganga River Basin Authority was constituted with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the helm. The Authority put on hold some Government-approved river projects on the Bhagirathi and declared the 130km stretch between Gaumukh and Uttarkashi as an eco-sensitive zone, but that's about it. The reason why these projects failed is not due to paucity of expertise or funds, but because those at the helm rarely made a sincere and concerted effort to implement the plans. Hopefully, Mr Modi will prove to be different if he becomes the Prime Minister.