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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Rs 20,000 crore spent in 28 years, Ganga still a flowing mess -Manjari Mishra
-The Times of India
 

"Ma Ganga aur Benares se mera rishta purana hai," BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said, pledging his intent to restore the Ganga to its original glory while campaigning in Varanasi. Plans to clean up the 2,500 km holy river too date back to older times -the first Ganga Action Plan was announced in 1986 - but activists claim the stretch flowing through Varanasi is in worse shape today than it was five years ago, with "river squatters" staking claim to its banks.

The government has spent over Rs 20,000 crore on various clean-up projects, according to a 2012 Central Pollution Control Board report. Yet at Varanasi, the Ganga is little more than a deadly cocktail of groundwater, sewage discharge and spillage from its tributaries. Over the last five years, houses and parks have come up on the river banks from Rajghat to Ramnagar, Nagva to the far end of Assi Ghat, reducing the width of the river to almost half its size. "On one hand, barrages and dams have reduced water flow to a trickle while on the other residents are bent upon reclaiming the river," says BD Tripathi, environmental scientist at the Benares Hindu University (BHU) and member of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA). Locals claim officials were alerted to land being illegally reclaimed in October 2013, when 22 unauthorized new constructions collapsed.

"The boundary walls of dozens of homes were also washed away in the flood. But six months later everything is back in place," says Amit Tripathi, local entrepreneur.

Attempts to cleanse the Ganga go back to late PM Rajiv Gandhi's Rs 1,700 crore Ganga Action Plan (GAP). A 2004 parliamentary committee report declared the project a failure, due to insufficient funds and monitoring mechanisms. In 2009, after the Ganga was accorded National River status, the Rs 7,000 crore NGRBA was constituted, headed by prime minister Manmohan Singh. In 2011, the World Bank sanctioned $1 billion towards the NGRBA clean-up. The year after, at the third NGRBA meeting, the environment ministry commissioned a consortium of seven IITs to prepare a comprehensive River Basin Management Plan.

But the river's water woes were apparent even in 2010, when a study by the Ganga Lab and River Ecosystem Environment Management and Training Centre at BHU revealed that "the quantity of (original) Ganga jal could in fact be less than 1% in Varanasi". That's primarily because dams and barrages trap the river and divert waters, and toxic substances are dumped in the river as it flows through UP. There are 12 dams and reservoirs on the Ganga's route till Varanasi and each takes a toll on the river.

The Bhimgoda barrage at Haridwar diverts 95 per cent of the 'holy' waters to the western and eastern Ganga canals while the next halt, at Narora, directs 100 per cent of the flow into the lower Ganga canal. Thereafter, the river is totally bereft of Ganga jal, says UK Chaudhary, former BHU Centre head. "It only comprises surface water, drainage and flow from other tributaries."

At Kanpur, 420 tanneries dump untreated effluents into the river and that flows into Varanasi, where the bathing ghats "are the worst polluted pockets perhaps in all North India," says Professor BD Agrawal, a BHU environmental scientist and NGRBA member. The faecal coliform count (FCC) at Assi - the point where the Ganga enters the city - is 60, 000, but shoots up to 1. 5 million at the tail end. The two cremation grounds - Harish Chandra and Manikarnika ghat - dump 33,000 bodies, 300 tonnes of half-burnt bodies and 16,000 tonnes of ash annually into the river.

Tripathi says the only positive outcome of NGRBA was the decision to stop 13 projects approved by Centre or states on the Bhagirathi and declaring the 130 km stretch between Gaumukh and Uttarkashi an eco-sensitive zone. But what is needed is the will to rectify the very first flaw, says Chaudhary, referring to the dams and reservoirs. Unless the river is allowed a free flow, attempts under the NGRBA would be just a cosmetic exercise, he says. "Can you expect a man to live after he donates 95 per cent of his blood?" he asks.

In February 2014, the PMO directed the environment ministry to draft a central legislation to save the Ganga, but activists are pinning their hopes on the new government. "Modi has promised to carry out Ganga cleaning on the lines of the Sabarmati project. But he needs to remember the eco-system of both rivers is different," says Tripathi but Professor Vishwambhar Nath Mishra, mahanth of Sankat Mochan Temple and president of Sankat Mochan Foundation, an NGO working for the cause of Ganga for over two decades, says he is happy political parties have made the river a poll plank.

"If it is really a sign of increasing political will to do something for the river, we can hope for good after the formation of new government at the centre," he says.

(With Binay Singh)