Those who worship Ganga have turned it into a dump. Who will save the holiest river?
A few years ago, I got a chance to cross river Ganga, near Patna, in a boat. The water appeared dark grey and as one approached the banks, it carried an unpleasant smell. People were taking a "holy dip" in the river to wash away their sins, just as millions of others do every day. But it seems that even these worshippers of the Ganga, who feel pure and clean upon the taking the holy dip, themselves do nothing to make it clean.
The river is 2,525km-long and originates at Gangotri, where its water is pure, transparent and clean, and finally falls into the Bay of Bengal, where it becomes dark grey and polluted beyond redemption. Today, the pollution level is so high that while the Ganga reaches Haridwar in clean, clear streams after descending from Gangotri, its waters become unfit even for bathing.
It shows that the very people who consider the Ganga holy and spiritual are responsible for polluting it. The river is at its worst near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh where more than 800 leather factories discharge their waste into the "holy waters". Apart from big cities where the Ganga flows, like Haridwar, Patna, Allahabad and Kanpur, there are many small ones which skip our notice. These, too, play their part in polluting the river. According to the World Wildlife Fund, Ganga is one of the world's ten rivers that are on the verge of extinction. Our holiest water body is choking to death. That goes on to show just how severe the state of the Ganga is.
It is not that the government has not tried to save the river. The Ganga Action Plan was launched in two phases by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Phase 1 was launched in 1985 and covered 25 Ganga towns in three states, and phase 2 covered 59 towns in five states.
Decades later, under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) was set up. In 2014, the BJP-led Narendra Modi government approved the Namami Gange mission with a massive budget outlay of Rs 20,000 crore to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution and conservation and rejuvenation of the Ganga.
Then, in October 2016, the National Mission for Ganga (NMCG) was set up. Despite all these schemes, we have been unable to meet the simple goal of cleaning the revered river. The government has set up sewerage treatment plants but they either do not work or are deficient because every day, millions of gallons of sewage is dumped into the Ganga, so the river flows with effluents and chemicals.
River Ganga is the lifeline of almost 40 per cent of India's population. In its journey, the Ganga provides many direct economic benefits and bears much spiritual value. The river also shelters so many other living beings — it is worth mentioning that the Ganga dolphin is our the national aquatic animal. Besides, it regulates the climate and plays an important role as the backbone of our economy in the region.
It's time we, as citizens, thought about the Ganga seriously without wasting any time. Instead of blaming the government and other institutions for polluting the Ganga, we should think of our own responsibilities.
Simply not throwing garbage or leftovers into the river and pressing our local administration for water treatment plants can make a big change. We have started movements against some practices, but now is the time to start a movement for rivers, especially the holiest of them all.