Of the world’s rivers, the Ganga isn’t the longest, the widest or the oldest. Yet, if sacredness were a parameter, the Ganga’s score would be tropospheric. This is particularly intriguing for the 21st century when rivers are viewed as requiring protection and care, for the purposes of ecological balance, tourism, commerce and conservation science.
The view that the Ganga is ‘polluted’ or is dying due to human abuse and needs concrete, scientific management is a thoroughly modern view and younger than the republic of India. Victor Mallet’s River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India’s Future is an account of the journalist’s travels along several stretches of the river.
He begins from the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand where the glaciers seed a pristine river. He reports from several towns and cities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — Kanpur, Allahabad, Patna — that bear the brunt of pollution.
Mallet’s work is aimed at an international audience that assumes no background knowledge of the river’s significance to Hinduism and, therefore, he weaves crisp mythology-backgrounders, as well as several oral histories to give context to the places he visits. However, the most impressive sections of the books are Mallet’s sharp accounts on the various players — bureaucrats, tannery owners, temple priests, activists — who have varied opinions on why the river is polluted and what ought to be done to clean it.
Though he doesn’t break investigative ground and extensively relies on second-hand reportage, he describes the central problem of Ganga clean-up missions — that is, in spite of promises from several governments, preceding Narendra Modi’s to clean up the river, there’s been little progress because most times projects are announced, States draw up plans to get a share of the funds and then this money “disappears.” This government has allotted ₹20,000 crore to clean up the river with very little so far to show as results.
However, there is an unprecedented focus on engaging private companies to set up treatment plants. Will it work? It’s too early to tell. Mallet, who’s keen on sailing and birds, apportions considerable length to the travails of the Gangetic river dolphin as well as his sightings of drongo and lammergeier and various other birds that he spotted on his travels. In sum, the extent of ground he has covered and the pacy narrative make the book a valuable reference point to understanding one of the world’s most intriguing rivers.
River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India’s Future; Victor Mallet, Oxford University Press, ₹550.