Glory of Ganga needs restoration

Despite several attempts to rejuvenate the Ganga, there has been little to show for it so far. Non-utilisation of funds is just one of the numerous problems that plague the sacred river. The adoption of a holistic approach is the only option to save the dying river

Over a century ago, in 1896, British physician E Hanbury Hankin reported in the French journal Annales de l’nstitut Pasteur that cholera microbes died within three hours in the Ganga water but continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours. The physicist’s samples were collected from below the bodies of cholera victims thrown into the river Ganga. That was then but now, the resilience of the Ganga is in peril as several pathogenic bacteria now thrive in the river and the number of Ecoli is the highest, posing a severe threat to human health and the life of the river.

Researchers from SBS Institute of Biomedical Sciences and Research, Dehradun, and Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University studied a 440 km stretch of the river in Uttarakhand. The study was a pioneering analysis of the bacterial diversity of the Ganga in which nearly 43 bacterial species were discovered. Ecoli was the most prevalent, followed by Enterobacter, Streptococcus faecalis and Pseudomonas. This study proved the dismal and deteriorating state of affairs of one of the most fabled rivers of India and probably prompted a Supreme Court bench to remark some time back that the Centre’s action plan may not help to clean the Ganga even after 200 years.

Cleaning the Ganga was a major poll promise of the NDA Government when it rode to power. But the project to clean the river has become the sole weak point in an otherwise splendid report card of the NDA Government. The Government too seems to be grappling with the mammoth task of turning around the river and restore it to its pristine glory.

Since the time the NDA Government assumed power, frenetic efforts have been made to cleanse the Ganga. A separate Ministry was formed under Uma Bharti and Rs 20,000 crore was allocated in the Budget 2015 to cleaning the Ganga by 2020, a four-fold increase over the expenditure over the past 30 years.

An umbrella programme called Namami Gange was declared along with the huge allocation and the Government officially started cleaning the Ganga and its tributaries. To speed up the process, Namami Gange was even given the status of an authority in 2016. These efforts are now proving to be too little against decades of pollution that has piled up in the river.

Despite best efforts of the Government, the result in the form of a purer river is still invisible. This led to the change of guard as Uma Bharti gave way to Nitin Gadkari as the Union Minister for the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation (MOWR & GR). Upon taking over, Gadkari declared that the Ganga will be cleaned by March 2019. This was a departure from the position of his predecessor, Uma Bharti, who had said the river would be clean by 2018.

There are multiple problems that present a hurdle for cleansing of the Ganga and unless a holistic approach is adopted, even the March 2019 deadline seems virtually impossible to achieve. The first problem is the non-utilisation of funds. A December 2017 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) showed that unused funds, the absence of a long-term plan and the lack of pollution abatement work are hampering the rejuvenation of the Ganga. The report analysed a total of 87 projects worth Rs 7,992.34 crore sanctioned after April 1, 2014. The report found that Rs 2,500 crore sanctioned to different Government organisations and public sector undertakings has not been utilised.

The report highlighted delay and non-implementation of project related to cleaning of the river, installation of sewage treatment plants and construction of toilets in households. A corpus of Rs 198.14 crore as of March 31, 2017, available in the Clean Ganga Fund was not utilised due to non-finalisation of action plan. Availability of funds is a major challenge but inability to use the available funds is unfortunate. The funds need to be immediately deployed for sewerage management, industrial effluents management, biodiversity conservation and solid waste management in addition to afforestation, rural sanitation and river front management.

Efforts to take care of India’s famous river need to reach a crescendo now as the total coliform bacteria levels in all the cities of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal has reached nearly 334 times higher than prescribed levels. As a part of the Ganga plan, special attention also needs to be done for communication and public campaign to make Ganga rejuvenation a public movement.

(The writer is an environmental journalist)