An ailing mission to clean river Ganga

NEW DELHI:  For all the lofty promises and political rhetoric on cleaning “Maa Ganga”, the holy river is not getting rejuvenated anytime soon. Four years after the ambitious ‘Namami Gange’ mission was announced by the NDA government with a budget outlay of Rs 20,000 crore, less than 25 per cent of the sanctioned projects have been completed and only 20 per cent of the allocated funds utilised. Even the tendering process for one-fourth of the projects is yet to be completed, though the 2020 deadline is not very far.

Authorities attribute the slow progress to the delay in an actual take-off of projects owing to procedural issues. These were streamlined only by December 2016 and most of the projects were sanctioned only in March 2017. However, with the 2019 general election approaching, the government is worried that the lack of a perceptible change in the status of the holy river has upset the ruling party’s core supporters.

According to official data, only 27 of the 114 projects sanctioned in the five states that the Ganga passes through – Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal — and also Delhi and Haryana, have been completed so far. Of the total Rs17,534.59 crore sanctioned for Namami Gange so far, only Rs 3,570 crore has been utilised. The funding has been divided for projects related to sewage infrastructure, construction of ghats/crematoria, riverfront development, cleaning of ghats and river surface, among others.

Officials say cleaning a river like Ganga is a mammoth exercise and it’ll take time for the results to be visible. “It is a continuous process keeping in mind the population expansion, developing cities and livelihood depends on the river,” Union Water Resources Secretary U P Singh said.

But anxious ministers want the work done so far made aware to the masses. The overall progress of the mission was discussed at a recent Cabinet meeting and ministers expressed concern over the failure to reach out to the people and inform them about the works completed so far.

Cleaning the Ganga was part of the BJP manifesto for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and Prime Minister Modi had promised the same during his campaign in his constituency, Varanasi.

The National Mission for Clean Ganga is hopeful the tendering of projects in major polluting cities along the course of the river will be done by March 2019. “There are efforts to involve people as stakeholders,” said an NMCG source. Through campaigns like ‘Paint the City’, which will kick off during the Kumbh in Allahabad next year, people will be encouraged to paint public spaces on the theme of Ganga.