Cleaning Ganga: Dispelling some Myths and Wrong Perceptions

1 — Goddess Ganga is pure, she cleans us of our sins; she can cleanse herself, no need mortals’ intervention; she has self-cleansing power... 

Figure 1: Beautiful Ganga and Balmy Tales: from Times of India (Speaking Tree)

It may be argued that such ideas are obsolete now at this twenty-first century, particularly among educated citizens. But no. And the myth which sanctifies our uncaring attitude towards mother Ganga is pretty widespread, which in turn causes public apathy or unenthusiastic effort towards cleaning Ganga. The 7-IIT SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) on GAP-I and GAP-II mentioned this point too as a weakness. 

Many of those who worship Ganga (and other gods and goddesses) release plenty of puja materials like flowers etc in Ganga water. But all such materials are effectively oxygen-demanding wastes. These wastes in their process of bio-degradation eat up oxygen dissolved in water which in turns causes an untoward chemical environment which, to say the least, is harmful for fish and other aquatic life-forms including the endangered Gangetic River Dolphins and turtles. Religious organisations and institutions may consider intervention in this regard.

2 — Last time they spent more than 20 billion in GAP-I and GAP-II and this time we were hearing of Rs 63 billion during Modi’s Namami Gange scheme and during Ganga Manthan we even heard of Nitin Gadkari’s Rs 800,000,000,000 super-project. So much money will be thrown into water!

Nobody is draining out money, actually. The money spent by govt circulates in the economy and goes on increasing our much-revered GDP. Even if we agree that there was a massive wastage In GAP in terms of getting ‘things’ worth that much money, the clean-up that was started by Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet gave back several benefits. While one may see benefit in bigger fish catch or at least a continuation of quantum of catch (stalling reduction is also a gain) other may get indirect benefit from improved sanitation or direct benefit from tourism. Many towns got sewage and waste treatment facilities. Plus, many cities get drinking water from Ganges (through treatment, of course) and this water-treatment would have been costlier had there been no clean-up.

All such benefits can be calculated and a cost-benefit analysis could be done. It is also true for non-tangible benefits – for example leaving a cleaner Ganga for our future generation implies a ‘bequeath value’ that we are ‘willing to pay’ – even if we are ‘non-users’, that is, we are not directly any user, even if some of us do not go for taking a holy-dip and we may also leave aside probability of our grandchildren’s usage. A.J. James and M.N Murty did a commendable task of measuring the ‘value’ of GAP for non-users applying contingent valuation method (CVM).

In their study done in the 1990s they found that educated city-dwellers of India were willing to pay anything between Rs 180 to 500 (we simplified a lot) for the Ganga clean-up project. For better ‘return’ they were, in general, in favour of giving the money to some trustworthy non-governmental organisations instead of giving the money to government. And Anil Markandya and M N Murty authored a book — “Cleaning-up the Ganges: A Cost-benefit Analysis of the Ganga Action Plan” which was published by the Oxford University Press in the year 2000. There they showed that public money was not drained off in vain, indeed we got ‘returns’ of that public investment, we got benefits which were not at all trivial.

So, criticisms against government for their Ganga cleaning ventures must be rethought, though of course money spoilage, if any, should be checked. 

3 — This time there will be positive result. See, how eager Modiji is, how much he respects Mother Ganga, how beautifully he formulated – Aviral Dhara, Nirmal Dhara – continuous and clean... And govt is making a budget of almost a trillion...

Keenness, reverence etc all may be starting points but you cannot deliver with those only. Moreover, those Aviral dhara and Nirmal dhara phrases were all old slogans. In the 2012 IIT-SWOT analysis we had those terms. Still earlier, in the 2010 Yatra Report of Save Ganga Movement we heard of these coinages. In 2005 we heard “Ganga ko nirmal rahne do - Ganga ko aviral bahne do” slogan from a group of students and activists at Kanpur who took a Ganga cleaning expedition... But of course, if there is a pro-active government, citizens may dream and demand better environment including clean rivers.

A more welcome gesture on part of the government would have been an open appreciation that we should be learning from the experience, the weaknesses and strengths of previous GAPs (GAP-I & GAP-II), or learning from gaps in our GAPs before we launch next programme.

The Navigation proposal of the govt, as we are hearing it, is highly dangerous. Making Ganga a set of interconnected navigation channels is suicidal – as some experts feel. V N Mishra, Professor of Electronics at IIT-BHU and also head priest of Sankat Mochan Temple opines, “If these barrages will be constructed on the river Ganga at every 100 KM then the divided part of this holy river would become like 10-15 separate large ponds, where the river's continuous flow of water will be obstructed, raising serious threat and rise in water pollution levels”.

Figure 2:  2010, Ganga After Maneri Dam, from the blog of V. Sundaram, IAS

More and more constructions that actually impede flow are taking a toll in various ways. Without a good flow how can a river assimilate environmental loads? The IIT SWOT study [Dec 2011] remarked – “The upper and lower Ganga canals have diverted almost entire amount of the river flow in Uttar Pradesh. This diversion has reduced the capacity of the river to absorb pollution as absence of adequate flows has affected the process of dilution.” And if we bother about aquatic animals, they will face a severe threat — every time their corridor is cut into separate pieces they experience reduced propagation rate; less diversity and reduced genetic pool threaten ecosystems. For example, the barrages and dams are also responsible for reduction in number of our national aquatic animal – the Ganges Dolphin.  

It is very disheartening to learn from environmental scientists that the Ganga Manthan meet organised by the NDA govt did not focus on urgent environmental needs like ensuring more and freer flow of the Ganga. Prof B D Tripathi of BHU thinks: “Ganga Manthan lacked the discussions on how to ensure continuous and uninterrupted flow of river from Gangotri to Ganga Sagar to be maintained”.

Slowing down of the river has many other untoward consequences. It increased silting, elevation of river bed, and when a huge flow comes due to excess rainfall the river cannot contain the flow, it floods more easily, it may change course in some unthought-of way. River water also becomes more saline due to reduced flow. And the most amusing thing is that due to silting many dams are actually storing less and less water and making these dams more and more useless! The myth of “Development” by “Dams” needs to be rethought. The severe Uttarakhand disaster in 2013, for a time being, brought the issue of “unchaining” the Ganga in limelight. 

Will the citizenry and the government consider that Nature too has rights and Ganga has Right of Ecological Flow (or Environmental Flow)? To start with – nation’s revered environmental engineer Dr. G. D. Agrawal (also known as Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand) and his students have written many times on this issue and we may start studying those.

Published in Business Economics 01-15 Dec 2015