Dying River (The Week)

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By Ajay Uprety  Dated: Saturday, June 7, 2014 11:54 hrs IST.

·       “Various factors have made the Ganga a deadly cocktail of sewage, industrial effluents and spillage from its tributaries,” says Prof B.D. Tripathi, a member of the National Ganga River Basin Authority. “The Ganga is getting fragmented and getting converted into a pond. It is grim, but it is the reality.”Official records say Rs1,100 crore was spent in the past 28 years to rejuvenate the Ganga. Unofficial estimates, however, put the figure at Rs20,000 crore. According to the government, 2.9 billion litres of sewage is discharged into the Ganga every day. In Uttar Pradesh, the Ganga is most polluted in Kanpur and Varanasi. If one goes by figures compiled by those who have been working to clean the Ganga, the picture is appalling. Every year, at the ghats in Varanasi, as many as 33,000 dead bodies are burnt and 800 tonnes of ash is discharged. The river also absorbs 3,200 dead bodies, 300 tonnes of half-burnt flesh and 6,000 carcasses a year. The three sewage treatment plants in Varanasi have a capacity to treat 102 million litres per day (mld) of waste, which is only a third of the actual volume of pollutants that the river absorbs. Moreover, the plants depend on power which is highly inadequate. The city gets around 10 to12 hours of power supply. And two of the plants have not been functioning for the past few years.

·       The authorities have turned a blind eye to the situation. “The National Ganga River Basin Authority of India, which was formed in 2009 under the aegis of the prime minister, has held just three meetings in the past five years,” says Prof Tripathi. “It is because of this attitude [of the authorities] that the various projects to clean the Ganga are not working properly.”

·       An official audit report of GAP, covering the period from 1993 to 2000, pointed out that the projects achieved only 39 per cent of its target. “The government wasted thousands of crores of rupees,” said Prof Tripathi. “There was no proper planning. Treatment plants were ill-designed and there was a complete lack of vision to execute the project.”