I wish, If Mighty Ma Ganga Was Just The Sabarmati River Front.

An estimated daily more than 4 billion litres of human sewage is discharged into the Ma Ganga Ganges. More than 300 million litres daily in the city Varanasi alone. The existing treatment plants have capacity to treat only 1.1 billion litres per day, leaving a huge deficit. Excessive pollution, put the Ganges in the most polluted rivers in the world. Coliform bacteria levels in the Ganges have also been tested to be at 5,500, a level too high to be safe for agricultural use let alone drinking and bathing. The leather industry in Kanpur with more than 400 tanneries uses chemicals such as toxic chromium compounds. Chromium levels now stands at more than 70 times the recommended maximum level. Same is the case with other heavy metals more importantly lead.


Several projects and plans have been in place with many thousands of crores already spent in the last 30 years. Phase I of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) was initiated in 1985, completed in 2000. The second phase is still on. Other projects amounting to Rs 2589 crore have been sanctioned under the NGRBA programme. This includes a pollution abatement project at Varanasi worth Rs 496.90 crores. WHO has initiated a 10-year project starting mid-2011 with an plan outlay of more than 9000 crores.

One cannot rejuvenate rivers without handling core issues starting from its source– in this case, the Himalayas.

All I understand with all this monies spent and actions and plans laid with ever increasing pollution in Ganga in Varanasi and elsewhere that what is additionally required is willingness to changes our ways, implementation of action plans with honesty and intelligent city management system in place.

At the end, I appreciate and wish good luck to the new prime minister of India, who has repeated his vow in his thanks giving (Ganga Aarti) in Varanasi yesterday to clean Ma Ganga. However, I just wish if Ganga was just a kilometre stretch of Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, which might look inviting to tourists, but in reality the river is dead both upstream and downstream.