Ganga ravaged as govt looks away

As dam construction takes its toll on Ganga’s tributaries in Uttarakhand, miners rob riverbed of sand & stone.

Updated on: Mar 23, 2012, 24:45:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The three-month-long election process in Uttarakhand seems to have given illegal miners a permit to ravage the Ganga as well as its tributaries. With hundreds of trucks visiting it everyday, whole stretches of the river now stand devoid of sand and stone.

Hindustan Times visited four major tributaries of the Ganga — Pilee Nadhi, Barasati Nallah, Rawasan river and Kotawali river — on the Haridwar-Nijababad highway, only to find that they had been mercilessly targeted by illegal miners.

Hundreds of labourers could be seen filling trucks, lined up to transport a mix of sand and stone from the shallow riverbed. “Most tributaries of the Ganga are drying because of construction of dams, and destruction of the ecology, in upstream areas,” said Ravi Chopra, director of the Dehradun-based People’s Science Institute and member of the Prime Minister-headed National Ganga Basin River Authority (NBGRA).

Once the trucks were filled, they would be driven to a parking lot on the riverbed. According to local residents, most of these trucks leave at night, when chances of being caught are slim.

Though miners are officially permitted to dig up to a metre of the riverbed, sand and stone up to five metres were found to have been cleared from the Ganga as well as its tributaries.

The politics behind the illegal mining in the Ganga runs deep and, at times, acts of defiance prove costly. Last year, Swami Nigamananda – who had taken up a fast unto death to condemn the illegal practice – was allegedly poisoned to death at his ashram in Haridwar. More recently, on Monday, the government had to air-lift former IIT professor G D Aggarwal from Varanasi, where he had launched a fast on March 6 to save the river.

Chopra, who had resigned from the NGBRA along with two non-official members, accuses the government of not being serious about saving the river. “The authority has turned into fund-doling arm for state governments in order to build treatment plants. Nothing has been done to ensure that even minimal quantity of water flows to support Ganga’s unique bio-diversity,” he said. Their resignations are yet to be accepted.

According to information provided to Parliament, the fine collected from illegal miners of minor minerals was R115 crore in 2010-11, as compared to just R84 crore for major minerals. Around 4,640 cases of illegal mining have been detected in Uttarakhand.

Anna’s dam demand

Anti-graft activist Anna Hazare on Thursday told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to immediately convene a meeting of the Ganga Basin Authority, and stop construction of dams on the Ganga till a decision is taken by the body.

Ahead of his day-long fast at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, on Sunday, Hazare expressed solidarity with GD Aggarwal, who has been on an indefinite fast to demand a meeting of the Authority, headed by the Prime Minister.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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