Cleaning one of the world’s dirtiest rivers Ganga is a tough task

Restoring the holy river Ganga to its past glory had remained on the government’s backburner as removing the dirt would have hurt the vote-bank of around 400 million Indians who live in the river basin.

Updated on: Aug 14, 2014, 07:33:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Supreme Court has rightly pulled up the government for not doing enough to clean one of the world’s dirtiest river — the Ganga. Restoring the holy river to its past glory had remained on the government’s backburner as removing the dirt would have hurt the vote-bank of around 400 million Indians who live in the river basin.

Use of hazardous chemicals for agriculture along the river, thousands of polluting industries on its banks and blocking of the water flow through construction of dams in Uttarakhand has contributed to the deplorable condition of the river.

In 2013, Ganga was ranked as second-most polluted river in the world after Citarum river in Indonesia. The report published in international journal Nature said that pollution level in Ganga was about 3,000 times of the safe limit prescribed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for human use. Another study quoted the Indian Council of Medical Research to say that the people living in the vicinity of the river were vulnerable to cancer.

All this happened despite the government spending thousands of crores under Ganga Action Plan since 1985. A comparison of data collected by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) of river’s water quality in the last two decades shows that both bio-chemical demand (BOD) and dissolved oxygen — two indicators depicting water health — had risen.

DD Basu, a former scientist with the CPCB had said that Ganga water downstream of Haridwar was not fit for drinking, bathing or any other use.

A clean Ganga will not happen unless the government brings in a change in the mind-set of people living along the river. In addition, it would have to ban use of chemicals in agriculture, make throwing garbage into the river an offence, satellite based monitoring for polluting industries and not allowing any more dams on the river. Many environmentalists believe it is an impossible task as it would require huge public investment.

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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