When would the NAMAME GANGE project really fructify?

The union government has formulated a separate ministry for cleaning pious Ganges and Yamuna and has already allotted about twenty thousand crores for this highly over ambitious project with the prime minister Narendra Modi himself taking personal interest in the matter, having visited Varanasi Ghat number of times and even brought two foreign heads of the state there. This flagship initiative of PM Modi known as Namaame Gange was started in 2014 with a budget of Rs 4000 crores later on enhanced to 20000 crores with the objective to get Ganga rid of its worst pollution and modernising its ghats from starting till end including giving it entirely a new high tech look making it river sports friendly too.

The seriousness of the prime minister in Ganga’s cleanliness and rejuvenation can be gauged from the fact that not only has he enhanced the budget of this head, from 4 thousand to twenty thousands crores but has also shunted out the former minister Uma Bharti after having found her incompetent on this score.

But the moot point is what’s the use of these credible intiatives at the PM’s level when despite so much of seriousness on Narendra Modi’s part things are not crystallizing or concretely materialising at the ground level. Though lot of work seem to have been started on this front as given us to understand, the incessantly deteriorating condition of the Ganga at Haridwar, Rishikesh and even at Varanasi unambiguously gives an impression that things are still at square on and very little or negligible is being actually done to clean the Ganges considered to be the pious diety holding special religious and spiritual significance for billions of Indians from all over the country and abroad.

Even today good number huge drains carrying thousands of tonnes of rubbish, human excreata n faeces, chemicals and poisionous waste of the leather industries called tanneries fall into this river compounded with myriad amount of plastics, polythenes, human waste and material used in spiritual activities all along the route from Haridwar to Allahabad. I remember when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister he too had started a Clean Ganga project incurring hundreds of thousands of crores but finally it was given up for the reasons best known to the government who put it in cold storage.

Last year in one of the Ganga Ghats several human corpses were found on the banks of filthy Ganges. During the season of KAAVAD, lakhs and lakhs of Lord Shiva devotees from all over the country throng Haridwar and Rishikesh and literally make mess of the area by leaving behind hundreds of thousands of killograms of rubbish, polythine and plastic bottles including left overs n dirty clothes thus polluting the already polluted Ganga.

The insanitary condition of the river banks and ghats where one can see massive amount of dirt, leftovers, human excreata and plastic materials, unambiguously speak of the sorry state of our local municipalities and the various state governments as well, who literally show THENGA to the clean Ganga and Swach Bharat flagship campaigns of prime minister’ Narendra Modi who earnestly seems to be too serious on both these counts. What is more shocking is the fact that the tributaries of Ganga like Yamuna and Hindon etc are in extremely bad, ugly and dying phase and more than 2000 crores worth of money has already been spent with no result in sight.

A recent survey by one of the prestigious pollution control body has revealed in its indept analysis that Ganga water even posseses myriad amount of faecal contents not prone to drinking purpose and desease prone as well thus throwing a direct challenge to the river’s pious relevance. The more shocking revelation by the principal scientist of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute Dr. V Kripa says that going by the current trend of increasing unchecked plastic prevalance in oceons and rivers of the country, by the year 2050 about 850 million metric tons of plastic will accumulate in the oceon compared to 821 million metric tons of fish. This is really shocking and highly disturbing a revelation.

Since the day BJP led NDA assumed power at the centre, almost four years have passed and we are heading for another national election but Ganga rejuvenation project seems to have stuck on the way, somewhere, with no hope of the Ganges becoming really clean. What would be the answer of this government to the people on on this pivotal issue, on whose mandate it came to power in 2014 and would again be striving hard to repeat it in 2019, is anybody’s guess. What’s your take friends?
SUNIL NEGIP