Don’t let Ganga die River conservation needs new approach (The Pioneer 19 March 2010)

India being a country where faith plays an important part in the lives of its people, articles of faith are highly revered. And nothing can be greater articles of faith than our many rivers, each of which has been venerated and deified for centuries. This is best exemplified by Ganga, the holiest of holy rivers. Indeed, the river can be called a living symbol of the Hindu faith, drawing to its banks multitude of devotees for whom a dip in the river is a sacred and spiritual experience. Ganga is one of the most important threads binding together people across the country. Given its religio-cultural significance, it is, therefore, surprising that Ganga continues to be subjected to massive pollution, and all efforts to clean the river have been in vain. More than Rs 1,000 crore has been spent on measures aimed at cleaning the river under Ganga Action Plan I and Plan II. But this has hardly made a difference in overall quality of the river's water. As much has been said by the Planning Commission in its latest report to the Supreme Court, which is monitoring the progress of work under GAP. The report makes the alarming conclusion that even if 100 per cent utilisation were to be achieved in all sewage treatment plants along the river, Ganga would only be rid of one-third of the total waste generated in the river's basin. Commenting on the health of the river, the commission states that Ganga downstream of Haridwar fails practically all standards of purity, whether it is the Biological Oxygen Demand figure or the Faecal Coliform count. For this deplorable state of affairs, the commission blames faulty planning of capacities despite satisfactory utilisation of funds. As a result, there is a huge gap between the amount of sewage that is being generated all along the Ganga basin and the amount of waste that is being treated by the installed sewage treatment plants. Presently, only 31 per cent of sewage pouring into Ganga on a daily basis is treated.

At the heart of the problem lies our piecemeal approach to treating effluents flowing into not just Ganga but practically every river in this country, whether is Yamuna — which has been converted into an open drain — or Narmada. We simply have not been able to develop a holistic system to preserve our rivers. Our primary fault lies in setting up localised treatment points along the course of the rivers whereas our focus should ideally be on catchment area development. The latter seeks to treat the entire river basin as one unit which, in the case of a river like Ganga, will stretch across several States. This approach ensures that there is little chance of effluents flowing into the river upstream or downstream. Second, we need to start thinking innovatively if we are to save our sacred rivers. The Planning Commission estimates that we would need to build treatment capacity for a massive 29,000 million litre of sewage per day if we are to clean up all our rivers. This is a gargantuan task, especially considering the fact that many of our existing treatment plants suffer from erratic power supply. Switching over to something like advanced integrated pond systems, which purify river water through a collection of purifying ponds and rely on natural algae for aeration, saving 60 per cent of the electricity needed in conventional plants, should be looked at in earnest. Unless a drastic change is effected in our river conservation methods, we would be doing a great insult to the embodiment of faith that is our rivers. Are the people of India listening?