Clean up the Ganga; Remember the Thames (Economic Times 03 June 2011)

The World Bank has sanctioned a loan, worth $1 billion, to the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), to clean up the Ganga. This is a good idea. The loan is supposed to fund projects to treat waste, from industry, towns and cities on the banks of the river, which is now routinely dumped into it. This, it was recognised many years ago, was one of the primary sources of pollution of Ganga waters.
Effluent treatment and efficient sewage networks in towns and cities can do a lot to clean up the river, which flows through five states, home to about 35% of India's population. The Ganga is one of India's most important water sources and, in its lower reaches, among the filthiest. While it is an excellent idea to clean up the effluents flowing into the river, it's also important to remember that a river can only be as clean as the people who live alongside allow it to be. If a deficit of sanitary infrastructure makes people turn to the river or if incompletely burnt bodies are floated into the river in the name of custom, or people throw tonnes of stuff daily into the river whether as sacrament or as garbage, polluted the Ganga will remain. If the Ganga has to be really clean, it's necessary to address not just its physical ecosystem, but its social ecosystem as well. And the government does not need World Bank money to do that.
The idea of forcing change in social mores might seem daunting, but it's less difficult than it seems. Think of the pristine river Thames that flows through London and try to imagine that as late as the 1950s, it was an open sewer, devoid of oxygen and therefore, all aquatic life, emitting the rotten-egg stink of hydrogen sulphide. And indeed, this was the condition of the Thames for centuries. By 1610, its water had become unfit to drink, by the 19th century, it was called The Great Stink and in 1858, sittings of the House of Commons on the banks of the river had to be abandoned, with MPs staying away from its malodorous presence. Yet by the mid-1970s, the clean-up of the Thames, started in 1964 and finishing exactly a decade later, was so successful that salmon, trout and even seal can now be found in the river. When in doubt about the Ganga clean-up project, remember the Thames.