Fractured/Earth

In September 2014, shortly after coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held his first meeting on the Ganga. The river had featured prominently in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election manifesto. The Ganga was both jeevan dayini, the giver of life, and mukti dayini, which sets the soul free, the document said.

But all was not well. “Even after decades of independence, the Ganga continues to be polluted and is drying,” said the manifesto. It went on to assert that the BJP was committed to ensuring “the cleanliness, purity and uninterrupted flow of the Ganga on priority”.

The Indo-Gangetic plain is home to a little over 5% of the world’s population. The Ganga and its tributaries bring in fresh water, recharge groundwater aquifers and drain wastewater. The survival of an estimated 400 million people – and the biodiversity amidst them – hinges on the health of the Ganga.

Modi’s meeting in September 2014 was one of the first signs the BJP intended to make good its election promise… Four-and-a-half years later, however, contradictory decisions by the government have pushed the Ganga into deeper trouble than before. On one hand, the government has moved to reduce river pollution, mainly by privatising sewage collection and treatment in 97 cities and towns along the river…

At the same time, the government has launched a set of other projects that further erode the river’s ecological foundations. Environmentalists have already expressed doubts about the Char Dham Pariyojana, a 10-metre-wide road between the temple towns of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Yamunotri and Gangotri, which is being built in the landslide-prone Garhwal Himalayas.

They have also criticised the large-scale dredging for the Inland Waterways project to ferry cargo on the river. Besides, environmentalists say, flows in the river will be hurt by the Ken Betwa river-linking initiative and the 450 hydel power projects being built on the river in Uttarakhand.

Last November, I reported on this three-part series on how our Hindu majoritarian government’s promise to revive the Ganga are coming along. Part one looked at the government’s work on pollution abatement.