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Ganga Action Plan Project & Its Objectives with Case Study

We all have heard about the river Ganga which flows south and east from the Himalayas, forming a canyon as it leaves the mountain. In this article, we have added the complete information on the Ganga Action Plan. We have added all details like objectives, a case study of the Ganga action plan project, and various information. It is essential to know as a part of the exam. So, we suggest one note the essential points while reading the below article.

Ganga Action Plan, Phase 2

Before understanding the details of the Ganga Action Plan, the Ganges is a transboundary river of Asia that flows through India and Bangladesh. Then, it is called Ganga in Hindi and other Indian Languages, and internationally it is known by its conventional name, the Ganges. The river Ganga rises in the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal. Further, it drains one-fourth of the territory of India, and its basin supports hundreds of millions of people. Besides, the course of the Ganges flows through the Indian territory. The general direction of the river’s flow is from northwest to southeast. Further, the below table gives you details of the River Ganga.

The volume of the Ganga increases significantly as it receives more tributaries and enters a region of heavier rainfall. Further, from April to June, the melting Himalayan snows feed the river. Then, in the rainy season, from July to September, the rain-bearing monsoons cause floods. Further, click here to know the river’s current state; we all know it is one of the holy rivers. However, the river is highly polluted. So, improve the river this particular project planned.

Ganga Action Plan

The Ganga Action Plan (GAP) started in 1986. Further, the plan is a 100% centrally sponsored scheme, and under this plan, the National River Ganga basin authority was established and declared Ganga as a national river of India. 

Background Details

What is the motto behind Ganga Action Plan? It is because of the water pollution problem. The river water has been rising continuously because of industrialization along the river stretches, open defecation, and many other issues. The authority is headed by the prime minister and chief ministers of all the states where Ganga flows. Further, the plan had two phases.

• Phase I – It was launched  in 1983, which covers seven states that include Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Delhi and Haryana.
• Further, in the Phase II – It was started in 1993. The national river conservation plan was started under the same program for the 2nd phase. Under this 152 towns located along  27 interstate rivers in 16 states are covered.

Further, various other plants have also been undertaken, like GAP, such as the Yamuna action plan (YAP). Besides, a total of 33 rivers are present under this. Later, the supply of pure water is essential. Else, water-borne diseases like cholera, typhoid, etc., can spread through water. Also, toxic chemicals like mercury, arsenic, and cadmium can cause severe diseases to the human body.

Objectives of Ganga Action Plan

The Ganga Action plan launched in the year 1986 on 14th January. The project’s main aim was to lower pollution and improve water quality in the Ganga river. But, first, let us look into the objectives of the Ganga Action Plan.

• In the first place, installation of sewage treatment facilities for the treatment of the intercepted sewage.
• It was in importance of protect biodiversity, developing an integrated river basin management approach. Further, it is important for to conduct research to know other objectives, and gain experience of  implementing similar river clean-up programs in other polluted rivers in India.
• Further, to intercept and divert the sewage draining into the river.
• To provide low-cost sanitization to communities and individuals.
• Development of the riverfront and Afforestation, and creating public awareness

Ganga Action Plan Project Overview

After understanding the objectives and the background details of the Ganga Action Plan, we will look into the project insights below.

• Ganga Action Plan is completely sponsored scheme and with this project river Ganga declared Ganga as a national river of India. 
• This project was directed by the Rajiv Gandhi. Further, the authority  is headed by the prime minister and chief ministers of all the states in which river Ganga flows. 
• Besides, the Ministry of Environment and forests was made in charge of the overall design and implementation of the project.

As we have mentioned above, there were two phases; let us understand each phase below.

Ganga Action Plan, Phase 1

The main aim behind launching the Ganga Action plan is to achieve all the objectives and to clean the river as it signifies purity and spirituality. Further, phase 1 aimed to restore river water quality to the Bathing Class Standard and improve water quality. Additionally, to reduce the river’s pollution and prevent toxic industrial wastes from entering the river. To conduct proper research and understand how to maintain the purity and cleanliness of the river. Besides, to prevent the entry of non-point pollutants into the river. Later, to use Ganga as a resource recovery option to produce Methane for energy generation. Further, the development of new sewage treatment technology.

Phase 1 of the project involved the construction of three new sewage treatment plants with a combined installed capacity of approximately 101,800m³ a day.

Further, phase 2 aimed at the city of Varanasi, India. Additionally, it involved the construction of a new 140,000m³/d sewage treatment plant (STP). It consisted of laying 34kms of sewers, rehabilitation of existing sewerage systems, and construction of three new pumping stations, namely Phulwaria, Chaukaghat, and Saria. Besides, to improve the water quality in the Ganga River. The overall investment earmarked for the project is INR4.97 bn, of which 85% will be provided by the central government and the remaining 15% by the state of Uttar Pradesh.

National Mission for Clean Ganga

The river Ganga is one of the world’s most populated river basins, with about 600 million people living in urban and rural areas. Further, the river Ganga contributes around 40% of India’s GDP and major economic and environmental asset. Additionally, the National Mission for Clean Ganga protects and manages River Ganga. The mission became a registered society on August 12, 2011, under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. Further, from 10th December to 15th December India Water Impact Summit 2020 was held virtually. Later, the World Bank has granted an  Rs. 3,000 crore 5-year loan to the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG).

In summary, the above article will give you complete information on the case study on Ganga Action Plan Project. Further, understand other details like a case study on the Ganga action plan and objectives of the Ganga action plan. The Ganga Action Plan was executed in two-phase and above; we have explained both phases. The project’s main aim is to clean the river Ganga, and we have added information on the river Ganga. Further, try to make notes while reading the article. Besides, as a part of the UPSC exam study materials, it is essential for the exam. Later, check out all the other essential concepts for the IAS exam. Click Here and get all information.

Further, the IAS exam comes with the longest syllabus, and one needs to cover the entire syllabus to get the best results in the exam. Therefore, this particular topic is also important for the exam, and we have added all the details that will help you with the IAS exam preparations. Get all information related to the IAS exam like syllabus, paper pattern, books, tips, and other details. Click Here .

Ganga Action Plan (GAP) Phase-I in the year 1985.

Shri Rajeev Gandhi planned the Ganga Action Plan.

The project’s main aim was to lower pollution and improve the quality of water in the Ganga.

The new name is  National River Action Plan (NRAP).

Editor’s Note | Ganga Action Plan

In brief, the article mainly speaks about Ganga Action Plan and a case study on the Ganga action plan. It is one of the essential projects launched for all over development of the river Ganga. Further, get all information like objectives, background details, phases one and two. As a part of the IAS exam, one must understand the important points of the project. However, it is tough to remember everything, so that one can go through the previous year’s question papers, you will understand how questions will be. Besides, it also helps one know the paper pattern and the exam syllabus. Moreover, various platforms provide you with mock test series, and it will help you understand your skills and how you can improve your skills.

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What It Takes to Clean the Ganges

The Ganges River begins in the Himalayas, roughly three hundred miles north of Delhi and five miles south of India’s border with Tibet, where it emerges from an ice cave called Gaumukh (the Cow’s Mouth) and is known as the Bhagirathi. Eleven miles downstream, gray-blue with glacial silt, it reaches the small temple town of Gangotri. Pilgrims cluster on the rocky riverbank. Some swallow mouthfuls of the icy water, which they call amrit —nectar. Women in bright saris wade out into the water, filling small plastic flasks to take home. Indians living abroad can buy a bottle of it on Amazon or on eBay for $9.99.

To hundreds of millions of Hindus, in India and around the world, the Ganges is not just a river but also a goddess, Ganga, who was brought down to Earth from her home in the Milky Way by Lord Shiva, flowing through his dreadlocks to break the force of her fall. The sixteenth-century Mogul emperor Akbar called it “the water of immortality,” and insisted on serving it at court. In 1615, Nicholas Withington, one of the earliest English travellers in India, wrote that water from the Ganges “will never stinke, though kepte never so longe, neyther will anye wormes or vermine breede therein.” The myth persists that the river has a self-purifying quality—sometimes ascribed to sulfur springs, or to high levels of natural radioactivity in the Himalayan headwaters, or to the presence of bacteriophages, viruses that can destroy bacteria.

Below Gangotri, the river’s path is one of increasing degradation. Its banks are disfigured by small hydropower stations, some half built, and by diversion tunnels, blasted out of solid rock, that leave miles of the riverbed dry. The towering hydroelectric dam at Tehri, which began operating in 2006, releases a flood or a dribble or nothing at all, depending on the vagaries of the season and the fluctuating demands of the power grid. The first significant human pollution begins at Uttarkashi, seventy miles or so from the source of the river. Like most Indian municipalities, Uttarkashi—a grimy cement-and-cinder-block town of eighteen thousand—has no proper means of disposing of garbage. Instead, the waste is taken to an open dump site, where, after a heavy rain, it washes into the river.

A hundred and twenty miles to the south, at the ancient pilgrimage city of Haridwar, the Ganges enters the plains. This is the starting point for hundreds of miles of irrigation canals built by the British, beginning in the eighteen-forties, after a major famine. What’s left of the river is ill-equipped to cope with the pollution and inefficient use of water for irrigation farther downstream. Below its confluence with the Yamuna River, which is nearly devoid of life after passing through Delhi, the Ganges picks up the effluent from sugar refineries, distilleries, pulp and paper mills, and tanneries, as well as the contaminated agricultural runoff from the great Gangetic Plain, the rice bowl of North India, on which half a billion people depend for their survival.

By the time the river reaches the Bay of Bengal, more than fifteen hundred miles from its source, it has passed through Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Kolkata, a hundred smaller towns and cities, and thousands of riverside villages—all lacking sanitation. The Ganges absorbs more than a billion gallons of waste each day, three-quarters of it raw sewage and domestic waste and the rest industrial effluent, and is one of the ten most polluted rivers in the world.

Indian governments have been trying to clean up the Ganges for thirty years. Official estimates of the amount spent on this effort vary widely, from six hundred million dollars to as much as three billion dollars; every attempt has been undone by corruption and apathy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected in May of 2014, is the latest to try. Modi and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., campaigned on promises of transforming India into a prosperous, vibrant modern society, a nation of bullet trains, solar farms, “smart cities,” and transparent government. Central to Modi’s vision is the Clean India Mission—Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. He insists that rapid economic development and raising millions of people out of poverty need not come at the cost of dead rivers and polluted air. So far, however, the most striking feature of his energy policy has been the rapid acceleration of coal mining and of coal-fired power plants. In many cities, the air quality is hazardous, causing half a million premature deaths each year.

Two months after Modi was elected, he announced his most ambitious cleanup initiative: Namami Gange, or Obeisance to the Ganges. As evidence of his capability, Modi points to the western state of Gujarat, where he served as Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014, presiding over impressive economic growth. The Sabarmati River, which flows through Ahmedabad, the largest city in Gujarat, was given an elegant tree-shaded esplanade, where residents now walk their dogs and take the evening air; still, it remains one of the most polluted rivers in India.

Modi is better known for his long association with the radical fringe of Hindu nationalism than for good-government initiatives. Born into a low-caste family (his father sold tea at a railway station), he was just eight years old when he began attending meetings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mass organization that is the most aggressive face of Hindu-nationalist ideology. In his twenties, he became a leader of the R.S.S.’s student affiliate, and soon after he befriended another leading activist, Amit Shah, who became his most trusted aide in Gujarat.

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In 1990, Modi, already recognized as a future leader of the B.J.P., was one of the main organizers of a protest pilgrimage from Gujarat to the town of Ayodhya, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. According to legend, Ayodhya was the home of the god Rama, and the protesters demanded that a Hindu temple be erected on a site occupied by a sixteenth-century mosque. In 1992, Hindu mobs converged on Ayodhya. They tore down the mosque, prompting nationwide riots, in which two thousand people died. Ten years later, when Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat, Hindu pilgrims made another visit to Ayodhya. As they were returning, Muslim mobs set their train on fire and fifty-nine people were burned alive. In reprisal, more than a thousand Muslims were killed, while the police stood by. Modi was widely accused of indifference, even of complicity, and, although he was later exonerated by the Supreme Court, he was denied a U.S. visa for a decade.

In 2014, Modi won a landslide election victory. Voters were tired of corruption, and Modi, a charismatic orator and an astute user of social media, promised to eradicate it. The business community clamored for deregulation. Young Indians were desperate for jobs. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty had exhausted its political appeal, and its choice for prime minister, Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of Indira, was a feeble campaigner, no match for Modi’s dynamism.

For the most part, Modi did not need to appeal to Hindu-nationalist passions. But his promise to clean up the Ganges plays directly into India’s charged religious and caste politics. Two problems are paramount. One is pollution from the tannery industry, which is centered in Kanpur, roughly midway along the river, and is almost entirely Muslim-owned. The other is sewage from Varanasi, two hundred miles downstream—an ancient city, considered the spiritual center of Hinduism, where the river is effectively an open sewer. Both cities are in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of two hundred and fifteen million and is central to Indian electoral politics. It is also notorious for extreme poverty, rampant corruption, rigid caste divisions, and communal violence, in which most of the victims are Muslims. At least half the mass killings recorded in India in the past quarter century have occurred in Uttar Pradesh.

In 2014, when Modi’s ministers began to discuss the Namami Gange project, the details were vague and contradictory. Naturally, the sewers of Varanasi and the tanneries of Kanpur would receive special attention. The Ganges would become a “hub of spiritual tourism,” but there was also talk of building dams every sixty miles along the busiest stretch of the river, to facilitate the transport of heavy goods. Four battalions of soldiers would be organized into the Ganga Eco-Task Force. Local communities would join the effort.

Modi has spoken of being inspired by the transformations of the Chicago River and of the Thames, but they are barely a tenth the length of the Ganges. Restoring the Rhine, which is half the length, took almost three decades and cost forty-five billion dollars. The budget for Namami Gange is about three billion dollars over five years.

Modi announced the effort in Varanasi. Like the Ganges, Varanasi (formerly Benares) is said to be immune to degradation, although this is hard to reconcile with the physical reality of the place. The city’s labyrinthine alleys are crowded with beggars, widows, and ragged ascetics, corpse bearers and the terminally ill, cows, dogs, monkeys, and motorbikes. A mixture of ornate temples and smoke-shrouded cremation grounds, Varanasi swarms with foreigners drawn by the promise of seeing India at its most exotic—dreadlocked hippies, Israeli kids just released from military service, Japanese tour groups in white surgical masks, stolid American retirees. When I visited, last October, the garbage and the post-monsoon silt lay thick on the ghats, the four-mile stretch of steps and platforms where thousands of pilgrims come each day to take their “holy dip.” The low water at the river’s edge was a clotted soup of dead flowers, plastic bags, feces, and human ashes.

Cylindrical towers, one emblazoned with an image of Shiva, stood at intervals along the riverfront—sewage-pumping stations that are designed to protect the most sensitive expanse of the bathing ghats, from Assi Ghat, in the south, to Raj Ghat, in the north. R. K. Dwivedi, a stout, sixty-four-year-old man who was in charge of the treatment plants, told me that the pumping stations, which were built in the nineteen-seventies, had recently been upgraded. But less than a third of the sewage that is generated by the 1.5 million people of Varanasi is treated; the rest goes directly into the river.

“From Assi Ghat to Raj Ghat, you will find almost nil flow coming to Ganga,” Dwivedi said. I pointed out that the Assi River, a thirty-foot-wide drainage channel that flows into the Ganges just upstream of Assi Ghat, bypasses the pumping stations and pours raw sewage into the river. Dwivedi said that there was a comprehensive plan to install a sewerage system in the newer, northern half of Varanasi. But the engineers were still struggling with the challenge of laying sewer lines under the tortuous lanes of the old city—a problem that defied the efforts of Dwivedi’s predecessors all the way back to the days of the Raj.

The first concerted attempt to clean the Ganges began in 1986, when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi launched the initial phase of what he called the Ganga Action Plan. He made the announcement on the ghats of Varanasi and focussed on the city’s sewers and the tanneries of Kanpur. The effort was haphazard. Thirty-five sewage-treatment plants were built in the three most populous states along the river—Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal—but their capacity was based on the population at the time, and they quickly became obsolete. Moreover, although the central government paid for the plants, municipalities were left to operate them, and often failed to pay the wages or the electricity bills to keep them running.

In 1993, under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, new treatment plants and other pollution-abatement projects were added on several of the river’s larger tributaries. This phase was followed by the creation, in 2009, of the National Ganga River Basin Authority, by the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. For the next two years, the cleanup was directed by Jairam Ramesh, the environment minister. Ramesh, who is now an opposition member of Parliament, is in his early sixties, with a head of thick gray hair. In many respects, he epitomizes the old Congress Party élite that Modi detests: cosmopolitan, fluent in English, Western-educated, with graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon and M.I.T.

Ramesh told me that he had taken a more comprehensive view of the problem than his predecessors. The unfinished hydropower projects I’d seen in the Himalayas were the result of a Supreme Court decision, which he had strongly supported, to halt construction in the ecologically sensitive headwaters of the river. Ramesh also ordered that the next generation of sewage-treatment plants be based on population estimates for 2025. The central government, in addition to funding plant construction, would bear seventy per cent of the operating and management costs for five years. Several new treatment plants will become operative during Modi’s term, and he will likely take credit for them. Ramesh added that the Prime Minister’s vow to “build more toilets than temples” was his own slogan in 2011. “And Modi attacked me for it,” Ramesh said. “He is shameless.”

I asked Ramesh if he saw anything in the Namami Gange plan that was new. Only one thing, he said: the addition of Hindutva , the ideology of “Hindu-ness,” which had cursed India with a poisonous history of communal strife.

As his parliamentary constituency, Modi chose Varanasi. “I feel Ma Ganga ”—Mother Ganges—“has called me to Varanasi,” he said in 2014. The idea came from Amit Shah, Modi’s campaign manager in Uttar Pradesh and former aide in Gujarat. Uttar Pradesh epitomizes the impoverished heartland of Hindu nationalism, and Shah was given the job of delivering the state to the B.J.P. He is a brilliant and ruthless strategist, and it was an ugly campaign. Modi attacked Arvind Kejriwal, his opponent in Varanasi, as “an agent of Pakistan”—an incendiary charge.

Shah, who in 2013 had reiterated the call for a Rama temple to be built on the site of the demolished mosque in Ayodhya, made no effort to court Muslim voters. Instead, he concentrated on maximizing turnout among lower-caste Hindus, deploying thousands of young R.S.S. volunteers in an unprecedented door-to-door campaign. In the end, Modi took seventy-one of Uttar Pradesh’s eighty parliamentary seats, enough to give him an absolute majority in the lower house of Parliament. Shah was appointed president of the B.J.P.

After this divisive campaign, it was noteworthy that Modi chose Uma Bharti to head a newly created Ministry of Water Resources, River Development, and Ganga Rejuvenation. Bharti is often referred to as a sadhvi , the female equivalent of a sadhu , or holy man, and has been a controversial figure throughout her career. A fiery Hindu nationalist, she was a prominent leader of the militants who tore down the mosque in Ayodhya in 1992 and still faces six criminal charges in the Uttar Pradesh courts, including for rioting, unlawful assembly, and “statements intended to cause public mischief.” In a separate case, now before the Supreme Court, she is charged with criminal conspiracy. (Such prosecutions of powerful politicians almost never result in a conviction.)

In 2004, Bharti told reporters that the demolition of what she called “the disputed structure” in Ayodhya was “a victory for the Hindu society.” Later, when an official commission of inquiry accused her of inciting the mob violence, she denied calling for the demolition of the mosque but said, “I am not apologetic at all. I am willing to be hanged for my role.” (Neither Modi nor Bharti agreed to requests for an interview.)

The Hindu nationalists I spoke with in Varanasi—public officials, businessmen, priests, veteran R.S.S. activists—dismissed any criticism of Bharti or Modi. One evening, I climbed a steep flight of steps from the ghats to the tiny Atma Veereshwar Temple, where I met Ravindra Sand, a Saraswat Brahmin priest who is deeply engaged in the religious traditions of Varanasi and the river. He told me, “You can call Modi a rightist, a fundamentalist, an extremist, whatever you want.” What really mattered, he said, was the passion and faith Modi was bringing to the monumental challenges facing India. “He is honest like anything. He sleeps three hours a night. I pray to God for Modi to be the P.M. of India for the next decade, at least.”

When I mentioned the destruction of the mosque in Ayodhya and the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, Sand looked at me as if I were missing the point. “Should I be honest?” he said. “I do not like Muslims at all.” Modi felt the same way, he added. Ayodhya was the home of Lord Rama, and the Muslims had been the initial aggressors in the Gujarat incident. “If a person can slap you once, and I reply to him with four slaps, you are going to blame me for the fighting? It is not correct. I am sorry to say, these Muslims are not at all comfortable anywhere.”

Such views are expressed openly by mainstream B.J.P. supporters in Uttar Pradesh. “Modi is a devotee—he is determined,” Ramgopal Mohley, the mayor of Varanasi, told me. Namami Gange would leave the ghats spotless; garbage would be trucked to a new waste-to-energy plant; discarded flowers from the cremation grounds would be turned into incense. Like Modi, Mohley had travelled to Japan to scout out ideas in Kyoto, which is home to seventeen UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Like Varanasi, he said, “Kyoto is also a city of narrow lanes and temples. Under their lanes, there are subway lines. Over the lanes, there are flyovers.” He conceded that Varanasi had more lanes and more temples—and, of course, India is not Japan.

I asked Mohley what he thought of Uma Bharti’s appointment. “Everyone loves Uma Bharti,” he said. He declined to say whether Muslims might feel differently, steering the conversation back toward Bharti’s plans for the river. “By October of 2016, you will start seeing the cleanness, up to twenty per cent. In another year, by 2017, you will start seeing the real cleaning.

“ Umaji ,” he added, using the Hindi honorific, “has said that if Ganga is not cleaned in three years’ time she might undertake samadhi. ” Samadhi is commonly defined as a state of deep, spiritual concentration, leading to a sense of oneness with the universe. For some ascetics, my translator added, it involved climbing into a ditch and burying oneself alive.

The next state-government elections in Uttar Pradesh will take place in mid-2017. Modi’s national victory gave him control of the lower house of Parliament, but he does not control the upper house, which is largely elected by state legislatures. Uttar Pradesh is currently ruled by the Samajwadi Party, which has heavy Muslim support.

Modi and Amit Shah launched the campaign on June 13th in Allahabad, at the sacred confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna. The preceding weeks had seen a series of violent skirmishes in the town of Kairana, in western Uttar Pradesh, which evoked unsettling memories of India’s last serious outbreak of communal violence, in 2013. Sixty-five people died on that occasion, and thousands of Muslims sought refuge in Kairana. Now the B.J.P.’s member of Parliament for Kairana claimed that hundreds of Hindus had fled, fearing for their lives. The charge was subsequently discredited, but Shah seized on it in his speech in Allahabad, warning of a mass exodus of Hindus if the Samajwadi Party retained power.

Three weeks later, on July 5th, Modi appointed three new ministers from Uttar Pradesh to his cabinet, a move generally interpreted as an appeal to caste-based voting blocs in next year’s elections. One is a Brahmin, one a member of the “other backward castes,” and the third a dalit (the term that has replaced “untouchable”).

Kanpur, with a population of more than three million, is the largest city in Uttar Pradesh and a microcosm of everything that ails urban India. The British once called it “the Manchester of the East,” for its booming textile mills, but these have gone into steady decline, replaced by tanneries, one of the most polluting industries in the world. As in Varanasi, about a fifth of Kanpur’s population is Muslim, but Muslims wield greater political influence here, because the city’s tanneries, nearly all Muslim-owned, bring in more than a billion dollars a year in export earnings.

One muggy afternoon in Kanpur, I went down to the Massacre Ghat, which is named for three hundred British women and children who were killed there in 1857, during a rebellion against the reign of the British East India Company, referred to locally as the First War of Independence. The river was a hundred yards from the steps, across a bleak expanse of silt. Raw sewage leaked onto the beach from a drainage channel. Cut off from the river, it had collected in a stagnant, bubbling pool. Groups of children were playing in the shallows of the river, and women clustered in circles at the water’s edge, preparing offerings of coconuts, fruit, and marigold garlands.

Kanpur has four hundred and two registered tanneries, which discharge more than two-thirds of their waste into the river. Most are immediately downstream from the Massacre Ghat, in a Muslim neighborhood called Jajmau. In deference to Hindu sensitivities, the slaughter of cows is illegal in Uttar Pradesh. Most of the hides that reach Kanpur’s tanneries are from water buffalo; the small number of cowhides are either imported or the result of natural death or roadkill.

Tannery owners in both the poorest and the most lucrative parts of the industry complained bitterly to me that they had been singled out for persecution because they were Muslim. “From the government side, there is nothing but trouble,” Hafizurrahman, the owner of the small Hafizurrahman Tannery, in Jajmau, told me. Hafizurrahman, who goes by only one name, has been the president of the Small Tanners Association since 1987; his tannery works with offcuts that are rejected by larger enterprises. A soft-spoken elderly man with a white beard and a suède porkpie hat, he works out of a windowless shed with rough plaster walls. When I met him, flop-eared goats and quarrelsome geese were rooting around on the floor, and the yard was strewn with pieces of dried rawhide that would be turned into chew toys for dogs. A skinny teen-age boy, bare to the waist and glistening with sweat, squelched around in a brick-lined pit, sorting pieces of “wet blue,” tinged that color from processing with highly toxic chromium salts, which leaves the leather more supple than the older, vegetable-processing method.

Hafizurrahman conceded that the tanneries do foul the Ganges, but said that the real culprits are corrupt state and city authorities. In 1994, when the city government opened a central plant to treat the tannery waste, tannery owners had to contribute part of the cost. Then the construction budget tripled and, with it, their contribution. “There were only a hundred and seventy-five tanneries at that time,” he said. “But then another two hundred and twenty-seven came up—and the government asked them to pay again. But it never upgraded the plant. They just took the money.”

In 2014, the Council on Foreign Relations named India’s judiciary, police, and political parties the three most corrupt institutions in the country. Local officials commonly skim off a substantial percentage of the fee paid to private contractors working on public-service projects, such as water supply, electricity, and sewage treatment. “It’s almost legal,” Rakesh Jaiswal, the head of EcoFriends, a small environmental group in Kanpur, said. “If it’s thirty or forty per cent, it’s not corruption—it’s more like a right. Sometimes all the money is pocketed by the authorities, a hundred per cent, and the work takes place only on paper.” I asked if things had improved under Modi, and he shook his head. “Not even one per cent has changed,” he said.

Taj Alam, the president of the Uttar Pradesh Leather Industry Association, had another complaint. Alam’s tannery, Kings International, makes high-end saddlery for export; situated in Unnao, a small town a dozen miles from Kanpur, it is surrounded by manicured gardens and walls draped with bougainvillea. In his ornate, air-conditioned office, Alam noted that the government shuts down the tanneries each year, sometimes for several weeks, to avoid polluting the river during India’s greatest religious celebration, the Hindu bathing festival at Allahabad, a hundred and thirty miles downstream. This costs the industry tens of millions of dollars, Alam said. “But you have ten million people shitting in the river, urinating there, throwing stuff on the ghats. The tanning sector is maybe 99.99 per cent Muslim. Tell me, has the government imposed any treatment-plant order on any other industry?”

Alam told me that he was worried about next year’s state elections. “If there’s a B.J.P. state government, they can do whatever they want,” he said. “When someone has an absolute majority, it can be misused. And it is being misused.”

Cleaning up the tanneries of Kanpur has proved just as intractable a problem as cleaning up the sewers of Varanasi. I spent a day in the tannery district with Rakesh Jaiswal, the head of EcoFriends, touring the evidence. Jaiswal, who founded the organization in 1993, is in his late fifties, and has silvery hair and a courtly manner. We stopped at a cleared plot of land about a quarter of a mile from the river, where the detritus of the leather industry was heaped in large piles. Some were offcuts of wet blue. Others were made up of scraps of hide with hair and bits of flesh still attached, surrounded by clouds of buzzing flies. A laborer was hacking at the muck with a three-tined pitchfork. When he was done, it would be sold to make chicken feed and glue. Nearby, an open drain carried a stream of tannery waste down a gentle slope to the Ganges. The odor suggested a mixture of decomposing animal matter, battery acid, and burned hair.

In 1998, Jaiswal brought a lawsuit against the central government and a number of polluting industries, and a hundred and twenty-seven tanneries were closed. Many were allowed to reopen after installing a primary-treatment plant, but Jaiswal told me that the levels of chromium pollution in tannery wastewater were still as much as eighty times above the legal limit, suggesting that the plant owners were not spending the money to operate them, and that the new regulations were only spottily enforced. From the tanneries, the wastewater is pumped to a central treatment facility, which was built in 1994. At the plant, sewage and tannery waste are combined in a ratio of three to one. After treatment, the mixture is used for irrigation. The plant handles nine million litres of tannery waste a day, barely a third of what the industry generates. When I asked the project engineer why the plant had never been upgraded, he shrugged.

Later, I drove with Jaiswal to the outskirts of Kanpur, to see the irrigation canal. It ran along an elevated berm where workers had spread out hides to dry in the sun. The treated mixture of sewage and tannery waste came gushing out of two rusted outflow pipes and made its way down the canal at a fair clip. In 1999, Jaiswal conducted a study of contamination in the villages that were using this water for irrigation; his samples revealed dangerous levels of chromium in agricultural produce and in milk. I asked Jaiswal if the situation had improved since then. “The quality of the water is the same,” he said.

The success of Modi’s cleanup effort will ultimately depend not on Uma Bharti, or even on Modi, but on less visible bureaucrats such as Shashi Shekhar, the water-resources secretary in Bharti’s ministry, who is charged with carrying out Namami Gange. Shekhar, who is in his late fifties, was trained as an earth scientist. Before assuming his current post, last year, he was the head of the Central Pollution Control Board, a national agency that is respected for its professionalism but is frequently unable to enforce the standards that it sets, because the state-level agencies responsible for meeting them are typically corrupt or incompetent.

When I went to see Shekhar in his office in New Delhi last fall, he walked me through a PowerPoint presentation that he was about to deliver to the cabinet. It served as a reminder that Modi is not only an ideologue but a demanding chief executive. In 2015, India recorded a growth rate of 7.5 per cent, overtaking China. In September, during a weekend visit to Silicon Valley, Modi won commitments from the C.E.O.s of Google and Microsoft—Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, respectively, both Indian-born—to help bring Internet access to villages and to install high-speed Wi-Fi in the country’s railway stations. (India has the world’s second-largest Internet market but the slowest average connection speeds in Asia.) He has also introduced programs designed to make the government more accountable to the public, such as PRAGATI , a videoconference platform where Modi grills government officials on citizens’ complaints about bureaucracy, corruption, delays in executing public-works projects, and other issues.

“The P.M. is very particular about making the system efficient, accountable, and sustainable,” Shekhar said. He acknowledged that the cleanup campaign had got off to a slow start, but said that his ministry was setting a series of deadlines that would soon begin to show tangible results. He had been in Kanpur just after I left, and he said there was now a more coherent plan for cleaning up the city’s tanning industry. This included an order that each tannery install sensors to measure its discharge. Several lawsuits are also under way, including one before the Supreme Court, that could close down tanneries that exceed official pollution limits—although, as Rakesh Jaiswal noted, this has been done before, to little lasting effect.

Shekhar had also proposed a “paradigm shift” in the approach to sewage treatment. Despite the efforts of the previous government, sixty per cent of the treatment plants along the river were still either shut down or not operating to capacity, and ninety per cent failed to meet prescribed standards. Too much responsibility remained in the hands of corrupt local officials and contractors. Now the contractors would be paid only after they’d done the work. Otherwise, Shekhar said, “we found that the fellow does not put his skin into it.”

Major corporations had agreed to clean the surface of the river with trash-skimming machines and booms. The Tata Group, India’s largest conglomerate, would take on the stretch of river in Varanasi. Shekhar also planned to build communal toilets in some of the poorest riverside villages. Women were especially keen on this idea, he said, since, for privacy, they customarily go out into the fields in the pre-dawn dark or after the evening meal, when they are vulnerable to snakebite and sexual assault.

Some elements of the cleanup shouldn’t be difficult to execute. Sewage-treatment plants that are already under construction will be completed. Recently, Shekhar e-mailed me to say that work on cleaning the ghats in Varanasi, Kanpur, and Allahabad had begun on schedule; for a company with Tata’s resources, this is not a particularly challenging assignment. Shekhar also said that the government had spelled out the terms of what it called a “hybrid annuity” plan for payments to contractors working on the new sewage-treatment plants and other public-works projects. But will tinkering with financial incentives truly reduce bureaucracy and corruption, especially in parts of the country where state authorities aren’t under the control of Modi’s political party?

Modi’s greatest asset may be his conviction that he can inspire change through sheer dynamism. But this may also be his biggest liability. “The expectation is so huge,” Shekhar said. “Even bureaucrats have the perception of him as Superman.”

Shekhar acknowledged that Namami Gange would not fully restore the river. The hydropower dam at Tehri would remain, as would the nineteenth-century diversion canals. In lower stretches of the river, where the flow is already severely depleted, it will take decades to address the inefficient use of water for irrigation. Even so, he said, “never in the past has a government initiated a project of this magnitude. I am putting myself under great pressure as far as targets are concerned. But if you do not see high, you do not reach midway.”

Early one morning in Varanasi, I went down to Assi Ghat to meet Navneet Raman, the chairman of the Benares Cultural Foundation and the scion of a family that traces its ancestry back to the finance minister of a sixteenth-century Afghan king. Raman is an environmentalist on a modest scale, planting trees and offering to compost the flowers left by worshippers at the Golden Temple, the most important temple in the city—an offer that the priests had declined.

We hailed a boatman to row us across to the east bank of the Ganges. It is considered to be an inauspicious place; anyone unlucky enough to die there will be reincarnated as an ass. As we pulled away from the steps, the rising sun flooded the curving waterfront of ghats, temples, and palaces. When we arrived at the other side, Raman reached into a bag and scooped out a handful of shiny purple seeds the size of pistachios. They were seeds of the tropical almond, Terminalia catappa , and would grow into what is known locally as “the sewage tree,” because it can filter heavy metals and other pollutants out of standing water. We walked along a narrow strip of scrubland, above the flood line, scattering the seeds left and right.

“Most people come to Benares to pay last respects to the memory of their near and dear ones who have passed away,” Raman said. “So I thought that on this bank of the river we could make a forest of remembrance. This is my guerrilla warfare. I am not doing it for Mr. Modi.” Raman imagined leafy gardens and walkways, and benches where families could sit and look across the river at the beauty of the temples and the ghats. But he acknowledged that this vision lay far in the future.

I asked him if he ever grew discouraged by the slow pace of change. He shrugged and said that all he could do was place his trust in Shiva. “India is a land of discouragement,” he said. “If you’re not discouraged by the harsh summers, then you are discouraged by the cow eating your plant, or the motorbike or tractor or car that is running over your plant, or the neighbor who is plucking the leaves from it just for fun as he is going by. If you can’t deal with discouragement, India has no place for you.” ♦

Reporting for this piece was facilitated by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Ganga Action Plan(GAP): The Challenge of ‘Regulatory Quality’

The largest river basin of India, the Ganges (locally referred as Ganga) is one of the most important river systems in the world. It is home to almost one tenth of the world’s population. Billions of litres of sewage, industrial waste, thousands of animal and human corpses are also released into the river every day. Consequently, the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) was launched in 1985 for pollution abatement as a Federal and state sponsored scheme and till date, three phases have been implemented. Even after establishing numerous institutional arrangements under the GAP and investing billions of dollars there has been no major improvement in the Ganges river water quality, in fact it has further deteriorated. Clearly governmental intervention through pollution control policies, specifically regulation has failed miserably. Therefore, an attempt has been made to analyse empirically, the legal and institutional framework of the GAP using the transdisciplinary method ‘economic analysis of law’. The results reveal that the chief underlying reason for ineffective GAP regulations is lack of a well-defined legal basis.

All papers reproduced by permission. Reproduction and distribution subject to the approval of the copyright owners.

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10 critical steps for Ganga revival

The Himalayas are the source of three major Indian rivers namely the Indus, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra. Flowing for about 2,525 kilometres (km), the Ganga is the longest river in India. The Ganga basin constitutes 26 per cent of the country’s land mass and supports 43 per cent of India’s population.

The government of India has set up an empowered body consisting of a dedicated team of officers as part of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) under the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti (earlier called as Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation).

The NMCG has stated its vision in terms of four restoration pillars, namely Aviral Dhara (continuous flow), Nirmal Dhara (clean water), Geologic Entity (protection of geological features) and Ecological Entity (protection of aquatic biodiversity). According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)'s 2014 estimates, approximately 8,250 million litres per day (MLD) of wastewater is generated from towns in the Ganga basin, while treatment facilities exist only for 3,500 MLD and roughly 2,550 MLD of this wastewater is discharged directly into the Ganga.

Namami Gange has completed 114 projects and about 150 projects are in progress, while about 40 projects are under tendering, of which 51 sewage projects were approved before May 13, 2015 — the day Namami Gange was approved by the Union Cabinet.

Till April 2019, 1,930 MLD of sewerage treatment capacity in 97 Ganga towns has been developed, whereas the sewerage generation in these towns is 2,953 MLD. It is further projected that the sewerage generation would touch 3,700 MLD by 2035.

The industrial pollutants largely originate from tanneries in Kanpur, paper mills, distilleries and sugar mills in the Yamuna, Ramganga, Hindon and Kali river catchments. Then, there is the huge load of municipal sewage which contributes two-thirds of total pollution load.

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) in November 2019 had imposed a penalty of Rs 10 crore on the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government for failing to check sewage discharge containing toxic chromium into the Ganga at Rania and Rakhi Mandi in Kanpur. It also imposed a penalty of Rs 280 crore on 22 tanneries for causing pollution.

The cost of the damage was assessed by the state pollution control board (UPPCB) as compensation for restoration of environment and the public health in the area. Incidentally, the NGT also held UPPCB liable and directed it to pay Rs one crore for ignoring illegal discharge of sewage and other effluents containing toxic chromium directly into the Ganga.

The NGT, in its order dated December 6, 2019, directed local bodies and concerned departments to ensure 100 per cent treatment of sewage entering rivers across the country by March 31, 2020. In the case of non-compliance, the NGT has warned authorities that they will be liable to pay Rs five lakh per month per drain falling in the Ganga and Rs five lakh for default commencement of setting up sewage treatment plants.

Water in India is a state subject and water management is not a truly knowledge-based practice. The management of the Ganga lacked basin-wide integration and is not very cohesive between various riparian states. Further, there is a greater challenge of upgrading the water supply and wastewater treatment infrastructure in the designated smart cities and of providing clean water supply to all rural households by 2024 under the Jal Jeevan Mission.

Given the limited water resources, the task is enormous. For about three decades, the different strategies to clean-up the Ganga were attempted such as the Ganga Action Plan (GAP, Phase I and II) and establishment of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA). But no appreciable results were achieved.

Recently, the Ganga Council headed by Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, in its first meeting held on December 14, 2019, floated a plan to promote sustainable agriculture in the Gangetic plain by promoting organic clusters in a five-km stretch on both sides of the Ganga basin in Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

It is a good policy move, considering the cumulative use of pesticides has doubled in the last one decade and most of it runs off in our rivers. For the short-term, the five-km stretch is fine, but the government should eventually plan to stretch it to cover more area in the basin. Agriculture along the entire riverbed should be organic.

The council discussed the concept of ‘River Cities’ and charted an action plan to provide sewer connection to every household in towns along the Ganga and its tributaries. The PM directed governments of the five Gangetic states  to focus on promoting religious and adventure tourism on the river to generate sustainable income to clean the Ganga.

He also said that the focus should shift from Namami Gange to ‘Arth Ganga’, which would prop up a sustainable development model through economic activity.

It is clear that the Ganga cannot be restored by only pollution-abatement measures. Effective policy-making needs a scientific base. Many of the strategies (river-linking, riverfront development projects, access to toilets, making villages open defecation free, piped water supply in rural areas, to name a few) need to seriously integrate long-term ecological and sustainability goals, and cannot simply be a short-term populist move. 

The policies should be compatible with technology and broader aspects of holistic water management. Significant time and money can go down the drain on measures whose effectiveness has not been seriously examined. Therefore, there is an urgent need to review all management programmes undertaken so far and learn from past failures.

The Ganga’s revival: 10 critical steps that NMCG must follow

A ten-point guideline is presented as critical steps that NMCG must follow in order to reinforce its four restoration pillars:

1. Promote only decentralised sewage treatment plants (dSTP) at the colony level. Reuse treated wastewater for irrigation and empty into natural drains. For all upcoming cities, smart cities and for those, whose master plans are not in place, earmark land for dSTPs. dSTPs below 10 MLD should be encouraged and incentivised under urban development schemes and real estate development.

2. The existing and planned STPs need to be verified on efficiency, reliability and technology parameters by independent agencies (tech-efficiency-reliability verification). This will allow assessing if the technology provides value for money and is sustainable. Many STPs are not performing up to desired standards due to choice of unrealistic assumptions and erroneous technology choice. A survey conducted by CPCB in 2016 found that most STPs in Kanpur fail to comply with environmental regulations.

3. Develop and restore local storages (ponds, lakes, wetlands) as permanent solutions to both floods and droughts. Only 10 per cent of water received during monsoon rainfall is harvested. Restoration of ponds, lakes and wetlands should be an integral part of river restoration and conservation strategy.

4. Bring back glory to all natural drains that empty into rivers, and transform and rejuvenate them into healthy water bodies — they have been converted to sewage carrying drains by our municipalities and planning bodies.

5. Start restoring lower order streams and smaller tributaries in the Ganga Basin. Every river is important. The focus of Ganga Action Plan (Phase I and II) and Namami Gange has been on the main stem of the river. The tributaries that feed the river were overlooked. The Ganga has eight major tributaries (Yamuna, Son, Ramganga, Gomti, Ghaghra, Gandak, Kosi and Damodar). The majority of the funds were spent on pollution-abatement measures on the main stem of the Ganga and on the upper Yamuna basin, which constitute just 20 per cent of the Ganga basin. Further, these eight major tributaries are joined by smaller rivers, whose restoration is equally important.

6. Identify, define and protect ‘river-corridors’ as areas for no cement-concrete structures — know that rivers have been formed after thousands of years of nature’s work. Infrastructure development and destruction of river ecosystem through populist measures such as riverfront developments in the name of area and township development projects or urban / smart city development must be stopped to protect and conserve surface water sources.

7. Map the entire looped length of each and every tributary of the Ganga and correct the land records. Many of the rivers have been underestimated which causes encroachment and jurisdiction conflicts. The existing methodology to measure river length is flawed and complete mapping of looped lengths is required for proper assessment of water resources and correct revenue maps. This will ensure that active flood plains and river-corridors are free from encroachments.

8. Restore base flows through groundwater recharge. Groundwater contributes significantly to river-flows through base flows (average base flow in the order of 40- 55 per cent) especially during lean seasons in the entire Ganga Basin. The idea of Ganga rejuvenation is also linked to groundwater rejuvenation. There is a need to have robust planning and regulation of withdrawal and recharge of groundwater across all orders of the river streams to make rivers perennial.

9. Define the desired ecological flow regime(s) in the Ganga main stem and its tributaries (not just a static figure) to allow the rejuvenation of the river. Dwindling flows from over-allocation threaten the river functions. According to the Central Water Commission, all the existing hydroelectric projects have provision for releasing the mandated environmental-flow through controlled gated spillways or water ways. However, in view of the flow allocation from Ganga river system to canals, additional flow should be augmented through improving the irrigation practices and improving the efficiency of canals. Old dams should be decommissioned once irrigation efficiencies are improved.

10. Evolve new and innovative ways to generate sufficient revenues for operation and maintenance (O&M) of water and wastewater infrastructure through pricing and valuing water. The municipalities are struggling to operate their existing STPs due to lack of financing. Municipalities and urban local bodies can tap into bond markets to finance the O&M.

Venkatesh Dutta is a river scientist and associate professor at the School for Environmental Sciences, Ambedkar University, Lucknow. He is also a Gomti River Waterkeeper. Views are personal  

Ganga Action Plan - Environment Notes

Patil Amruta

Aug 9, 2024

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The Ganga Action Plan was launched on January 14th, 1986 by Shri Rajeev Gandhi, India's then-Prime Minister. Its primary goal is to reduce pollution and improve water quality by intercepting, diverting, and treating domestic sewage as well as current toxic and industrial chemical waste entering the river from identified grossly polluting units. It is a 100% Centrally Sponsored Scheme. This article will explain to you about the Ganga Action Plan which will be helpful in Environment Subject preparation for the UPSC Civil Service Exam.

Ganga Action Plan

• The Ganga Action Plan (GAP) is a government-funded initiative.
• The National River Ganga Basin Authority was founded under this concept, and Ganga was declared a national river of India.
• The Ministry of Environment and Forests took up the first River Action Plan, the Ganga Action Plan, in 1985.
• Since then, the program's scope has expanded to include all of the country's major rivers, with the National River Conservation Plan - NRCP extending the programme to other significant rivers in 1995.

Why need a Ganga Action Plan?

• During the late 1970s, the development in industrialization and urbanization resulted in a significant increase in the discharge of untreated sewage into water bodies.
• This increased level of pollution raised the risk of water-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and other illnesses, as well as reduced the supply of clean drinking water.
• Due to behaviors such as open defecation, the release of untreated industrial runoff, and other factors, the major river, Ganga, experienced a significant increase in contamination.
• All of this happened as a result of a lack of public knowledge and no rules in place to keep these sectors under control.

Ganga Action Plan - Objectives

The GAP's ultimate goal is to develop an integrated river basin management approach that takes into account the different dynamic interactions between abiotic and biotic ecosystems.

• Non-point pollution from agricultural runoff, human excrement, cow wallowing, and the dumping of unburned or half-burned bodies into rivers must be controlled.
• Research and development to protect the river's biological variety and increase its productivity.
• New sewage treatment technologies, such as the Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) and sewage treatment through afforestation, has been developed effectively.
• The use of soft-shelled turtles for river pollution abatement has been proven and found to be beneficial.
• Resource recovery options have been demonstrated, such as methane production for energy generation and aquaculture for revenue creation.
• To serve as a model for implementing comparable action initiatives in other heavily contaminated river segments.

Ganga action plan

Ganga Action Plan - Phases

Outside agencies role in Ganga Action Plan

• The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has offered technical support for a Development Study on the "Water Quality Management Plan for Ganga" .
• It focuses on four towns: Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, and Varanasi.
• The JICA Study Team/Consultants hired by JICA to conduct the study began working in March 2003 and finished in August/September 2005.
• The study's main goal was to create Master Plans and Feasibility Studies for the four towns' sewerage (including sewage treatment) and non-sewerage components.
• The JICA Study Team had submitted a Master Plan and Feasibility Studies report for sewerage and non-sewerage works in Varanasi town in the first phase during 2004-05, based on which the JBIC had signed an agreement with the Government of India for providing a loan for taking up pollution abatement schemes of the river Ganga in this town at an estimated cost of Rs.540 crore (13.248 billion Yen).
• JICA has received the final Feasibility Study Reports for the remaining three towns of Allahabad, Kanpur, and Lucknow, which include the opinions of the respective organizations.
• The cost of GAP-II projects in the three towns is expected to be Rs.1100 crore (Allahabad-Rs.305 crore, Kanpur-Rs.425 crore & Lucknow-Rs.375 crore).

The Ganga Action Plan prioritized pollution reduction and improved water quality. GAP I places a strong emphasis on sewage interception and treatment facilities. It also prioritized biodiversity conservation, building an integrated river basin management approach, undertaking comprehensive research to promote these goals, and gathering expertise in implementing comparable river clean-up initiatives in India's other dirty rivers.

Question: What is the primary goal of the Ganga Action Plan?

The key goals of the Ganga Action Plan are to improve water quality by intercepting, diverting, and treating domestic sewage and reduce toxic and industrial chemical waste entering the river from recognised highly polluting units.

Question : What is the purpose of the Ganga Safai Yojana?

The Ganga River is extremely polluted and sacred, as well as to rescue the one and only pink dolphin species that can only be found in the Ganga.

Question: Why did the Ganga Action Plan fail?

One of the Ganga Action Plan's flaws was that it was purely a bureaucratic effort with top-down, end-of-pipe actions. The plans failed miserably due to a lack of data on water use and wastewater generation.

Question: Consider the following statement regarding ganga action plan?

• The Ganga Action Plan was launched in 1986 with the goal of reducing pollution in the Ganga River.
• It is a joint initiative of the central and state government.

Select the correct code below

(c) Neither 1 nor 2

(d) All the above

Answer: (a) See the explanation

• Ganga action plan was started in 1986 with the objective of pollution abatement from river Ganga.
• The Ganga Action Plan (GAP) is a government-funded initiative. The National River Ganga Basin Authority was founded under this concept, and Ganga was declared a national river of India.
• GAP was split into two sections. Phase I began in 1985, and it covered the three states of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar, and West Bengal at the time (WB).
• GAP Phase II began in 1993 and covers seven states: Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Delhi, and Haryana.

Therefore, option (a) is the correct answer.

Question: Which of the states in india does not cover under ganga action plan?

(a) Uttar Pradesh

(c) Haryanna

Answer: (d) See the explanation

• Punjab is not covered under the ganga action plan .

Therefore, option (d) is the correct answer.

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The Ganga River is among the five most polluted rivers of the world and the Himalayas, from which the river originates, one of the most endangered ecosystems.

Each day, 2.9 billion liters of waste water from sewage, domestic and industrial sources is dumped directly into the river, posing a serious public health crisis to over 500 million in the Ganga River Basin.

Over 80% of the river's waters are extracted for irrigation as well as several hydro-power schemes leave long stretches of the river dry and significantly compound pollution levels.

Tons of religious waste, such as flower offerings, dead bodies, idols, and other non-biodegradable trash, such as plastics, are thrown daily into the river, choking and blocking drainage systems.

Water intensive farming and run-off from inorganic farms, including dangerous chemicals like DDT and HDH further aggravate the threats facing the Ganga River.

Pollution, Solution and Ganga Revolution

Over 500 million citizens depend on the River Ganga for life itself, yet our National River remains one of the most polluted in the world, denying vast populations of their rights to water, and robbing the world of the beauty and sanctity of a river that is worshipped by one billion people as divinity itself. Yet, while the problems are numerous, they are not insurmountable.  As the problems have been created by humanity, they thus can be remedied by humanity, if the will and focus is there.

Based on the wise inputs of experts and members of Ganga Action Parivar, we suggest three main areas of focus:

1. Restoring ecological flows at every point along the Ganga’s course. 2. Preventing and curtailing all waste water, starting with sewage and industrial waste, from mixing with the river. This especially needs to be prevented along the heavily polluted Kanpur and Varanasi stretches of Ganga. 3. Promoting massive water conservation and water resource management, inclusive of rain water harvesting schemes, at both centralized and decentralized levels within the Ganga River Basin.

We also suggest these three comprehensive solutions:

1. Implementing a detailed legislation that prevents any source of pollution or threats to the health of the national river. To see the National Ganga Rights Act and learn more about this legislation, click here . 2. Continual stakeholder involvement, including persistent and consistent efforts to implement policies and plans that connect state and local bodies, addressing their challenges and encouraging training and capacity-building programs. 3. Mass awareness campaigns and media-based water eco-consciousness campaigns that get people to not only stop pollution, but to also become an active part of the solution.

Below outlined are key thematic areas of concern as they impact our National River, Mother Ganga, and Her tributaries, such as the Yamuna. Also outlined are solutions that can be implemented for the benefit of all.

Restoration of Flow

Sewage Waste Management

Industrial Waste Management

Agriculture Management

Solid Waste Management

Renewable Energy

Ecological Management

Awareness and Education

Ganga: the run of the river

“Ganga is India’s largest river basin: it covers 26 per cent of the country’s landmass and supports 43 per cent of its population. In 1986, the government of India launched the Ganga Action Plan (GAP). In August 2009, GAP was re-launched with a reconstituted National Ganga River Basin Authority. The objectives in the past 30-odd years have remained the same: to improve the water quality of the river to acceptable standards (defined as bathing water quality standards) by preventing pollution form reaching it – in other words, intercepting the sewage and treating it before discharge[d] into the river. But despite programmes, funds and some attention, the Ganga still runs polluted.”

From Ganga: The River, It’s Pollution and what we can do to clean it by the Center for Science and Environment briefing paper.

Threats to Ganga’s Lifeline

For ease of understanding the issues and threats to the river basin, we have divided the river system into three main geographical regions along its main course:

1. Upper Ganga Region: the origin of the river in the lap of the Himalayas 2. Middle Ganga Region: the river as it meanders through the plains, where it is the most heavily populated and thereby most polluted stretches 3. Lower Ganga Region: the delta region as the river meets with Ganga Sagar

This diagram helps illustrate the major threats facing India’s National River:

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Ganga’s wait for a cleaner tomorrow continues …

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• Six years have passed since the National Democratic Alliance government launched the Rs 200 billion Namami Gange programme to clean river Ganga.
• During the last six years, the authorities involved in cleaning the river have repeatedly come under the scanner of a parliamentary panel as well as the National Green Tribunal for the slow pace of cleaning-related work.
• After spending Rs 100 billion on the programme, the authorities claim progress in cleaning the river.
• However, The Central Pollution Control Board’s most recent data and environmentalists monitoring the river question these claims and state there is no marked improvement in cleaning of Ganga and sewage continues to fall into the river unchecked.

This June marked six years since the government of India launched a Rs. 200 billion (Rs. 20,000 crore) programme, ‘Namami Gange’, for cleaning the severely polluted river Ganga, considered sacred in Hinduism.

Authorities leading the effort to clean the river claim significant improvement in the quality of the river. Those closely monitoring the effort, however, highlight that despite billions of rupees being spent, courts and parliament panels repeatedly pulling up authorities for lax efforts, the river remains polluted with little hope in future as well.

Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, who is the Director-General of the National Mission for Clean Ganga ( NMCG ), the national body leading the efforts for cleaning the river Ganga, said that over the last few years the Namami Gange programme has had an impact and gathered momentum.

“We have spent around Rs. 10,000 crores (Rs. 100 billion) already from the budget of Rs. 20,000 crores (Rs. 200 billion). Last two to three years great momentum has been built. We have already sanctioned projects of value worth Rs. 28,000 crores (Rs. 280 billion) in different sectors. The results are now visible. But now the programme is not just about cleaning and aims at efforts for improving ecology and flow with conserving biodiversity, ensuring ecological flow and protection of wetlands, springs etc.,” Mishra told Mongabay-India.

“I think we also have followed an evidence-based policymaking system now with scientific mapping and developing baselines on many aspects.  We are also focusing on tributaries of rivers Ganga to ensure rejuvenation of Ganga on a long-term basis with a basin approach,” he said, adding that outreach efforts have also been going on.

“We are also focusing on municipal sources of pollution both in urban and rural areas. Projects are being made to tap the drains carrying untreated sewage into the river and divert them to STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants) to prevent polluted flow falling into the river. When we started, against around 3,000 MLD (million litres per day) of sewage generation from Ganga towns, treatment capacity was less than 1,000 MLD and many plants were not functioning well,” said Mishra.

He stressed that the NMCG has scientifically planned for the gap in sewage generation and treatment capacity to take care of requirements upto 2035, estimated to be 3,600 MLD. “We now have treatment capacity exceeding 2,000 MLD which is likely to reach 3,300 MLD in the next two years or so. In Uttarakhand almost entire required capacity has been now created with four STPs in Haridwar (68 MLD), Rishikesh (26 MLD), Muni ki Reti (7.5 and 5 MLD) area getting commissioned during last few months, even during (COVID-19) lockdown period.”

“Similarly, in Kanpur, Prayagraj and Patna as well STPs are being completed. All along 2500 kilometres of Ganga river, sewage capacity is being created. This includes areas like Patna where there was almost no sewage treatment capacity. Moreover, our idea is not to build and forget. We have built-in the operation and maintenance component for 15 years in all our projects. We have moved beyond the construction era and gone into the performance-based era.”

According to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)’s latest available data , the water quality of Ganga across a significant portion of its 2,500 kilometres length is still unfit for bathing and drinking as it does not meet the permissible parameters for biochemical oxygen demand and total coliform.

Vishwambhar Nath Mishra, who is a professor in the department of electronics engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University (IIT-BHU), remarked that the technology used in the STPs being developed will not bring down the faecal coliform levels which then makes the whole process redundant. “It is because the high faecal coliform level is the root cause for all the waterborne diseases. Another point is that the plan was to intercept the drains falling into the rivers, treat the sewage and then use that water for agriculture etc. However, some of the intercepted drains are falling into another drain which is then again coming to the river and in some cases, the partially treated drain water is again being dumped into the river.”

“The claims being made doesn’t matter but the Ganga river is far from being clean. The tricks that the officials are playing won’t help the river. For instance, often the water quality is recorded in mid-stream areas where water is cleaner. The government claims that the Ganga river has become cleaner. This is all a lie. The river cannot become cleaner till the sewage falling into the river stops completely,” Mishra, who is also the head of the Sankat Mochan Foundation, an NGO to clean and protect the Ganga, told Mongabay-India.

Read more: Despite promises and allocations the Ganga flows polluted and fettered

Hits and misses 

Prior to the 2014 elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had famously claimed the river Ganga as his mother and said that he had come to Varanasi (constituency from where he got elected to parliament) due to her call. Soon after coming into power, the rechristening of the water resources ministry to the ministry of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation and the launch of the Namami Gange programme in June 2014 were among the first few decisions of the Modi government.

Subsequently, in the last six years, the authorities have spent billions of rupees into developing STPs, intercepting drains, tried to bring together states from where Ganga passes before falling into the Bay of Bengal, planned a waterway on the river and a massive afforestation drive, stop people from dumping garbage into the river, development of riverfront and ghats, biodiversity conservation, bioremediation and construction of toilets across gram panchayat near Ganga river etc.

According to the NMCG’s data , a total of 314 projects worth Rs 28,794.27 crore (Rs 287.94 billion) have been sanctioned so far and of that 124 have been completed. It also states that an expenditure of Rs 8,888.19 crore (Rs. 88.88 billion) has been incurred so far (May 31, 2020).

Earlier this year, in March 2020, the Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti and Social Justice and Empowerment, Rattan Lal Kataria, told parliament that a total of 152 sewerage infrastructure projects have been sanctioned in eight states (Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh) to rehabilitate 4,857 MLD sewage treatment capacities and sewer network of 4,972 kilometres along Ganga and its tributaries. Of that, 46 projects are completed, 75 projects are under progress and 31 projects are under various stages of tendering.

“The completed projects have created 632 MLD sewage treatment capacity and are presently in operation. All the requirements of sewage treatment infrastructure in 10 towns have been fully addressed. These towns contribute almost 64 percent of present sewage generation along Ganga main stem. The towns are: Haridwar, Kanpur, Allahabad, Farrukhabad, Varanasi, Patna, Bhagalpur, Kolkata, Howrah and Bally,” Kataria had said.

Meanwhile, in the 2014-2020 period, environmentalist G.D. Agrawal, popularly known as Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand, died following a fast of 111 days in demand for a clean and free-flowing Ganga. Agrawal died in October 2018 and in the same month, the central government also published a notification mandating environment flows in the Ganga river, even as it was criticised for having serious flaws.

The plan to clean the polluted Ganga river is not new or exclusive to the current government of India. In the mid-1980s, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had launched the Ganga Action Plan to clean the river and since then billions of rupees were spent but the river never got cleaned.

Read more: [Commentary] ‘Righting’ the wrong: Rights of rivers in India

Is there any marked improvement in Ganga’s water quality?

During the past six years, the cleaning of river Ganga has also come under the scanner of the parliamentary standing committee on water resources which, in December 2019, expressed disappointment over the slow pace of Ganga cleaning and pushed the central government to complete all the sanctioned projects under the Namami Gange programme within the scheduled time.

Through a series of orders over the past six years, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) too has been closely monitoring the cleaning process of Ganga. The reports submitted to the NGT by the NMCG and several state governments in compliance with the tribunal’s orders highlight how many drains are still falling into the river and many other areas that still need serious work.

For instance, the NGT in August 2019 had directed completion of all ongoing sewage treatment-related projects by June 2020 end. On this, the NMCG’s report submitted to the NGT on June 26, 2020, states that the progress of sewerage projects has been “severely impacted due to COVID-19 pandemic and the extraordinary situation prevalent in the country.”

“Non-availability of labour at sites and related problems is having a serious impact on the pace of the projects …” said the NMCG. It informed the green tribunal the STPs have been delayed in Bihar “inordinately for want of finalisation of tenders by the state government” and sometimes the reasons “are too trivial.”

The NMCG in its report highlighted that of the five states, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, the flood plain zoning work is far from being completed except Uttarakhand.

The NMCG also said that based on bio-assessment carried out at 41 locations during 2014-2020, it is found that there is an improvement in biological water quality at 29 of the 41 locations.

On criticism about no visible difference in the quality of the river, NMCG’s Rajiv Ranjan Mishra said he hoped that there is a magical wand. “The projects are in an advanced stage and differences are visible.”

“Did we not see it during Kumbh? Several drains such as Sisamau drain carrying 140 MLD sewage to Ganga at Kanpur is closed. More than 80 drains have been tapped and several more are likely soon. More impact will be visible in future. For example, the entire length of the river is already meeting DO norms. Dolphins and other aquatic animals are also being seen more frequently,” he argued.

Talking about government claims regarding cleaning of Ganga, Vimal Bhai of Matu Jan Sangathan, a Uttarakhand based group that works for community rights, remarked that “everyone has a right to joke.”

“Why I am saying this is because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders exploited Ganga for its political gains and after that just forgot about it. Now they don’t need Ganga and that’s why no one cares about its cleaning anymore. Thousands of crores of rupees (billions) were spent but nothing has changed. The drains are still falling into the river. What is left on the issue of the Ganga river now – Nothing. Dams are also one of the major causes of pollution as it stops the free flow of the river – nirmalta connected with aviralta,” Vimal Bhai told Mongabay-India.

Read more:  How does plastic pollute the Ganga? An all-women scientists’ expedition is looking for answers

Banner image: A worker on the banks of river Ganga. Photo by Kartik Chandramouli/Mongabay.

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NMCG & Namami Gange Programme

• 12 Dec 2022
• GS Paper - 1
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For Prelims: NMCG, Namami Gange programme, Arth Ganga, natural farming, SBM 2.0 , AMRUT 2.0, ‘Project Dolphin

For Mains: Significance of Namami Gange Programme in the Rejuvenation of River Ganga

Why in News?

Recently, the Union Minister for Jal Shakti chaired the 10 th meeting of the Empowered Task Force (ETF) of National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG).

• As part of its flagship Namami Gange programme , the Union government has shifted its focus from improving sanitation to conservation, tourism, and economic development of the Ganga river.

What are the Recent Developments in Ganga Rejuvenation?

• ‘Arth Ganga’ implies a sustainable development model with a focus on economic activities related to Ganga.
• Exhibitions & Fairs across 75 towns along Ganga River planned as part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.
• Eco-agriculture being promoted besides efforts to improve water-use efficiency in Ganga villages by MoA&FW.
• Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs focusing on mapping of urban drains and management of solid and liquid waste in Ganga towns under SBM 2.0 and AMRUT 2.0
• The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change mulling scaling up of afforestation activities in the Ganga belt and a detailed plan to take ‘Project Dolphin’ forward is also underway.

What is NMCG?

• It is being implemented by the National Council for Rejuvenation, Protection and Management of River Ganga also known as the National Ganga Council.
• This mission was established on 12 th August 2011 under the Societies Registration Act,1860 as a registered society.
• The mission incorporates rehabilitating and boosting the existing STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants) and instant short-term steps to curb pollution at exit points on the riverfront in order to check the inflow of sewage.
• To maintain the continuity of the water flow without changing the natural season variations.
• To restore and maintain the surface flow and groundwater.
• To regenerate and maintain the natural vegetation of the area.
• To conserve and regenerate the aquatic biodiversity as well as the riparian biodiversity of the river Ganga basin.
• To allow participation of the public in the process of protection, rejuvenation and management of the river.

What is Namami Gange Programme?

• Namami Gange Programme is an Integrated Conservation Mission, approved as a ‘Flagship Programme’ by the Union Government in June 2014 to accomplish the twin objectives of effective abatement of pollution and conservation and rejuvenation of National River Ganga.
• It is being operated under the Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti.
• The program is being implemented by the NMCG and its state counterpart organizations i.e State Program Management Groups (SPMGs).
• Focus is also being given to the revival of small rivers and wetlands.
• For future, each Ganga district is to develop scientific plan and health card for at least 10 wetlands and adopt policies for reuse of treated water and other by products.
• Sewage Treatment Infrastructure
• River-Front Development
• River-Surface Cleaning
• Biodiversity
• Afforestation
• Public Awareness
• Industrial Effluent Monitoring

What are the Other Related Initiatives?

• The National River Conservation Plan is an extension to the Ganga Action Plan. It aims at cleaning the Ganga river under Ganga Action Plan phase-2.
• It declared the Ganga as the ‘National River’ of India.
• Clean Ganga Fund: In 2014, it was formed for cleaning up of the Ganga, setting up of waste treatment plants, and conservation of biotic diversity of the river.
• Bhuvan-Ganga Web App : It ensures involvement of the public in monitoring of pollution entering into the river Ganga.
• Ban on Waste Disposal: In 2017, the National Green Tribunal banned the disposal of any waste in the Ganga.

UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Questions (PYQs)

Q. Discuss the Namami Gange and National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) programmes and causes of mixed results from the previous schemes. What quantum leaps can help preserve the river Ganga better than incremental inputs? (2015)

Source: PIB

Write a short note on the Ganga Action Plan. [5 MARKS]

Explanation: 5 marks this multi-crore project came about in 1985 because the quality of the water in the ganga was very poor. the ganga action plan or gap was a program launched by rajiv gandhi in april 1986 to reduce the pollution load on the river. but the efforts to decrease the pollution level in the river became more after spending rs 9017 million. therefore, this plan was withdrawn on 31 march 2000. the steering committee of the national river conservation authority reviewed the progress of the gap and necessary correction on the basis of lessons learned and experiences gained from the gap; phase 2 schemes have been completed under this plan. a million liters of sewage are targeted to be intercepted, diverted and treated. phase-ii of the program was approved in stages from 1993 onwards, and included the following tributaries of the ganges: yamuna, gomti, damodar and mahananda. as of 2011, it is currently under implementation..

Write a short note on fertilization in plants. [5 MARKS]

Write a short note on: 1. Mitochondria 2. Golgi apparatus [5 MARKS]

Write a short note on the characteristics of beard ape? [5 MARKS]

Write short notes on 5 metallic properties of metals. [5 MARKS]