Today's meeting on 'Namami Gange' programme assumed significance as it was the first since the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the river's two key basin states whose previous governments were accused by the Centre of not cooperating fully.
Addressing the Indian community at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2014, the Prime Minister once said, “If we are able to clean it, it will be a huge help for the 40 per cent population of the country. So, cleaning the Ganges is also an economic agenda.”
The River Ganga is important not only for its cultural and spiritual significance but also because it hosts more than 40% of the country’s population.
But after three years of BJP ruling the facts says a differemt story.The party blames that project could not be implemented at the desired pace due to "non-cooperation" by the previous governments in Uttar Pradesh, where Ganga's longest stretch falls, and Uttarakhand, from where the river originates. Now all three states are ruled by BJP and we should be able to see some progress.
“Not a single drop of river Ganga has been cleaned so far,” said the National Green Tribunal earlier this year, criticizing the National Democratic Alliance-government for wasting public money in the name of ‘Namami Gange’ project.
A senior government official associated with the project told agencies that the conceptualization stage of the project had been cleared and the funds would be released soon. The official also said that projects worth Rs 11,000 crore were approved on 11 May 2017.
The government had allocated Rs 20,000 crore for the project, but only 18 per cent of it has been released so far and only 9 per cent of the total fund has been used so far, the official confirmed.
“It is a historic moment as for the first time the river is being cleaned with wholesomeness. We will show Phase I of Ganga cleaning in October 2016, while the second phase will be completed two years later,” Union minister for water resources Uma Bharti had said at the launch of the project. Her words seem to stand no ground so far.
Today, Ganga is contaminated with industrial waste, animal waste, human waste and garbage. More than 3,000 million litres of waste water enter Ganga everyday while we have mechanisms to treat only 1,000 million litres of waste water.
Previous governments have also made futile attempts to clean Ganga. In 1985, the then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi launched the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) Phase I, and Phase II in 1993. According to Press Information Bureau, a sum of Rs 986.34 crore was spent on the two phases till 31 March 2014. However, the impact of it can hardly be seen, which is why Ganga was listed among the top 10 dirtiest rivers in the world by the World Wildlife Fund in 2016.
Many experts believe Ganga cannot be cleaned until the sewage system of big cities along the river are restructured. For instance, Kanpur city in Uttar Pradesh has two sewage treatment plants and only one common effluent treatment plant to treat around 600 million liters per day. The city alone has 470 sewage drains that flow into the Ganga.