by Justin Rowlattblog.hawaii.edu/...News-Indias-dying-mother-Ganges.pdf · These river aartis are a celebration of the Ganges. A similar ritual is performed in towns and villages

5/23/2016 BBC News India's dying mother

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The Ganges is one of the greatest rivers on Earth, but it is dying.

From the icy Himalayan peaks, where it begins, right down to the Bay ofBengal, it is being slowly poisoned.

The Ganges is revered in India but it is also the sewer that carries awaythe waste from the 450 million people who live in its catchment area.

Pollution from the factories and farms of the fastest-growing largeeconomy in the world – and from the riverside cremation of Hindu truebelievers - has turned its waters toxic.

India's dying motherby Justin Rowlatt

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The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, promised two years ago toclean up the Ganges, but can he do it?

Can the sacred mother of Hinduism be saved?



The source of the Ganges lies among the soaring, snow-clad peaks of theHimalayas.

As a rose-pink dawn rises over the jagged teeth of the mountains, thevalley where the river begins remains in deep shadow.

It takes hours for the sun to scale the great crags. Only then does a singleshaft of sunlight finally penetrate into the chasm.

The Swami



It strikes a glacier called Gangotri, suddenly illuminating its cloudy blueand white depths.

It is easy to understand why this is one of the most sacred sites in allHinduism. Up here in the cold fresh air the great shimmering body offrozen water appears radiantly pure.

At the foot of the glacier there is a cave in the ice. This is “Gaumukh”, thecow’s mouth, and the chuckling stream of crystal clear icy water thatemerges from it is the beginning of the Ganges.

, it is known in Hindi: “Mother Ganges”. It’s an apt name - theGanges has nurtured and supported the rise of Indian civilisation.Ma Ganga

As the stream snakes down from the mountains it gathers pace andvolume, joined by hundreds of others bringing snowmelt from the vastHimalayan watershed.

But studies show that even here in the Himalayas the water is becomingincreasingly polluted.

And the further you descend, the more pronounced the legendary river’sproblems become.

In the holy city of Rishikesh, Swami Chidanand Saraswati is leading theevening , a Hindu fire ceremony.aarti



He is an irrepressibly cheerful man, theflickering light of the butter candles he circlesin front of him twinkle in his eyes as he chantsand sings along with the music. About 50monks take part, watched by a couple ofhundred devotees.

These river aartis are a celebration of theGanges. A similar ritual is performed in towns

and villages all along the 2,500km-long (1,500-mile) river.

All day pilgrims have been descending to the water to bathe, part of anancient ritual of purification.

Hindus revere the Ganges as a god. They believe she came down fromheaven to cleanse the Earth, and that bathing in her waters can washaway a person’s sins.

The Swami has built the ashram into a huge enterprise. He glances downmodestly when I ask how many followers he has. “Perhaps a million,” hereplies. But his demeanour changes when I ask about pollution in the river.His brow furrows.

Too many people think the Ganges not only purifies sin but also has thepower to cleanse itself, he says.

Sitting here by the Ganga I can tell you, before we take a bath inthe Ganga we need to give Ganga a bath.”

“People think Ganga can take care of my sins, can take care of anything,and they forget that while Ganga can take care of your sins it cannot takecare of your waste, of your pollution.”



Campaigning for a serious effort to clean the river, he says, occupies mostof his time. He is in no doubt that India is killing the Ganges, “killing its ownmother”, he says, and he is determined to save her.

For me if Ganga dies, India dies. If Ganga thrives, India thrives.”

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist, also sees cleaningup the Ganges as nothing less than a mission from God.

“Ma Ganga has called me,” he told the crowd at his victory celebration,when he was swept to power in a landslide victory two years ago.

“She has decided some responsibilities for me. Ma Ganga is screaming forhelp, she is saying I hope one of my sons gets me out of this filth,” he said.“It is possible it has been decided by God for me to serve Ma Ganga.”

He has pledged serious money to his Clean Ganga Mission - more than$3bn (£2bn) over five years.

Quite deliberately he has chosen this as one of his signature projects,knowing that it is symbolic of an even bigger challenge - India’s effort to liftits people out of poverty and to become a modern world power.

Previous Indian leaders launched similar initiatives. In the 1980s RajivGandhi began a huge programme of public works, building sewers andwater treatment plants, for example.

But they didn’t solve the problem. In fact, the Ganges has steadily becomemore and more polluted.



So what can be done?

Rakesh Jaiswal believes he has a good idea where to begin.

The veteran environmental campaigner has told me to meet him in theindustrial area of Kanpur.

Kanpur is the centre of India’s vast leather industry, and Jaiswal believes itis the dirtiest city in the entire country.

Most of the leather produced in Kanpur isexported, much of it to Europe and the US.More likely than not you own products that useleather from Kanpur.

“Follow me,” he orders, before vanishing into aweb of high-walled alleyways.

This modest, plump man has pretty muchsingle-handedly led the campaign to clean up the leather industry in hishome city for more than two decades.

We swerve around a couple of tight corners until the alleyway opens upinto a broad brick-paved path beside a stream.

The campaigner



Rakesh Jaiswal

Jaiswal turns to speak to me. I see he has ahandkerchief clamped over his nose and isgesturing to the dark black water.

I don’t hear a word he says.

I am totally overwhelmed - disabled - by thewarm oily stench coming from the water.

The smell is impossible to describe. There’shuman waste in there, and something very rotten indeed.

But that’s just what a wine buff would call the “top notes”. Behind them areother awful odours that I can’t even begin to identify: meaty, acidic andvery wrong.

Instinct takes over. I begin to retch uncontrollably. And each time my bodyconvulses I suck in another great lungful of that fetid air.

It is only with great effort that I manage to avoid vomiting.

Jaiswal leads me swiftly away to a bluff overlooking the place where thisfilthy drain flows directly and completely unfiltered into the main flow of theGanges.

There is sewage and other domestic waste in the stream, he tells me, butalso much more dangerous stuff.



The leather industry uses highly toxic chemicals to soften and preserve thehides, he says. Some - including compounds of chromium - are powerfulcarcinogens.

“India has the resources to clean up the river,” he tells me.

We have the science and technology, the talents, the manpower:everything is there. What is missing is honesty and dedication.”

As Jaiswal sees it, the problem is simple. The government just does notenforce the laws it has enacted.

What about the huge emphasis Narendra Modi has put on this project, Iwant to know.

“Maybe he didn’t realise how difficult it would be,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter how many meetings Modi has held in the past, howmany he is holding, or will be holding in the future, I need to see thechange on the ground to believe something is happening.”

I can’t remember ever meeting a more dispirited campaigner.

“I don’t think I am ever going to see a healthy and clean river in mylifetime. For the last 22 years I’ve been watching the same polluted riverand there has been no change. So much I have done, so much the



government has done, but nothing has changed. All hope is dead for menow.”

At the Water Ministry in Delhi I am surprised to learn that the civil servantin charge of the Clean Ganga mission, Shashi Shekhar, agrees withJaiswal’s diagnosis that corruption and mismanagement have allowedpollution to pour into the river.

Shashi Shekhar

He quotes figures which show that, untilrecently, there were almost 200 tanneriesoperating in Kanpur without licences. LikeJaiswal, he says this could only happen withthe connivance of corrupt officials.

But he says things really are changing.

The government has tightened up the rules, hesays - every tannery now has to install its own

effluent treatment and chromium recovery plants, for example - and it hasalso improved enforcement.

More than 100 tanneries have been shut down, Shekhar tells me, becausethey didn’t meet the new standards.

It takes a lot of wheedling, but eventually we get permission to go out withpollution control officers on one of their surprise inspections.

The first tannery they take me to is a model of hygiene and efficiency. Somuch so, it makes me suspicious. I ask if I can choose where we go next,and to my surprise, they agree.

There are more than 400 tanneries in Kanpur and I pick one at random. Assoon as the security guard creaks opens the big iron gate it is clear this isa very different operation.

Someone shouts and we see a scuffle at the end of the long yard. Theyseem to be trying to turn off the machines. We rush down.

What we find is truly horrific.



Leather tanning - even at the best of times - is not a pleasant process.First you have to scrape any remaining flesh from the hides. It seemsthey’ve been doing that here for days, but haven’t got round to cleaningup.

Beside a machine, a huge mound of rotten meat spills out on to the floor ofthe workshop. It is four days’ worth, one of the workers tells the inspector.And this is at a temperature of 30C (86F).

But I’m more worried by the blue-tinted water sloshing out of one of thegreat rotating wooden drums they use to process the hides. It was thisthey were trying to turn off.

That blue, the pollution inspector says, is thesignature colour of the most dangerous of allthe chemicals used in the tanning process,chromium.

He says the contaminated liquid is not goinginto the public drainage system, it is containedwithin the effluent treatment system of the

tannery, but that it is not good practice to have so much washing around.

“I will recommend this place is closed,” the inspector tells me earnestly aswe leave.

As he and his team walk off down the lane I’m left feeling confused.



He seems sincerely to want to clean up the industry, and appears to beempowered to do so, but how many of Kanpur's tanneries are like this one,and how come the effluent entering the river is so disgusting?

Cleaning the Ganges isn’t just a question of controlling what is going intothe river, but also a question of controlling what is being taken out.

The river is a crucial source of water for a vast area. Its basin covers morethan one million sq km (390,000 sq miles) and is home to more than 40%of India’s 1.3 billion-strong population.

All along the length of the river you see channels siphoning the flow forirrigation and for drinking water. Most of Delhi’s water, for example, comesto the city in two great canals, one from the Ganges and the other fromone of its main tributaries, the Yamuna.

And the water taken directly from the main flow is just one part of theproblem. More worrying still is the water that is taken from the ground.

The vast plains either side of the Ganges are the breadbasket of India.These hugely fertile flatlands have produced the food that has sustainedIndia for millennia.

The farmer



The rich alluvial soil is very productive, so long as farmers keep it wellirrigated, says Rajesh Bajpai of the WWF.

Rajesh Bajpai

He’s another passionate campaigner and hasspent more than two decades working withfarmers on these plains.

His mission: to reduce the amount of waterthey use.

It doesn’t take long to dig a well here. Thewater is just 100m (330ft) or so down, so ateam can do it in a couple of days of hot, hard

labour - I should know, I helped dig one.

Once the well is dug, there is no restriction on how much water farmerscan take. The only limit is the cost of the fuel needed to pump it out of theground.

And since virtually every one of the more than two hundred million farmersin the plain of the Ganges now has a well, vast amounts of water are beingused. As a result, say hydrologists, the water table is falling, in someplaces very dramatically.



In 2012 scientists at India’s National Geophysical Research Institute saidDelhi’s groundwater could dry up in just a few years.

So much water is now being taken that some once free-flowing parts of theriver are now sluggish or even stagnant during the dry months - effectivelythey have become nothing more than an open sewer.

It doesn’t help that the country is in the grip of a devastating drought afterthe failure of the monsoon for two years in a row.

But Bajpai believes he has at least the beginnings of a solution.



He leads me across the fields and shows me a magnificent old dieselengine with a huge cast-iron flywheel.

A farmhand cajoles it into life and it emits a series of throaty coughs,puffing out filthy clouds of diesel smoke. The thick hose attached to itthrobs and swells as the pump begins to suck up water from deepunderground.

I follow the hose down the lane and into the next field, where the cool,clean water the pump is drawing out pours into one of the neat littlesections the farmer, Shri Ram, has created by heaping up the muddy soilof the field into a series of dams.

As each section is flooded, he breaches the dam wall and floods another.

It turns out that this system is far more effective than flooding the wholefield at once.

“We used to use lots of water before, now weirrigate the fields with much less,” the farmersays.

My water use is down by almost half and youknow what? We are still getting good crops.”



Shri Ram It is a pleasure to see how proud Ram is of hisefforts.

“All the other farmers are also doing it,” he says. “It is good for everybody.We spend less on water and get good yields and that means we savemoney.” He smiles broadly.

Similar water-saving efforts are now being replicated across India butmany economists believe that a more fundamental solution is needed.

They argue that farmers need to be incentivised to value water properly.

That would mean stripping away the plethora of subsidies, in particularlythose that support the cultivation of water-intensive crops such as sugarcane and cotton.

Or - more radical still - farmers could actually pay for the water they use.

But that is very unlikely to happen.

With two-thirds of the Indian population still dependent on agriculture,farmers are a crucial political constituency, and one Indian politicians arecareful to cultivate.

No city embodies India like Varanasi.

The holy city



This is the “Incredible India” you see in the adverts noisy, chaotic,colourful, rich with tradition, and radiantly beautiful.

-

But what really overwhelms visitors is the number of people. There arepeople everywhere. And that’s another big challenge the clean-upcampaign faces: the sheer scale of the problem.

Just try to walk through the tangle of lanes alongside the ghats - the seriesof stone platforms and steps that lead down to the Ganges – and you arecaught up in another great river, a river of people.



Fires flicker day and night at the two “burning ghats”, where the ancientpractice of riverside cremation still continues.

Hindus believe that being burned on a pyre beside the Ganges brings: liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.moksha

It is reckoned that 32,000 human corpses are cremated here each yearwith up to 300 tonnes of half-burnt human flesh released into the Ganges.



But that is only a tiny part of the pollution problem.

The real issue here, as along the entire length of the river, is the wastefrom all those living humans.

The Ganges is still the main sewer for many of the 450 million peoplereckoned to live in its catchment area.

The first Ganges action plan 30 years ago commissioned a series of hugesewage plants. The plants are still there but, according to thegovernment’s own figures, most are working way below capacity or notworking at all.



Sanjay Kumar Singh, who runs the Ganga Pollution Control Unit atVaranasi, is a man who understands the ebb and flow of filth in his city.

“The total treatment capacity is 100 million litres a day, but 300 millionlitres is being generated,” he says solemnly.

We are going to build more plants but at the moment only a thirdof the city is connected to the sewers. The rest of it goes straightinto the Ganges.”

The figures elsewhere are even worse, according to the Centre forScience and the Environment, an Indian research and campaigningorganisation. It estimates that 80% of sewage in the Ganges basin isuntreated.

Which is why faecal contamination in the river is so high.

Here in Varanasi it is sometimes more than150 times the recommended safe level forbathing, yet vast numbers of people batheaway regardless.

And that brings us to the most compellingreason of all to clean up the river. In Indiatoday a third of a million children under five still

die each year from diarrhoea.



The man whose job is to oversee Narendra Modi’s ambitious clean-up planhas an office in one of the greenest buildings in India. Or at least that’swhat the posters at the Environment Ministry claim.

Apparently it is a passive building - it doesn’t need power for heating orcooling - and has an impressive array of solar panels on the roof.

But there is nothing passive about Prakesh Javadekar, the IndianEnvironment Minister. He is a lively man, with a neat little beard.

India's EnvironmentMinister PrakeshJavadekar

The prime minister sits in on the committeethat oversees the Clean Ganga Mission, butJavadekar runs the show day to day.

As a project, cleaning the Ganges dwarfs theattempts to clean other rivers such as theThames or the Rhine. It is on a far larger scale,and involves many more people.

So I want to know why, after so many otherattempts to clean the Ganges have failed,Modi’s government believes it can do better.

The minister



“Because we have learned lessons from their mistakes,” says Javadekarwith a confident smile. He tells me Modi is leading from the front.

There is tremendous focus and therefore we are very confident wewill achieve our targets.”

He says every aspect of the pollution problem has been mapped out, andthe government has worked out how to deal with it in what he calls a “time-bound manner”.

He talks about the new regulations on industrial units, knows how manytanneries have been closed down and claims industrial pollution hasalready fallen by a third. He says new effluent treatment plants will be builtand that corruption will not be a problem - every rupee the governmentspends will be accounted for.

As he cheerfully reels off the government’s plans it finally dawns on mewhy he is so upbeat.

The government has set itself tough targets and, to be fair, assigned adecent budget to the world’s biggest river-cleaning project - but for themoment he is sheltered by the sheer scale of what his government isattempting to do.

“We are not saying that the whole Ganga mission will be complete in fiveyears, no. Five years will ensure there is a marked difference but this is along project,” he says.

“The Rhine and the Thames were in the same dirty state 50 or 60 yearsago and it took nearly 20 years to change the overall ecology of that, andwe will also achieve it within 10 to 15 years’ time.”

The dolphins



As I leave the Environment Ministry I can’t help feeling a little deflated.

I had been looking forward to a good confrontational interview but I have toconcede that the minister’s position is reasonable - it is too early to judgethe government’s record.

Nevertheless, given the state of the river and history of efforts to improveit, it is hard to be optimistic.

It takes something very special to give me any sense of optimism aboutthe Ganges.

This begins with a tantalising invitation from contacts at the WWF, who askif I want to try to get a glimpse one of the rarest species in India, theGanges river dolphin.

These extraordinary animals are to all intents and purposes blind - theyhave evolved a system of echolocation to navigate and catch fish in themurky waters of the Ganges.

But they are threatened with extinction. Back in the 1980s the populationwas reckoned to have fallen to just 5,000 in India.

According to a recent survey by WWF there are now fewer than 2,000 left,and that figure is higher than the experts were expecting.



When I mention my dolphin-watching ambitions to a grizzled fellowjournalist over a large Black Dog whisky at the picturesquely decrepitforeign correspondents’ club in the centre of Delhi, he meets them with aderisive snort.

“Not only are they very rare, but they aren’t nearly as frisky as theirmaritime cousins,” he warns. “You’ll be lucky to see anything more than agrey dorsal fin break the surface.”

My hopes suitably quashed, I await further details from WWF.

I’m expecting that we’ll be heading to the higher reaches of the river wherethe water is cleanest but they tell me to meet them in Allahabad.

The city is on one of the most polluted stretches of the Ganges of them all,just downstream from Kanpur.

With a camera crew, I drive to a little village. We have been told to getthere by 10:00 because the dolphins are most active in the morning.

I’m prepared for a long wait, but as I walk down a steep slope on to thesandy banks beside the river I see something break the surface.

“That wasn’t a dolphin was it?” I ask,astonished.

It was, Asghar Nawab of WWF tells me. Heexplains that the dolphins need to breatheevery minute or two, so when a pod - a dolphinfamily - is around they come to the surfacevery regularly.

Asghar Nawab

But it is one thing to see dolphins, quiteanother to get good pictures of them.

Fortunately the excellent BBC cameraman,Sanjay Ganguly, is up to the task. And he isably assisted by the dolphins themselves,which jump and splash in the water, just asplayfully as those in the oceans.

I will never forget one moment when sevendolphins jump near the boat, one after the other.



After a couple of hours on the river we’ve bagged some wonderful shots ofthese incredible animals.

I am surprised what an impression it makes on me.

It tells us that, despite the pollution, the river is capable of supporting theseamazing animals.

It also demonstrates again why it so important that the Indiangovernment’s efforts to clean up this river succeed.



My final destination is Gangasagar, on the Bay of Bengal where theGanges meets the Indian Ocean.

This is another holy site and I visit during theannual , when the descent of Ganga fromheaven is celebrated.

mela

More than a million people have come here tobathe in the holy but polluted waters. Thatsounds like a lot, but by the standard ofGanges festivals it is quite modest.

Some 120 million people are reckoned to have visited Allahabad over atwo-month period in 2013 for the Maha Kumbh Mela - a celebration heldonce every 12 years.

More than 30 million are estimated to have visited on one day alone - 10February 2013.

These huge numbers are a measure of just how important the Ganges isto Hindus, and explains why the Clean Ganga Mission has been givensuch prominence by the government.



Find out more

Killing the Ganges from BBC News Our World (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0070w71)

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, knows it is a key yardstick by whichhis success or failure will be judged.

His efforts to clean the Ganges are a test of India’s ability to modernise - totackle corruption and introduce proper regulation, as well as to investmassively in waste treatment.

But he has a crucial asset - the fact that so many Indians want him tosucceed.

On the banks of the Ganges I meet Swami Chidanand again, the cheerfulreligious leader I met way back in Rishikesh. He believes change willcome.

“I think one day we will see the Ganga - the pristine Ganga - and this willhappen not only because the politicians but people also, all stakeholderswill come together. Because rivers belong to all, Ganga belongs to all. Weall must come together. I’m very optimistic, we will see it through.”

Let’s hope so. Because if India can clean up one of the dirtiest rivers in theworld, who knows what else this great rising nation can achieve?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0070w71



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Justin Rowlatt answered your questions on the BBC News Facebook page live from the banks of the RiverGanges (https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews/videos/10153603487777217/)

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Justin Rowlatt

Shalu YadavSanjay Ganguly

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Shalu YadavAdditional Himalayas images - Getty Images, AlamyZoe BartholomewDominic BaileySteven Connor

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by Justin Rowlattblog.hawaii.edu/...News-Indias-dying-mother-Ganges.pdf · These river aartis are a celebration of the Ganges. A similar ritual is performed in towns and villages

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