When Narendra Modi says ?Maa Ganga aur Banares se mera rishta purana hai?, or goes to perform aarti there later today?as is supposed to be the plan?he has to be struck by the fact that 30 years, several action plans and R40,000 crore later, the 2,500- km-long holy river is dirtier than ever. Indeed, in 2004, the parliamentary standing committee examining various Ganga
Action Plans declared them to be a failure. In 2009, with all the Ganga Action Plans not resulting in much, the National Ganga River Basin Authority was set up with the aim that, by 2020, no untreated effluents or untreated sewage would flow into the river. Going by what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said while chairing the Ganga Authority?s meeting a couple of years ago, around 2,900 million litres of sewage is discharged into the Ganga every day.
Fixing this will require more than greater empowerment of the Ganga Authority. It will require, for instance, working along with the JNNURM to ensure effluent and sewage treatment. Environmentalist Sunita Narain who coined the term Sewage Canal to describe the Yamuna has long pointed that India?s current lot of treatment plants are located in areas where there is no sewage, for instance. There is also the issue of treating sewage in special plants or in the pipelines themselves and, for decades, locals in Varanasi?such as in the Banaras Hindu University?have been at odds with the government?s treatment plans. Whether or not a separate ministry for rivers, as some believe will be created, will help is not clear. What is clear, though, is that cleaning up the Ganga, apart from what it might mean in religious terms, has tremendous spin off benefits in terms of people?s lives as well as economic potential in terms of tourism for instance.