The Ganga River system epitomises all that has gone wrong with our rivers. Under the Indian Constitution, water is the responsibility of the states, while the central government provides planning and funding. But this has historically led to no one being responsible for managing our rivers, let alone adopting any holistic approach for long term sustainability. With the shifting onus of responsibility and skewed planning, the question is – will the Ganga and our other rivers survive the threat from banks, companies, contractors, politicians, embedded scholars and religious leaders? The BJP-led NDA government has set up an Integrated Ganga Conservation Mission – Namami Gange – for the rejuvenation of the Ganga and its tributaries. Will it work for the river and its people?
Ganga cleanup – a pipe dream?
Rejuvenation of Ganga has been in focus since the last 30 years. The revival of Ganga is one of the litmus tests which Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set for himself and his government. The Ganga basin spreads over 239 parliamentary constituencies comprising 80 seats of Uttar Pradesh, 40 of Bihar, 40 of West Bengal, 25 of Madhya Pradesh, 16 of Rajasthan, 12 of Jharkhand, eight of Haryana, five of Uttarakhand, four of Chhattisgarh, two of Himachal Pradesh and seven of Delhi. Ganga’s catchment area falls in four countries – India, Nepal, Tibet-China, and Bangladesh. Yet, the planning and action viz., the river betrays a rather fragmented vision and approach.
Uma Bharti, Minister of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation has pointed out the “large gap between sewage generation and availability of sewage treatment capacity”. The PM has chaired the meeting of the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) and called for an “uncompromising mission-mode approach” to stop further pollution of the Ganga. He said the task at hand could not be accomplished without jan-bhaagidaari (people’s participation).
The issue of jan bhaagidari can only be understood in relation to sarkari bhaagidaari (government participation), bank bhaagidari (participation of banks), company bhaagidari (participation of companies), thekedar bhaagidari (participation of contractors), siyaasi bhaagidari (participation of political parties), and Ganga bhaagidari (participation of Ganga). But the meeting confined itself to the quality of water of the Ganga River alone. And even with regard to water quality, it did not address all the water sources in the Ganga Basin and its relationship with soil pollution.
Given the fact that the Ganga and its basin have been divided into a large number of ongoing and proposed projects that focus on water quantity and include diversion of rivers for the Interlinking of Rivers Project; NGRBA could have paid attention to how depletion of water due to extraction in myriad ways has deteriorated the river’s water quality. Incidentally, jan bhaagidari is never discussed while endorsing and approving projects which pollute and degrade the Ganga! BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) 2014 election manifesto referred to jan bhaagidari as it promised to “Ensure the cleanliness, purity and uninterrupted flow of the Ganga on priority. Massive Clean Rivers Programme across the country driven by people’s participation.” But the survival of the river and its basin hardly seems to be a priority.
The Ganga plans
The efforts in the aftermath of the submission to the government of the 217-page Ganga River Basin Management Plan (GRBMP) dated January, 2015, along with eight mission reports and many thematic reports, assumes significance. This plan has been prepared by a consortium of seven IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and other institutions. The plan provides a draft of a 36-page National River Ganga Basin Management Bill, 2015, which proposes a National River Ganga Basin Management Commission (NRGBMC) and a National River Ganga Basin Tribunal (NGRBT). As per the draft Bill, the NRGBMC is “to serve as a custodian of the Ganga Basin and to work for its upkeep and improvement on the premise that the health of the National River Ganga is a key indicator of the health of NRGB (National River Ganga Basin) as a whole.” It is starkly evident that this “whole” of “National Ganga” is structurally actually only a part of the ‘international Ganga’, but the plan fails to accommodate this reality.
The plan is likely to face massive opposition from the residents of the Ganga Basin states because it recommends, in effect, that Ganga should be nationalised now that it has been declared the “National River Ganga”, disregarding the universal truth about its evident international character. In due course, the plan is likely to face criticism from the Ganga Basin countries as well.
The plan document states it categorically that “no concerted effort has been made till date on the legislative front against exploitation of rivers in various ways. Many issues concerning river management do not fall within the present legislative frame, such as maintenance of environmental flows, protection of a river basin’s ecology and biodiversity, maintenance of ground water table, consolidated plans for diversion of river waters in different stretches, discharge of sewage, obstruction to river flows and loss of connectivity, use of floodplains and active floodplains, etc.” Having said that, the plan goes on to suggest “an integrated river basin management plan approach that focuses on maintenance and restoration of wholesomeness of rivers of the Ganga Basin”. It is interesting to note that the plan document reposes its entire faith in “the proposed Ganga River Basin Management Act” for fulfilling the aim of prohibiting and regulating “activities that affect the wholesomeness of rivers.” It does not seem to realise that undemocratic economic enterprises and their activities are beyond regulation, because they are donors of political parties who expect a quid pro quo response in lieu of their donations.
Himalayan concerns
The plan document further underlines, “The Himalayan glacier-fed head-streams of National River Ganga, as also her many Himalayan tributaries, bring in considerable water, sediment and nutrients into the river almost round-the-year, thus ensuring perennial life-giving flow in the river and fertility to her floodplains. The Himalayan connection thus plays a significant role in the basin dynamics.” Notably, the plan admits the land building function of the river which is generally ignored by the government and project proponents. It states that the Ganga River network not only conveys water, but also transfers enormous amounts of eroded Himalayan sediments to the sea. The alluvial deposits of the basin constitute large and highly productive multi-aquifer systems in NRGB, which are a major storehouse of groundwater.
Now, the challenges facing the Ganga’s restoration
There remains a structural flaw in the conceptual design of initiatives for saving the Ganga, which spreads across northern and eastern India and neighbouring countries, from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. The plan recommends “research to determine ecological limits, thresholds and interconnections of NRGB’s water resources and river flow health assessments within the framework of ecohydrology.” This is a virtual admission of ignorance in the face of massive land use changes and exploitative economic activities in the basin.
The plan has recommended control and restriction of geologically hazardous activities including deep groundwater withdrawals, underground excavations, explosions, tunnelling, mining, fracking and operation of large reservoirs. It recommends region-specific restrictions on geo-morphologically harmful land-use practices such as deforestation and construction activities on hill slopes and in floodplains, excessive agricultural tillage, sand and gravel mining from river beds and river bank modifications, besides drainage improvement of low-lying areas and stabilisation of disturbed areas.
The blueprint
Four ministries – water resources, transport, environment and tourism – met to discuss the road map for the Ganga. The IMG has proposed to construct 11 terminals on the banks of the Ganga’s Varanasi-Hoogly stretch for freight movement, along with barrages every 100 km. As per the blueprint, it is proposed to conduct dredging to provide a width of 45 m and for a 3 m draft (depth) to enable transport of passengers and goods between Varanasi and Hoogly on the River Ganga in the first stage of its development. Such a proposal without a proper cumulative environment impact assessment leads to serious doubts. Meanwhile, a 2012 Parliamentary Committee report revealed that so far Rs. 39, 225.95 crore has been spent on cleaning of the river under various schemes or projects. As of now, it can only be hoped that the initiative of the Modi government will chart a new course.
What the World Bank and the UNESCO say
These deliberations need to be looked at in a context. A World Bank document of 2009 titled United Nations World Water Development Report 4: Managing Water under Uncertainty and Risk, published by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) states: “The National Ganga River Basin Authority in India, with the financial support of the World Bank, launched a programme in 2009 to clean the Ganges, to ensure that ‘no untreated municipal sewage or industrial effluents would be discharged into the river by 2020. Previous action plans did not improve the health of the river, in which almost 95 per cent of the pollution is caused by sewers and open drains. This time the governmental approach has moved from a town centric approach to a broader river basin approach.”
But the UNESCO report’s treatment of the Ganga Basin, the largest river basin of the country, leaves a lot to be desired. The report fails to list any achievement of the Ganga River Basin Authority that was set up in February 2009. It does not scrutinise whether or not the promised ‘broader river basin approach’ has indeed been adopted. It does not dwell on the split personality of the World Bank either. The Bank has been undertaking contradictory projects in the Ganga Basin. It depletes water quality of the Ganga by supporting dams upstream, and it provides loans for improvement of water quality in its downstream.
If the Bank knew that the Ganga Basin is an international river basin but it chose to refer to it as ‘national’, accepting its faulty description by the government, the UNESCO report, like the Bank, failed to comprehend that the Ganga, like the Mekong, is a trans-boundary river of the Himalayan watershed.
The Basin approach
While the commercial benefits of damming rivers have been talked about a lot, the in-stream and off-stream monetary and non-monetary benefits and advantages of flowing rivers have not been assessed so far. Doesn’t the basin approach mean undertaking that assessment?
One can refer to initiatives under the Ganga River Basin Authority as the Third Phase of Ganga Action Plan (GAP-III), which promised a river basin approach which could have affected the quality and quantity of surface water, groundwater and the survival of natural flow of the rivers in the basin. GAP-I, which was to be completed by March 1990 was extended till March 2000 when it was declared complete, but Phase I of the Plan is not yet fully complete. GAP-II which was to be completed in 2001 was extended till December 2008. This too remains incomplete.
It is not surprising that GAP-III also failed, because it applied only to 79 percent of the Ganga Basin, which is in India. It did not include 13 percent of Ganga Basin that is in Nepal, 4 percent in Bangladesh and 4 percent in Tibet. It did not factor in its relationship with the river systems of the composite Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin and its consequences. More than 30 years have passed, but admittedly no “concerted efforts” have been made to alleviate the suffering of the Ganga. The efforts underway do not qualify to be a holistic effort towards that end.
The fourth phase for the protection of the Ganga (GAP-IV) has been initiated by the Modi government. It is evident that this phase is simply a continuation of the previous phase with greater advertisement blitzkrieg. The fact remains that unless measures for protection of the river are situated in the policies of industry, power, agriculture, urban development, health and environment by the central government, the governments of 11 Ganga Basin states, neighbouring countries, industry bodies, political parties, contractors and religious organisations, this phase too will meet a similar fate.
The government will have to examine and deploy the relevance of the Ganga River Basin Approach because the river channels have been amputated from the flood plains, besides the amputation of the river channel itself. If the Ganga Basin approach is indeed adopted, then as per Comptroller Auditor General’s audit reports, there is a need to strengthen the environmental clearance process which is being weakened with each passing day. The blind enthusiasm about mega projects like Ganga Water Expressway and ‘interlinking of rivers’ scheme must factor in the fact that the Ganga, an inter-generational heritage of our civilisation is more important than development, and the ecological entity of the river basin is non-negotiable.
Meanwhile, the government has set up an Integrated Ganga Conservation Mission called Namami Gange. The central government has given its approval for establishment of the Clean Ganga Fund (CGF). The Cabinet set up CGF with voluntary contributions from residents of the country and Non-Resident Indians/Persons of Indian Origin. Domestic donors are eligible for tax benefits as applicable in the case of the Swachh Bharat Kosh. This Fund finances activities outlined under the Namami Gange programme for cleaning of the River Ganga.
Amidst institutional constraints emerging from irrational budgetary allocations, as a consequence of the Plan, the NGRBA has been structurally compelled to adopt a truncated approach, though it claims to adopt a river basin approach for comprehensive planning and management. It covers only 79 per cent of the basin that lies in the Indian territory and does not even represent all the 239 parliamentary constituencies and all the states in the basin.
Here is a litmus test for the government vis-à-vis protection of the Ganga. Pursuant to the Cabinet note on the Ganga, the Prime Minister could issue an enforceable order banning discharge of industrial effluents and domestic sewage into the Ganga, its tributaries and the groundwater aquifers of its basin, besides banning projects like barrages on it. It can demonstrate its political will and its commitment for saving the holy river and its basin, to begin with.