More moolah from centre to clean Ganga

The government seems to be in a hurry to clean the river. But looking at the fate of similar projects in the country, a clean Ganga still looks a far-fetched dream
Akash Bisht Delhi Hardnews

After spending more than Rs 900 crore in the last 22 years, the centre has decided to pump in another Rs 15,000 crore in the next 10 years to make Ganga pollution free. This was announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the National Ganga River Basin Authority meeting.

The meeting was attended by chief ministers of Uttarakhand and Bihar and cabinet ministers from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Union minister for forests and environment, Jairam Ramesh, urban development minister, Jaipal Reddy, water resources minister, Pawan Kumar Bansal, minister of state for science and technology, Prithviraj Chavan, and deputy chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, also attended the meeting.

In its first meeting, the authority decided that cleaning the river must be of utmost importance. By 2020, there should be no sewage or effluents flowing into the river. The project certainly looks ambitious as similar cleaning projects of the Ganga and the Yamuna have yielded no results. The rivers hardly have any fresh water downstream and the toxic levels are way too high for agriculture, forget consumption.

The holiest river of the Hindus at present looks filthy and dirty because the capacity of sewage treatment plants on the river is of only 1,000 million litres per day (mld) against 3,000 mld disposed into the river daily from towns situated on its banks. To meet the required sewage treatment capacity, the government would need funds to the tune of Rs 15,000 crore.

At the meeting, it was suggested that the total expenditure envisaged for the project operation and maintenance cost of the existing sewage treatment plants for the next five years is in 70:30 ratio. The respective state governments had reservations about funds and were seeking 100 per cent funding by the centre. However, it was later agreed that both the central and state governments would share the expenditure. The centre will have to take care of the operation and maintenance cost of the existing sewage treatment plants on the river for the next five years. The government has already allocated Rs 1,300 crore for the same.

Respective state governments have been asked to prepare a detailed report on the pollution hubs along the river by November, Hardnews learnt. The responsibility of coordinating with the states has been handed over to the ministry of forests and environment which will look into specific plans to reduce industrial pollution in the Ganga basin.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar expressed reservations about the success of the programme. He questioned the authority's capacity to clean the river. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal urged that the state in which the Ganga originates should be given special privileges compared to the states through which it passes.

The authority seems to be in a hurry to clean the river. But looking at the fate of similar projects in the country, a clean Ganga still looks a far-fetched dream. In addition, the government seems to have ignored the fact that in ten years the population is bound to swell and so would the industrial waste and sewage disposal into the river. So it is possible that by the time a sewage treatment capacity of 3,000 mld is attained, the total sewage and industrial disposal might have climbed much higher levels.

Has the government thought about these possibilities or is it just confining itself to the findings of the present? If the government hasn't kept the future in mind, the prospects of a clean Ganga flowing across the country will remain a dream.