Ganga still polluted

When the entire world is gearing up to welcome the New Year once again making new resolutions, the stream of holy Ganga would perhaps remain polluted washing the sins of mankind. Despite the investment of crores of rupees for cleaning the river millions of litres of wastewater is still polluting the Ganga unabatedly. The stretch from Kanpur to Varanasi is defined as the middle range of the Ganga, and this reach has two very important pilgrimage places -Allahabad and Varanasi. And the direct discharge of raw sewage into Ganga is believed to be the major factor behind the increasing pollution level in the middle reach of Ganga between Varanasi and Kanpur. Alone in Varanasi about over 250 MLD sewage is generated while the installed capacity of the sewage treatment plants (STPs) in the city is only 102 MLD.“In view of public health as well as cultural and environmental reasons it could be said that this middle reach would finally decide the success or failure of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) launched by the government to clean the river,” said Prof. Veer Bhadra Mishra, the president of Sankat Mochan Foundation (SMF), an organisation working for the cause of Ganga for last 25 years. He said that the river as well as people were facing serious problem of water pollution mainly due to point sources discharging sewage and other pollutants directly into river. Mishra claimed that the SMF had full knowledge about the number and locations of the point sources in Varanasi, Allahabad and Kanpur whereas the government’s agency had no data in this regard. The SMF collected data in Varanasi, Allahabad and Kanpur observing all point sources in these cities with the global positioning system (GPS) with the help of National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad. According to collected data, there are 33 point sources of sewage discharge into the river in Varanasi while this number is 41 in Kanpur. Allahabad has the highest number of such sources including 40 drains discharging into Ganga, 14 drains discharging into Yamuna and eight drains discharging into Ganga in Jhoosi area.Even the the Public Account Committee (2003-2004) headed by Sardar Buta Singh was not satisfied with the operation of GAP. “The Committee are concerned to observe that GAP even after more than 18 years of its operation, is still in its trial and error exercise which invariably suggest that the GAP has been formulated without proper assessment of actual ground realities,” observed the committee, which presented the report to Lok Sabha in February 2004. For immediate reduction of pollution load on the river Ganga was prepared by the Department of Environment (now Ministry of Environment & Forests) in December 1984 on the basis of a survey on Ganga basin carried out by the Central Pollution Control Board in 1984. To oversee the implementation of the GAP and lay down policies and programmes, the central government constituted the Central Ganga Authority (CGA) under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister in February 1985. It has been renamed as the National River Conservation Authority (NRCA) in September 1995. The Cabinet approved GAP in April 1985 as a hundred per cent centrally sponsored scheme. The GAP was thus launched in June 1985 with the establishment of the Ganga Project Directorate (GPD), renamed as the NRCD (National River Conservation Directorate) in June 1994, as a wing of the Department of Environment, to execute the projects under the guidance and supervision of the CGA. At the time of launching, the main objective of GAP was to improve the water quality of the Ganga to acceptable standards by preventing the pollution load reaching the river. The objective of GAP was, however, recast in June 1987 as restoring the river water quality to the “Bathing class’ standard. It means there should be Dissolved Oxygen (DO) not less than 5 mg/litre, Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) not more than 3 mg/litre, Bacterial Load/Coliform Count not more than 10,000 per ml, Faecal Coliform not more than 2,500 per 100 ml, and pH value 6.5 to 8.5.But, the Committee also observed that no adequate attention was being given to the urgency that had been demanded by GAP, thereby compromising the health of about 40 per cent of population of India living in the Ganga Basin. As a matter of fact, a study by a team of environmentalist from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and India have, in a World Bank sponsored study, concluded that in spite of the massive Rs. 1500 crore plan launched in the 80s to clean up the Ganga, the pollution levels in the mighty river continue to be alarmingly high and are contributing to about 9 to 12 per cent of the total disease burden in Uttar Pradesh.