Why the Grand Government Effort to Clean up the Ganga Is Failing
The QuintPollution levels in the holy river at Varanasi are rated “severe”, the worst category, according to a 2018 report–the latest data available–of the Central Pollution Control Board. Varanasi is the parliamentary constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi and critical to Namami Gange, the Rs 20,000-crore flagship programme he launched in 2015 to clean the river. A river that meanders 2,500 km from the Himalayas across the great northern plains and empties into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganga is one of the world’s most polluted and populous river basins. Today Maa Ganga is calling us, her children, to make the river clean once again,” PM Modi tweeted in May 2014, soon after his party came to power and right before the BJP’s maiden budget in which the Namami Gange mission was first introduced.