For many Hindus the world over, nothing is more holy or pure than Ganga jal, or water from the Ganges
round the baggage carousel at London’s Heathrow airport goes a battered cardboard box waiting to be claimed by its owner, a passenger from Delhi: “PLEASE KEEP THIS SIDE UP! GANGA JAL—HOLLY WATER.” For many Hindus the world over, nothing is more holy or pure thanThe whole river—from Himalayan glaciers across the vast North Indian plain to the filigree delta on the Bay of Bengal—is worshipped as a life-affirming goddess.
Low flows not only harm the livelihoods of fishermen and farmers downstream. They also degrade water quality. Sewage is pumped raw into the stream. Levels of fecal coliform bacteria are off the chart. Tests from the Yamuna, a tributary which flows through Delhi, have found 1.1bn such bacteria per 100 millilitres—nearly half a million times the officially recommended limit for bathing. No wonder “Delhi belly” is so prevalent.
Alarmed at the state of the Ganges, some holy men have spoken out. In October G.D. Agrawal, an environmental engineer turned guru, fasted to death as a protest. Despite such dramatic gestures, too few Hindus accept that the Ganges’s holy waters are sullied. Civic pressure to clean up the river remains slight.
To his credit, Narendra Modi, the prime minister, declared a clean Ganges a priority when he came to power in 2014. It was a nod to his Hindu-nationalist following. He promised $3bn and new plants to treat sewage and industrial waste. Five years on, progress is disappointing. In Varanasi, the focus is on razing a rambling old quarter to provide vistas for visitingAs for Kanpur, a city of Dickensian leather factories, the picture is dystopian. The river stinks.
Too often, says Shashi Shekhar, a former senior water official, state governments and their business cronies are more interested in constructing treatment plants than ensuring their long-term use. New forms of public-private partnership may start to bear fruit in a few years’ time, Mr Shekhar predicts, and water quality at last improve. Yet deeper change is needed. The Ganges is abused in search of short-term gain.
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