PERSPECTIVE: A RIVER BETRAYED
The death of Prof. G.D. Agarwal, also known as Swami Sanand, on October 11, 2018, on the 111th day of his fast for the Ganga also marks the utter failure of the Narendra Modi government to achieve any improvement in the state of the river.
In fact, as Prof. Agarwal repeatedly pointed out, for all Modi’s oaths to rejuvenate the Ganga, the state of the river has worsened under the current government, which has pushed several damaging initiatives, from Ganga Waterways to Riverfront Development, the Char Dham Road, river inter-linking and more dams and hydropower projects in the river basin.
It’s worth noting that Prof. Agarwal was considered an ally of Modi—he came from a family that has supported the RSS for generations. But several independent reports have reached the same conclusions as Agarwal on the state of the Ganga. These include the reports of the Parliamentary Standing Committee, the Comptroller and Auditor General and the World Bank. The Central Pollution Control Board’s report also showed increasing pollution in the river. Even Shankaracharya Swami Avimukteshwaranand has publicly spoken of the abject failure of the Modi government on the Ganga.
Modi replaced Uma Bharti with Nitin Gadkari in September 2017, possibly signalling that a ‘go-getter’ minister would achieve better results. And Gadkari is good at contracts management, but that is clearly not good enough to achieve a rejuvenated river. Gadkari’s statements on the Ganga have only shown his shifting, vague and slippery goalposts. He started by saying he would achieve an 80 per cent clean Ganga by March 2019—90 per cent by December 2019. The latest version says his ministry will try to achieve a 70 per cent clean Ganga by March 2019, not bothering to clarify what parameters, at which location and what baseline will be used to measure this impact. The objective is clearly impossible, considering the trajectory and current state of the river. Perhaps he meant that he would award all the contracts and spend most of the money allocated for the World Bank-supported Ganga Cleaning Project by March 2019. But awarding contracts or even disbursement of all the money under the project cannot be equated with achieving a clean Ganga.
Modi’s Namami Gange follows the same pattern: more funds, more infrastructure and some technology that the failed Ganga Action Plan had been following since the 1980s. There is no attempt to ensure that the infrastructure that is set up performs and delivers. There is absolutely no effort to achieve Aviral Ganga (incessant flow in the river), one of the declared key objectives of Namami Gange. As the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has repeatedly said, without achieving Aviral Ganga, it’s not possible to have a Nirmal (clean) Ganga.
The environment flow notification for the Ganga that Gadkari announced on October 10, 2018, a day before Agarwal breathed his last, was not only too little too late, but completely non-serious and unscientific. Agarwal had rightly rejected it, as his demands—listed in a letter to Modi—were different: stop all ongoing and planned hydropower projects in the upper Ganga basin, stop sand and boulder mining from the upper Ganga, particularly close to Haridwar, pass a Ganga Protection Bill and create a council of Ganga-devoted persons whose consent would be required before taking up any work affecting the river.
Modi, who tweeted in support of his fast in 2012, had no time to respond to any of the letters Agarwal wrote to him since February, when he declared his fast unto death. The PM may have been rattled by the very first letter in which he said that if he died, he would pray to Mother Ganga that Modi should be held responsible. Modi did find time to tweet about Agarwal, after his death. Many would see this as hypocrisy towards Agarwal and towards the Ganga.
The PM may have been rattled by the letter in which Agarwal wrote if he died, he would pray to Ganga that Modi is held responsible