Thames sets example for Ganges clean up
Sunday, February 17, 10:31 AM
By Deepshikha Ghosh, Indo-Asian News Service

New Delhi, Feb 17 (IANS) Ganges, the holiest river for Hindus in India but perhaps the country's largest repository for sewage, faeces and dead bodies, has lessons to learn from river Thames of London.

The two rivers meet in a collaborative programme called "Campaign for Clean Ganges" that has pressed Indian and foreign experts into the gargantuan task of cleaning up this revered, yet one of the most polluted rivers in the world.

The campaign draws from the experience of cleaning up the Thames, a river so dirty and smelly with pollution that it "disrupted" sittings of the British Parliament located on its banks. In the early 19th century, the river was also known as the "great stink".

"It was once one of the most polluted rivers of the world. Now it is clean and even has 119 varieties of fish in it, all thanks to massive public mobilization and discipline," said Mark Lloyd, the director of the Thames campaign who came to India recently to assist in cleaning up the Ganges, also known as the Ganga.

He was speaking at the launch Saturday of the portal www.cleanganga.com, a one-stop site for everything you wanted to know about the deadly pollutants residing in the Ganges and the struggles to combat it.

The Ganges, which originates in the lower reaches of the Himalayas, passes through several Indian cities - some of them considered equally sacred by Hindus - before merging in the Bay of Bengal.

Hindus think taking a bath in the 2,480-km long river will wash away their sins. "To see this holiest of rivers (Ganges) was very special for me," said Lloyd. "The clean-up of the Ganges is important for rivers everywhere and will tell the world something about India as a civilization."

But when he visited Varanasi, he was appalled to see the river in the state it was and the complete apathy of the people. In that city, the river is worshipped as a purifier yet dirtied in almost equal measure. For millions of Hindus who come for holy dips, open defecation, laundry activities, littering and disposal of dead bodies is part of life.

"People think it is not possible to clean the river, but in fact, it is," insisted Lloyd. It was most important to generate awareness, and the portal was the best for the purpose. Unless people had information they could not make the decision to do what's best, he added.

"It is a website by Indian and international journalists, bringing together Ganga lovers the world over," said Swedish journalist Roger Choate, the international coordinator of the campaign who also heads the portal.

Choate says he grew up hearing so much about Ganges, "the world's only holy river", that as a child he wanted to take a dip in it. "When I grew up I learnt it was polluted."

Every year nearly two million Indian children die of waterborne diseases, and the main culprit is untreated sewage dumped directly into the river in Varanasi and 113 other cities.

As part of the clean-up campaign, thousands of volunteers are busy cleaning up litter and debris in the Ganges at the Hindu holy city of Varanasi and the basin alongside.

The campaign has volunteers patrolling the banks, boatmen removing corpses and carcasses and Hindu priests attending awareness programmes to check their flower dumping habits.

According to Choate, the campaign is concentrating on altering set human habits that have transformed the Ganges into a giant sewer. "We need to mobilize public opinion in the face of massive bureaucratic and public apathy - the Ganges is the only holy river in the world," remarked the journalist.