India's Sacred, Sewage-Filled River

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VARANASI, India (Jan. 6, 2007): An old man in a loincloth squats on

the banks of the sacred Ganges River, scrubbing his clothes. Nearby,

sewage gushes from a pipe as water buffaloes contentedly wallow in the

river's murky waters.

 

Upstream, a bright-eyed woman clad in a fuchsia sari stands

waist-deep, pouring a stream of the river's holy water from a brass

pot and reciting prayers while a plastic bag of garbage washes up on

the shore.

 

This river is known to Hindus as goddess Ganga, one of the main

arteries at the heart of India's spiritual and physical life, who

provides a lifeline of fresh water to the 400 million people who live

on her banks.

 

For the next six weeks, legions of devout Hindus will celebrate the

"Ardh Kumbh Mela" or Half Grand Pitcher festival in the city of

Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.

Allahabad is one of four spots where Garuda, the winged

steed of the Hindu god Vishnu, is said to have rested during her

battle with demons over a pitcher of divine nectar.

 

But chronically high levels of pollution have turned this river

goddess into a potential killer. For the nearly 75 million pilgrims —

setting the record for the world's largest gathering of people — who

will travel here to bathe their sins away, sip the river water, or

cremate their dead, the "holy dip" is believed to usher them more

quickly into a state of nirvana.

 

Leading Indian environmentalists claim the $100 million Ganga Action

Plan (GAP), launched 20 years ago to treat sewage dumped in the river,

has failed. They blame poor planning, corruption, lack of technical

knowledge, and a gross miscalculation of the volume of waste from

Varanasi, a teeming city of around 1.2 million people, which they say

has left pollution levels worse than ever.

 

Kicked off in 1986 by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the GAP

aimed to divert and treat the waste and bring the quality of water up

to bathing standards. However, in Varanasi, where raw sewage spews

into the river from 30 sources, levels of fecal coliform bacteria are

up to 3,000 times the accepted Indian standard and 1.5 million times

the safe level for drinking.

 

The river's destitute state is no mystery to the hordes of fervent

devotees. This year, hundreds of Hindu holy men have threatened to

commit mass suicide during the festival to protest what they say is a

lack of government action, the Daily Telegraph reported last week.

 

Among the devotees completing the daily dawn ablutions before the

festival was Veer Bhadra Mishra. Clad in a white cotton dhoti, the

tall, silver-haired priest cups his hands and lifts the water to his

mouth. But he leaves out one part of the ritual — he does not drink

it. As the mahant, or spiritual and administrative head of Varanasi's

second-largest temple, he believes the water is holy. But as a

professor of hydraulics and a leading campaigner to clean up the

Ganges, he knows it is not pure.

 

The 66-year-old has been campaigning to clean the river since 1982,

when he founded the Swatcha Ganges Abhiyaan (Campaign for a Clean

Ganges) organization, an effort that combines his knowledge of the

spiritual with the scientific.

 

"On a practical level 400 million people rely on this water.

Spiritually, for practicing Hindus, the river is a medium of life. We

want to touch our mother, submerge our bodies in the water, sip the

waters. But we only have human bodies. If the river is polluted they

will die, and with them their heritage, culture and faith," he says.

 

"The Ganga is the silken thread which binds this country together.

What will happen if it breaks?"

 

Mishra says GAP has categorically failed. "The planning was hasty and

unscientific. They did not know how many million liters of sewage

flowed into the river, what the organic content of the water was or

whether there were chemical pollutants in the water." Varanasi

produces about 39 million gallons of sewage per day, but can treat

only about 26 million liters.

 

Each day, samples of the water are tested in the campaign's

laboratories. The tests reveal a toxic cocktail of industrial

chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals and arsenic — quite apart from the

refuse, corpses and animal carcasses that float past chanting

pilgrims. Ninety percent of the pollution comes from sewage.

 

The treatment plants are crippled by poor maintenance as well as

electric power cuts. For the five months of the monsoon, the pumps

cannot function at all due to flooding.

 

With the help of William Oswald, an engineering professor at the

University of California at Berkeley, Mishra came up with an

alternative solution. Oswald's scheme would use gravity to divert the

waste downstream into a series of treatment ponds built on wasteland

outside the Varanasi city limits, using bacteria and algae to

eliminate chemical and biological pollutants.

 

The plan was unanimously approved by the city council eight years ago,

yet the state and central governments turned it down.

 

Ujjwal Raman Singh, minister of environment for the state of Uttar

Pradesh, insists the level of organic matter has gone down despite

more domestic sewage being pumped into the river. But he admits there

are shortcomings.

 

"Money was not properly utilized," he says. "There was a faulty

bidding system, global tenders were not allowed, and money was instead

given to petty contractors who did not have a clue about the technical

or financial know-how to deal with the matter."

 

He says the solution lies in more electric-powered plants, but that

will require more government financing.

 

Some residents blame the state. Sanjay, a silk weaver, says, "The

government takes the money but the river never gets cleaner. If we

complain to the local administration they ignore us."

 

Others blame the local population. "The government can't do anything

unless the people change," says Varanasi guest-house owner, M.P. Sahi.

"Until people learn not to throw corpses in the river or empty their

rubbish there, and factories stop their pollution, nothing will change."

 

For Mishra, who founded the Swatcha Ganges Abhiyaan (Campaign for a

Clean Ganges) organization, the battle to change the attitudes of both

the authorities and the people continues. He says his campaign has

been a bit like a game of snakes and ladders: When it has gained

speed, a snake comes and swallows it up.

 

"But one day," he says, "I will dodge all the snakes and save mother

Ganges."

 

SOURCE: CBS News, New York. This article was written by Sunita Nahar

and Lilly Peel.

URL:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/05/world/main2332901_page2.shtml