Death highlights Ganges failure

The death of Indian environmental activist G.D. Agarwal should act as a wake-up call for the Government in New Delhi which faces a General Election next year.

Agarwal starved himself to death in a 15-week hunger strike in protest at a lack of action in cleaning up the Ganges, India’s largest river system and sacred to Hindus.

The desperate action of the 86-year-old should be especially significant to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014 on a pledge to clean up the 2,500 kilometre river, choked with industrial and domestic waste which in places is little more than an open sewer.

While past efforts at reducing pollution in the waterway have always resulted in miserable failure, Modi projected a ‘can-do’ image based on his achievements as Chief Minister for Gujarat State, and many of his followers believed that this time it would be different.

Few doubt that the Government has made genuine efforts to tackle the problem, but an ambitious clean-up plan launched in 2015 has so far failed to even make a dent in the amount of pollution discharged into the river.

Complicated planning rules, disputes with land-owners over where to build the much-needed sewage treatment plants and arguments with industries that send their raw waste straight into the river have left the project idling on the launch pad.

Less than a quarter of the funds allocated to the program have been spent.

In an attempt to make some progress before the election deadline, bureaucrats have resorted to exotic measures, such as seeding the waters with pollution-gobbling microbes.  

Agarwal’s death was met by an outpouring of grief from his supporters, but also anger that despite his sacrifice and all the promises from New Delhi, the Ganges is still a health hazard for the faithful who seek to bathe in its waters in order to wash away their sins.

Modi took to Twitter to say he was saddened by Agarwal’s death. “His passion towards learning, education, saving the environment, particularly Ganga cleaning, will always be remembered,” the Prime Minister said.

There is no doubt these sentiments were sincere, but for increasing numbers of Indians it is actions, not fine words or visions, that are needed to do justice to the sacred Ganges and her historic role as a symbol of the nation’s ancient culture and civilisation.