Dr. Arvind Kumar*
Rivers are the lifeline of every country, similarly for millions of Indians through millennia. It’s a country which also derives its modern name India from river Indus. While some rivers are worshipped as deities, others sustain lives around them. In either case, Indians have a profound sense of reverence for their rivers. However, the health of many such rivers has taken a severe beating in recent decades owing to unchecked industrial activities and a lack of proper waste management systems. Every day, an estimated more than 1 billion gallons of waste flow into the River Ganges alone, coming from sewer drains, leather tanneries, squat toilets, and elsewhere. The Yamuna, its main tributary, is also tainted with sewage and industrial pollution and has stagnated in some places. Experts say most of the sewage treatment plants near the rivers are not functioning as they were designed to. Indian rivers are currently facing three major challenges—an age-old law, misuse of water resources, and continuous pollution. In 2023, 311 river stretches were polluted in 279 rivers across 30 states and Union Territories. With growing social and economic aspirations, concerns related to water availability and quality of Indian rivers is increasing too.
The discussion on aquatic ecosystems underlined that unsustainable human activities, poor management, pollution, ecosystem degradation and climate change are affecting the availability, distribution, quality and quantity of water and snowmelt, and the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation and a clean and healthy environment. Water bodies such as lakes, rivers, groundwater aquifers, glaciers and wetlands provide water for drinking, industry, ecosystems and food. They also act as natural defenses against pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change. However, their ability to continue providing these benefits is being undermined. For example, we are losing wetlands, including peat lands, at an alarming rate – the most rapid decline of all ecosystems. At the same time, understanding of wetlands’ outsized role in climate mitigation and carbon sequestration is growing.
River clean programmes in India- Mammoth task to handle
Today, India’s rivers are depleting at an alarming rate. Many perennial rivers are headed towards becoming seasonal in the next two decades. Already, the most significant rivers of southern India reach the ocean only a few months in a year. The Ganga and Indus are now among the most endangered rivers on the planet. Many of the smaller rivers and streams have already vanished. Drinking water has become scarce in many places. The Namami Gange mission is one of the top priorities of the Government of India. Launched in 2014, the mission has been allocated a total sum of Rs 16,011.65 crore from FY 2014-15, up until October 2023. Today, every state is also working for the revival of small rivers; however the ground realities remain the same.
India has been cleaning up its polluted rivers for many decades now. In the past three years alone, the country has spent over Rs 4,000 crore on two flagship programmes, Namami Gange and the National River Conservation Plan, suggests government data. Still, 46 per cent of the 603 Indian rivers remain polluted, shows a report released by the Central Pollution Control Board in December 2023. India’s river cleanup drives have failed because the country has focused on major rivers alone. They were bound to fail because small rivers eventually merge with major rivers and pollute them. Starting 2019, the focus has widened to include small rivers and tributaries in revival programmes. Besides the two flagship schemes, several other Central programmes such as Swachh Bharat Mission, Smart Cities Mission have components to arrest river pollution.
The effort to rejuvenate and conserve the great Indian rivers is a gargantuan effort that has much to offer to the world. It is no secret that India has begun asserting greater influence within the international community, with a host of countries looking towards it for innovative solutions to complex problems. At the COP28 Summit in Dubai last year, India launched the Global River Cities Alliance (GRCA) along with a host of countries. The initiative is led by the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), and countries like Egypt, Netherlands, Denmark, Ghana, Australia, Bhutan, Cambodia and Japan are a part of it. That the initiative is led by the National Mission for Clean Ganga – the body overseeing the Namami Gange project – is noteworthy and speaks to the impact India’s effort to clean its most revered river has had on the international community. It is owing to this recognition of India’s efforts to clean the Ganga that the project has been adjudged as one of the top 10 World Restoration Flagships initiatives.
Way Ahead
The establishment of the Global River Cities Alliance further cements India’s role as a leader in river conservation, with countries worldwide looking to emulate its success. Environmental activists point out that merely launching these programmes will not save the rivers. They say that officials, polluters and citizens need to act in unison to clean up the rivers and stop further pollution. India Water Foundation’s ground-level experience has revealed a dire need for capacity building among all stakeholders in order to keep the river free from pollution. There is a need for specific emphasis on changing cultural attitudes, which have long held rivers as revered and to have self-purifying properties. We urgently need to shift from thinking of how to exploit our rivers to how to revitalize them. We need to realize that our rivers are national treasures. Water is not a commodity; it is life-making material. The human body is around two-thirds water. You are a water body. And on this planet, rivers are the water bodies with which we have the closest relationship. For thousands of years, these rivers have embraced and nourished us. A time has come when we have to embrace and nourish our rivers.
*Editor, Focus Global Reporter
