Abstract:
The focus given to environmental issues across India has been discouraging. If
observed properly, nothing represents the environmental problem better than the Ganga
river. A river whose role changes across the geographic terrains, catering to the needs
of more than quarter of our population has been exploited by the same people who take
a dip in holy water to have a “sin free life”. The current NDA government whose pitch
to revive Ganga rode them to power in the most populated state of our country has
duped its electorate, meanwhile capitalising the reverence given to the river.
Reviving Ganga has been a typical example of wicked problem posed by any public
policy issue. Involving multiple stakeholder’s interest and a mammoth budget, reviving
Ganga is a distant dream even after 35 years of its conception. Billions spent on these
efforts, but it took a lockdown as a result of Covid-19 pandemic to actually revive the
river. Instances like these compels us to think what actually went wrong where the
civilizational identity, the physical manifestation of goddess, the mighty river Ganga
was dying a slow death and we as a society kept watching it, preparing a man-made
disaster and waiting for the same. The document tries to understand and explain the
reason behind the systematic degradation of the river and failure on our part to revive
the same.
