WHY GANGA WOULD NEVER GET CLEANED but hope is there

There are techno-political reasons because o which Ganga the Indian national river will never get cleaned up. However, a foolproof strategy is available as explained which can clean the Ganga for ever.

Haridwar, India (prHWY.com) February 10, 2011 - From:
Prof. Dr. Devendra Swaroop Bhargava
Former Professor of Environmental Engineering & Pollution Control at IIT Roorkee & Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok
Bhargava Lane, Devpura, HARIDWAR 249401, UK, India


PRESS-NOTE

FAILURE OF EFFORTS OF CLEANING GANGA & PERMANENT FOOLPROOF PREVENTION OF POLLUTION OF GANGA

Previous governmental attempts to clean up the Ganga River have failed for political, technical, and scientific reasons, according to Dr. Devendra S. Bhargava, a former professor of environmental engineering and pollution control at Roorkee University in India and an author of 450 research papers and recipient of 32 awards including the most prestigious Swami Pranavananda Award, UGC's highest academic honour for 1992 for outstanding scholarly, scientific contribution in Environmental Engineering. In an article, published in WORLD WATER of the USA's Water Environment Federation, Dr. Bhargava explains the reasons for these repetitive failures and proposes a fool-proof strategy to control Ganga's pollution and restore Ganga's pristine water quality.

As published in many peer refereed foreign journals, Ganga, India's most revered national river now aspiring a world heritage status, is famous for its extraordinary high self-cleansing abilities due to its unusual ability to reaerate and assimilate organic matter upto 25 times faster than any other river in the world through the presence of well adapted aerobic bacteria and exo-cellular polymers present in its waters. These polymers act as excellent coagulants to remove upto 60% of the total organic matter (BOD) in 30 to 60 minutes. Also, a volatile material continues to exist only in Ganga's bed even when all Ganga waters are taken out in canals at Haridwar and Narora. This material prevents survival of disease causing bacteria (pathogens) and water putrefying bacteria (anaerobes). Ganga jal (water) is thus preserved in airtight containers for religious rites. However, Ganga's pollution and most needed shore aestheticity have become so severe that many Hindus now hesitate to take a dip in the river or do aachman, a religious ritual involving direct inhaling of water.

Causes of failure of previous action plans include (i) adoption of unscientific and arbitrary effluent standards (legally permissible concentration of any pollutant in wastewater) which should have been worked out scientifically using mass balancing concepts from pre-fixed stream/river standards taking account of the river's self-purifying abilities in terms of kinetic coefficients and ratios of river-effluent flow-rates. These effluent standards would thus vary for different polluters,
(ii) ignoring of Indian conditions in formulating strategies, e.g. (a) many Indian streets are too narrow to install sewer pipelines that require deep excavations creating structural dangers to street buildings. Consequently, wastewater generated from homes in these types of streets flow directly into the Ganga, (b) many private homes in India carry on small-scale industrial activities such as plating, generating toxic wastes that flow unabatedly into the nearby river or percolate into the ground and later seep into the river, (c) slums generate large volumes of wastewater in unsewered urban areas that ultimately seep into the river, (d) religious mass bathing gatherings that are regularly held along the Ganga generate wastewater that flows directly into the river, (e) drains channel wastewater upstream of bathing platforms (ghats), (f) open defecation apart from the disposal of dead human and animal bodies (only to be scattered all over by the stray dogs and birds) degrade riverbank areas, (g) riverbanks are also used as dumping sites for solid organic wastes, including polythenes, so these substances leach into the river. not practicing a self-supported sustainable strategy (4-S) which could help keep city streets clean in an organized manner, e.g. several rag pickers could be employed to pick up fruit-skin-vegetable wastes, organic wastes, nails, and newspapers/polythenes from specified streets and sell them to consumers such as dairies, piggeries, and scrap dealers (kabaris). This will also avoid the accident causing menace of pigs and cattle on the streets.
All this uncollected waste causes 50 percent of urban, untapped, untreated wastewater to flow unabatedly into rivers. India's extremely high population, a severe constraint to any developmental action, can effectively be controlled in Indian situations only by limiting the privileges such as voting rights, ration card, free education, reservations, etc. to only one or two children,
(iii) further, the Indian culture and religion demand a very high water quality level at the Ganga banks where millions of Hindus perform religious rites (including aachman) in the river, thus pollution control strategies successful in western countries cannot be successful or appropriate in India. In such situations, even with the most modern wastewater treatment facilities in urban areas, hundreds of action plans could/would not clean rivers,
(iv) lack of pollution control defensive strategies such as segregation of industrial wastes as in-plant practices, wastewater recycling and reuse, general sanitation, and improved agricultural practices to reduce excessive use of fertilizers and insecticides by the greed of greater yield by the illiterate Indian farmers leading to eutrophication (a bane of green revolution) in the country make river cleaning plans ineffective,
(v) not implementing proactive or offensive strategies such as the regulated release of wastewater to ensure the maintenance of the pre-fixed river standard, artificial re-aeration and in-drain treatment practices using water hyacinths (very carefully enough to ensure that it does not enter the river system to continue its stay put) which could increase the likelihood of success in action plans,
(vi) comprehensive river pollution control requires professionals with knowledge of several fields including civil engineering, public health or environmental engineering. The lack of experts in these fields (or high dominance of pseudo environmentalists incompetent to identify the relevant literature or real experts) with decision-making responsibilities within the Indian Ministry of Environment has been disastrous for success in previous Ganga clean-up projects,
(vii) political connections or bribery used to secure high positions in government, judiciary, and academia have also stymied efforts to clean up the Ganga. Merit (evaluated through an index representing the integrated effect of all essential requirements), a bygone word in Indian system (infested with severe nepotism, regionalism, casteism, etc.), and right persons not placed in right places together make India a third world developing nation despite its highest qualified hardworking genius manpower in every discipline. As a result, much smaller but merit minded neighboring countries have their leaders/drivers of better merit (manifesting superiority in sports, diplomacy, decision making, politics, academics, etc.) although persons of much higher merit are easily and abundantly available in India who are only forced to make dust bins as their habitat or migrate to even less developed nations to work almost double at half wages compared to their local counter-parts,
(viii) fine collectors demand bribes. A hefty bonus (kind of bribe legalization) to the fine collectors would ensure honest, duty bound and dedicated fine collectors in Indian situations. The corrupt and opaque judicial system makes the legislative approach to river pollution control ineffective through delays and politically motivated judges and lawyers. Administrators deliberately ignore the principles of natural justice to victimize/harass their non-favorite subordinates as they can not be booked till they retire, due to court delays. Indian courts need to be liberal in accepting criticism without any contempt threat, avoid media censuring on any pretext or bitter reporting, classify themselves (subject-wise), appoint mobile magistrates for immediate evidence recording before the evidence is killed, and judges be paid per case as reward for timely disposal of pending 100 million cases in India. Indian Lawyers not understanding pollution and its implications argue such cases only to extort money on pretexts, delay matters for regular income, misuse power of attorney by getting blank papers signed, and hob-knob with opposite parties which add to the continued environmental degradation. The Right to Information Act (RTI), promulgated in 2005, could make government and judiciary decision-making more transparent, however its implementation is excruciatingly slow and tardy apart from being subjected to an easy evasion on any pretext (recently, an information pertaining to the year 1994 being more than 20 years old in the year 2006 has been held right after lengthy court proceedings in Nainital High Court WP No.726/2008). RTI requests have incurred police wrath, harassment, bribe, and assault,
(ix) the Indian political system, thriving on muscle-money-caste-region-religion powers, can be cured through the adoption of a Presidential form of democracy where the top person commanding the mandate of the entire country will have his own team to work uninterruptedly for the term, and a concept of weighted votes starting from the grass-cutter as one to the highest say 1000 or 10000 equivalent votes just as persons of different academic credentials are paid differently. The politics of regionalism (like the anti-Hindi movement in Maharashtra, Punjab, Assam, etc.) can most effectively be curbed through a 'national integration model' wherein every state will employ/promote its own natives (the main cause of unrest and fear of native's job being taken by outsiders) and 50% employees in each state come from all other states to promote national integration, understanding of each others culture, habits etc. In metropolis, entire population is equally (population proportion basis) taken from all states. This will also reflect the real Indian culture to a foreign visitor,
(x) the most rampant corruption in India wastes most of the money allocated to river cleaning works. Former Prime Minister of India Rajeev Gandhi (1984-89) stated that only 15 percent of allocated public funds reach beneficiaries or project execution stage. His son, Rahul Gandhi, 38, the most likely future prime minister of India, recently lowered this figure to five percent. Mammoth river cleaning projects cannot be completed when so many public funds are siphoned off through corruption,
(xi) the Indian public (including saints) has been ineffective in building any pressure to clean the rivers. Increased awareness through seminars, media, non-governmental organizations, and public education could help enhance public support and participation in clean up campaigns.

For these reasons, the implementation of numerous action plans cannot ever result in a pollution-free Ganga River.

Instead, a more effective, fool-proof strategy is to prevent wastewater from entering the river by creating a barrier between the river and cities along the Ganga. This barrier could be an embankment ("bandha") or dam-like structure constructed so that all urban wastewater is trapped, through a huge sewer or covered canal positioned parallel to the river, with or without any treatment depending on available municipal finances. The wastewater would be carried to a point some two to three kilometers downstream of the city for treatment and disposal, allowing the Ganga River to naturally purify itself before reaching the next urban center. The distance of this stretch of the river between two cities would depend on the self-purification coefficients of the river, degree of waste treatment in the previous city, river configurations, stream width-to-depth ratio, stream velocity, and other factors. If the distance between two cities is short, then the wastewater treatment at the upstream city should be more intense to produce cleaner effluent.
The stated fool-proof strategy ensuring that not a drop of any wastewater would enter the Yamuna at Delhi would be ideal and only solution for Delhi, the national capital situated along Yamuna, a tributary of Ganga.




























REPRINT OF THE ARTICFLE






28 Urban Wastewater Management
March/April 2010 World Water

Previous governmental attempts to clean up the Ganga River have failed
for political, technical, and scientific reasons, according to Dr. Devendra S.
Bhargava, a former professor of environmental engineering and pollution
control at Roorkee University in India. In the following article, Dr. Bhargava
explains the reasons for these failures and proposes a foolproof strategy to
reduce the river pollution load by exploiting its self-purifying capacity.


Restoring the
pristine waters of
the Ganga River



India's most revered river, the Ganga
River, is famous for its self-cleansing
properties, but rapid urban and industrial
development has created
such a heavy pollution load that the
government has been forced to initiate
several attempts to restore its
pristine quality. Unfortunately, all
government efforts so far have failed
miserably.

The latest action plan is the World
Bank-funded Mission Clean Ganga,
launched in October 2009, that aims
to stop all untreated municipal sewage
and industrial wastewater discharged
into the river by 2020. One
year earlier in November 2008, Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh declared
the Ganga as a "National River" to
give greater urgency to clean up efforts
during a review of the original
Ganga Action Plan (GAP) started
more than 20 years ago. But the author
contends that these actions plan
cannot improve river water quality
without adopting a foolproof barrier
to prevent sewage and wastewater
from draining into the river within
urban areas.

Approximately 3,000 million liters
(mld) of wastewater are generated
each day along the 2,510-kilometers-
long river; only 1,025 mld of
this volume are treated.

The Ganga River flows from the
Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal
through major cities including
Haridwar, Kanpur, Allahabad,
Varanasi, and Calcutta to support
the needs of 600 million people.
Much of the river water is already
redirected to irrigation canals as it
leaves the Himalayas before reaching
heavily populated areas.

In 1985, the Government of India
launched the GAP to clean up the
river. After spending approximately
US$ 188 million (901.71 crore) in 15
years, the pollution load did not decrease.
Despite more than two decades
of governmental efforts at all
levels, the Ganga remains polluted
for technical, scientific, and political
reasons. This situation would remain
unchanged unless the government
changes its GAP strategy.

Interestingly, the river's self-cleansing
property is the result of its unusual
ability to re-aerate and assimilate
organic matter through the presence
of well-adapted aerobic bacteria and
exocellular polymers (excreted by
bacteria in their endogenous phase)
present in the water. These polymers






act as excellent coagulants to destabilize
organic colloids that are well
flocculated due to the mean velocity
gradient generated in the swiftly
flowing river. Such flocs along with
the settleable component of organic
matter constitute up to 60 percent,
depending on the degree of treatment
received by wastes, of the total organic
matter and is removed linearly
in 30 to 60 minutes. The dissolved
organic material assimilates by an
extraordinarily high exponential
rate constant (25 times higher than
other rivers).

Apart from this, a mysterious material
exists in the Ganga riverbed
that creates a hostile environment
for the long survival of pathogens.
This material continues to exist despite
much Ganga water being siphoned
off via canals at Haridwar
and Narora, which proves that
this material exists in the riverbed
and not only from the Himalayas.
Scientific research on the effect of this
material if transported to other rivers
could reveal interesting results. Its
non-putrefying character is evident
from Ganga water's long storage in
airtight containers and high level of
organic waste assimilation. In most
Hindi homes, Ganga water (jal) is
preserved for religious rites and has
often been used for its disease-curing
properties. However, its pollution
load has become so severe that many
Hindus hesitate to take a dip in the
river or directly inhale its waters for
Aachman, a religious ritual.

Lessons for future success

In previous action plans, unscientific
and arbitrary standards were adopted
to check pollution levels. Instead,
effluent standards (legally permissible
concentration of any pollutant
in wastewater) should be determined
through scientific methodology using
mass balancing concepts from prefixed
stream/river standards. These
should take into account the river's
self-purifying abilities (measured
through kinetic coefficients available
in recognized literature) and
ratios of river-effluent flow-rates.
These effluent standards would thus
vary for different polluters.

Indian conditions have also been
totally ignored in formulating strategy,
which hinders any success in
pollution control. For example,
many Indian streets are too narrow
to install sewer pipelines that
require deep excavations, which
create structural dangers to street
buildings. Consequently, wastewater
generated from homes in these
types of neighborhoods flow directly
into the Ganga as infrastructure is
also outdated.

Many private homes in India carry
on small-scale industrial activities
such as plating, generating toxic
wastes that flow unabatedly into
the nearby river or percolate into
the ground and later seep into the
river. Slums generate large volumes
of wastewater in unsewered urban
areas that ultimately seep into the
river. Religious mass bathing gatherings
that are regularly held along
the Ganga generate wastewater that
flows directly into the river. Drains
channel wastewater upstream of
bathing platforms (ghats). Open
defecation apart from the disposal
of dead human and animal bodies
are Indian customs that degrade riverbank
areas. Riverbanks are also
used as dumping sites for solid organic
wastes, including polythenes,
so these substances leach into the
river.

A self-supported sustainable strategy
(4-S) could help keep city streets
clean in an organized manner, but
this is not even practiced. For example,
people could be employed to
pick up organic wastes, nails, newspapers,
and polythenes from specified
streets and sell them to consumers
such as dairies, piggeries, and
scrap dealers. All this uncollected
waste causes 50 percent of urban,
untapped, untreated wastewater to
flow unabatedly into rivers.

Further, the Indian culture and
religion demand a very high water
quality level at the Ganga banks
where millions of Hindus perform
religious rites in the river, thus pollution
control strategies successful
in western countries cannot be
successful or appropriate in India.
In such situations, even with the
most modern wastewater treatment
facilities in urban areas, hundreds
of action plans could not clean rivers.
Likewise, the lack of defensive
pollution control strategies such as
segregation of industrial wastes as
in-plant practices, wastewater recycling
and reuse, general sanitation,
and improved agricultural practices
to reduce excessive use of fertilizers
and insecticides in the country make
river cleaning plans ineffective.

Proactive or offensive strategies
such as the regulated release of
wastewater to ensure the maintenance
of the pre-fixed river stand-
ard, artificial re-aeration and in-drain
treatment practices
using water hyacinths
could increase the likelihood
of success in action plans, but they
are not implemented.

Comprehensive river pollution
control requires professionals with
knowledge of several fields including
civil engineering, public health or
environmental engineering. The lack
of experts in these fields with decision-
making responsibilities within
the Indian Ministry of Environment
has been disastrous for success in
previous Ganga clean-up projects.
Political connections or bribery used
to secure high positions in government,
judiciary, and academia have
also stymied efforts to clean up the
Ganga. Fine collectors demand
bribes. The corrupt and opaque judicial
system makes the legislative approach
to river pollution control ineffective
through delays and politically
motivated judges and lawyers.

Corruption could easily be wiped
out in India by paying generous bonuses
per case to fine collectors, various
officers, and judges for timely
processing of millions of legal cases,
in addition to other democratic reforms.
Expert positions filled through
merit-based appointments rather
than political connections would
vastly improve the government's capacity
to manage comprehensive pollution
control projects.

The most rampant corruption in
India wastes most of the money allocated
to river cleaning works.
Former Prime Minister of India
Rajeev Gandhi (1984-89) stated
that only 15 percent of allocated
public funds reach beneficiaries
or project execution stage. His son,
Rahul Gandhi, 38, the most aspiring
future prime minister of India,
recently lowered this figure to five
percent. Mammoth river cleaning
projects cannot be completed when
so many public funds are siphoned
off through corruption.

The Indian public has been ineffective
in building any pressure to
clean the rivers. Increased awareness
through seminars, media, non-governmental
organizations, and public
education could help enhance
public support and participation in
clean up campaigns. The Right to
Information Act (RTI), promulgated
in 2005, could make government
and judiciary decision-making more
transparent, however its implementation
is excruciatingly slow and tardy.
RTI requests have incurred police
wrath, harassment, and assault.

For these reasons, the implementation
of numerous action plans cannot
ever result in a pollution-free
Ganga River. Instead, a more effective,
foolproof strategy is to prevent
wastewater from entering the
river by creating a barrier between
the river and cities along the Ganga.
This barrier could be a "bandha"
or dam-like structure constructed
so that all urban wastewater is
trapped through a huge sewer or
covered canal positioned parallel to
the river with or without any treatment
depending on available municipal
finances. The wastewater would
be carried to a point some two to
three kilometers downstream of the
city for treatment and disposal, allowing
the Ganga River to naturally
purify itself before reaching the
next urban center. The distance of
this stretch of the river between two
cities would depend on the self-purification
coefficients of the river, degree
of waste treatment in the previous
city, river configurations, stream
width-to-depth ratio, stream velocity,
and other factors. If the distance
between two cities is short, then the
wastewater treatment at the upstream
city should be more intense
to produce cleaner effluent.

This strategy would lessen the
burden on the city administration,
which could invest as less or more
as it could afford in order to take
advantage of the Ganga's self-purification
abilities. However, if the
city administration could afford investing
in more infrastructure, then
all wastewater could receive primary
or secondary treatment before
discharge to the river. This strategy
could also work for the national
capital Delhi, to prevent wastewater
from discharging into the Yamuna, a
tributary of the Ganga.

Author's Note
Professor Devendra Swaroop
Bhargava, PhD, is the author of
more than 450 research papers
and the recipient of 32 awards,
including the prestigious Swami
Pranavananda Award, India's
highest academic honor for 1992
for outstanding scholarly, scientific
contributions in environmental
science, engineering, and ecology.
In 2002, he was presented the
Institution of Engineers' (India)
National Design Award in
Environmental Engineering.
He can be contacted at
dsbhargava@ yahoo.co.in.

























Mission
Clean Ganga
underway
On December 30, 2009, Indian
Environment and Forest Minister
Jairam Ramesh announced
that the US$ 3.2-billion
(15,000-crore) Mission Clean
Ganga project would stop all
municipal sewage and industrial
waste from being discharged
without treatment into the
"holy river" by 2020. The World
Bank committed one billion
US dollars in a long-term loan
to fund the construction of
wastewater treatment plants
and sewerage infrastructure in
cities along the Ganga River.
The Varanasi-Kannauj stretch
of the river is one of the most
polluted areas of the Ganga,
according to the Environment
Ministry. Three new sewage
treatment plants are planned
for Varanasi, The government
plans to make the city an
eco-development model of the
Ganga river basin. Currently,
the city generates 290 mld of
sewage, but only 102 mld of
this waste is treated in sewage
treatment plants; the rest flows
untreated into the river. The new
mission will focus on river front
development and catchment
area treatment in addition to
sewage treatment plants. By
December 2010, a catchment
river basin management plan
will be prepared and specific
action plans for industrial
pollution will be developed by
January 31, 2011.






" Organic matter
assimilation rates in
the Ganga River are
25 times higher than
any other river in
the world".
Professor Devendra
Bhargava


>>
The Indian
public
has been
ineffective
in building
any
pressure
to clean
the rivers.
>>

###

Tag Words: cleaning ganga, ganga

Categories: Environment

Press Release Contact
Environmental Professor Dr. Devendra Swaroop Bhargava, formerly with Indian Inst. Tech., Roorkee & Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Bhargava lane Devpura, Haridwar,India. Mobile +91-9412074331

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