The Hindu : New Delhi News : `Ganga water quality has improved'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 13, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

`Ganga water quality has improved'

Special Correspondent

Values although decreasing yet to achieve desired standards

NEW DELHI: The quality of Ganga water has shown a marked improvement since the launch of the ambitious Ganga Action Plan in 1985 to clean the river, according to the Union Environment and Forests Ministry.

There is a clear improvement in terms of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) of the river between 1986-2005 at Kannauj, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Patna despite a phenomenal increase in population in the urban centres located upstream on the river. At Kanpur, the values although decreasing are yet to achieve the desired standards because of unchecked pollution load.

The water quality monitoring has been done by independent institutes like the Central Pollution Control Board, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) and the Indian Toxicological Research Centre in Lucknow.

In terms of the time and costs taken, the GAP compares well with those of the other major rivers of the world like the Thames, the Rhine and the Danube, according to a Cost-Benefit Analysis of GAP-I carried out by the Harvard Institute of International Development between 1995-97 in collaboration with other institutes. The findings of the study, carried out on the direction of the Planning Commission, were released in the year 2000 as the first phase was closed on March 31 the same year.

According to these, it would be unreasonable for a developing country like India to expect to achieve in 10-15 years what it has taken countries with many more resources over 30 years to achieve particularly for much smaller rivers than the Ganga.

For example, the length of the Thames is just 245 km and the Rhine 1,320 km as compared to 2,857 km of the Ganga. The Ganga serves a population of 500 million as against 50 million in the case of the Rhine and 86 million of the Danube. Cleaning the Thames and the Rhine took 30 and 50 years respectively while it is just 13 years since the Ganga Action Plan was launched, the study noted.

The restoration costs for the 245-km Thames were Rs. 5 billion and for the 1,320-km-long Rhine Rs. 1940 billion, whereas only Rs.11 billion has so far been spent on the Ganga.

The model showed that in 1995 a 437-km stretch of river between Rishikesh in UP and Rajmahal in Bihar still had biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) levels above the permissible limit of 3.0 mg/l.

The problem stretch mainly lies between Kannauj and Varanasi. However, without GAP this stretch would have been about 740 km and more than 100 km would have exceeded 10 mg/l of BOD. Dissolved Oxygen (DO) levels would have been below 5.0 mg/l for a short stretch near Kanpur. The BOD and DO levels have shown significant improvement. The present approved cost for the Ganga river operation under GAP Phase II, under the National River Conservation Plan, is Rs.652.89 crore against which an amount of Rs. 240.72 crore has been released to the implementing agencies.

Out of a total of 268 sanctioned schemes, 79 have been completed so far and the rest are in progress. This plan is being implemented in 60 towns covering five States.

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