In March 2017, the river Ganges was accorded ‘Human status’ by the Uttarakhand High Court. This judgement makes it one of the most abused humans on the planet. Decades of dumping dead bodies, industrial effluents and pollutants make it one of the most polluted humans in the world. Yet, this has not stopped the government from making claims to make the Ganges clean again.
In 2014, the newly crowned Narendra Modi administration announced the Namami Gange Mission as their flagship programme. Modi promised that the river would be clean by Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary – 2019. The Ministry of Irrigation was renamed as the Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation, with Uma Bharti as its chief. 2020 was set as a deadline, and Rs.20,000 crore ($3.1 billion) was allocated as the project outlay for the next five years.
The next year, Modi auctioned off a bespoke suit with his name emblazoned in golden lining for Rs. 4.31 crore ($677,446) – with the money due for the Namami Gange Mission. It was a symbolic gesture demonstrating that Modi felt personally involved in the project.
In November 2015, Uma Bharti said the Ganges would be among the cleanest rivers “in the world” by October 2018. On mounting criticisms that little had been done to show progress, she used the analogy of a sprinter taking a pause before a big race.
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