Ganga won’t be cleaned in next 50 years, says Murli Manohar Joshi

BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi has mounted a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Namami Gange project to clean the Ganga, and Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari’s ambitious plan to develop inland waterways.

Addressing a gathering on Varanasi’s Tulsi Ghat as part of the various World Environment Day functions in the city, Joshi said the manner in which the cleaning of the Ganga has been undertaken will ensure that the river “does not get cleaned even in the next 50 years”.

“You cannot treat Ganga in parts — one part in Uttarakhand, one in Haridwar, another in Varanasi. Ganga is the same continual flow till it meets the sea. If you divide up the cleaning too in parts, it will not get cleaned. It will not get cleaned in the next 50 years,” said Joshi, a former Minister of Science and Technology who has been a teacher of physics at the Allahabad University.

Joshi was earlier an MP from Varanasi who was shifted to Kanpur parliamentary constituency to make way for Modi, who contested and won from the holy city. He spoke on his shift as well as the general attitude of successive governments, including the present BJP government, towards the Ganga.

Joshi then attacked Gadkari without really naming him for a World Bank-assisted project named Jal Marg Vikas, which is aimed at developing the stretch on the Ganga between Haldia in West Bengal and Allahabad in UP and make it navigable for ships.

Additionally, the Inland Waterways Authority of India, under Gadkari’s charge, has undertaken preparatory work for 101 inland waterways, for which the required Bill has been moved in Parliament. Joshi said such planning reflects no understanding of any of the three — hydro-dynamics, geography or geology.

“I have a friend, he is a Minister. He plans to run ships on the Ganga. He could have asked me, we have done it from Allahabad to Haldia. But we discovered that the ships cannot run, as there isn’t enough water in the river. They used to run, the big boats. But those rivers had a different volume of the flow… But he says he plans to run it in all the rivers. It reflects no understanding of hydro-dynamics, geography or geology. Sometimes, I think I am the only mad person pointing these things out,” said Joshi.

He was very passionate about the Ganga and the manner in which the holiest of India’s rivers has been treated.

“There is not enough water in the Ganga. The Ganga has been smothered. If it does not flow uninterrupted, it will not get cleaned. It is as simple as that. Enchained and smothered Ganga will never be clean. Successive governments have violated the basic principle that there should be a minimum quantity of water flowing all the time in the river,” said Joshi.

He then compared his own political journey to the increasing pollution in the Ganga. “It is unfortunate that from the pure glaciers, I have reached the most polluted part of the Ganga in Kanpur,” he said.

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