Slow murder

River of Life, River of Death: the Ganges & India’s future, Victor Mallet; Oxford University Press; Rs.550, Pages 344 Victor Mallet is the latest in a string of visitors over the centuries who have evocatively recorded their fascination for India’s life-giving River Ganges. They include Xuanzang in the 7th century, who was in raptures of its waters, “dark blue in colour with great waves rising”, J.A. Hodgson, the first outsider to reach the Gaumukh glacier, who saluted discovering the origin of the great river with a bugle march, and Fanny Parkes, the 19th century diarist, who was charmed by everything she saw as she sailed up river in a flotilla of vessels; to, more recently, Eric Newby, who meandered slowly down the Ganges on a makeshift craft, Sir Edmund Hillary who jet-boated up it, and Dennison Berwick who trudged from its mouth to its source.  While retaining the enthrallment the river unfailingly asserts, Mallet’s is arguably the best-researched, and most perceptive and disquieting of all first-person accounts about the Ganges. After trekking up to Gaumukh, immersing himself in the river during the kumbh mela, participating in the annual gathering at Ganga Sagar, besides exploring the historic cities on its banks, Mallet cannot help venting his anguish and despondency at the present plight of this great river which, he warns, poses a threat to the wider Indian population. “The conclusions of official measurements, academic papers and the evidence of one’s own eyes, are alarming for anyone who cares about human health or the environment,” he writes.  The Ganges is worshipped, celebrated and entwined with myth and legend as no other river has been. It provides for the agricultural, industrial and potable water needs of half a billion people, but what survives at its extremity is grievously tainted by faecal germs and infectious bacteria, industrial chemicals and pesticide residues. Standing at the junction where the river meets the sea, Mallet reflects: “The pure water melted from the glacier at Gaumukh has by this point been subjected to all the follies and wonders of India”.  Given the status rivers are bestowed in our theological and cultural ethos, they should be purer in India, in terms of water quality, than elsewhere. Mallet’s investigation leads him to comment that “Indians are killing the Ganges with pollution and that the polluted Ganges, in turn, is killing Indians”. But as he tracks the river downstream, in quiet wonderment of India and getting to understand how the country works, he believes the story is not without hope. There are examples of filthy rivers having been cleaned elsewhere, and he trusts that India can draw lessons to restore the Ganges. The GAP (Ganga Action Plan) was launched in the 1980s with much fanfare, and followed up with YAP (Yamuna Action Plan), GAP II and YAP II. Millions of rupees have been spent, but the rivers remain as polluted as ever.  The Centre for Science and Environment has referred to the clean-up as “the great sham”, undertaken “more to create drama than to…