The sacred and the profane.

The Ganges River particularly in the old and religious city of Varanasi is polluted by the discharges of cities and towns into the river. Human corpses and raw sewage are the major sources of the rivers pollution. There is no sewage system for 90% of the population. Coliform levels are 120000 colonies/100 milliliters of water. Industry must pay for a permit to dump into rivers but there is no rule governing urban contributions to pollution control. In 1992 members of an environmental group Swatch Ganga attended a conference conducted by the Friends of the Ganges in order to gain moral technical and financial support for cleaning up the river. A strong point was made about fertility levels being lowered when infant mortality declined particularly infant mortality due to water-borne diseases. 50 teachers were also trained to test for water quality by a simple method that students could use. The engineers in attendance discussed the construction of a deep water gravity system for transporting sewage which would not harm the citys ancient architecture but would be costly. Other suggestions were a Chinese-style composting of sewage and an American method for chemical treatment of water. There was no perfect method suggested. The publicity attracted the attention of the Minister of Environment; Dr. Mishra an elite Brahmin founder of Swatch Ganga was asked to personally present the conference recommendations. Friends of the Ganges was also able to raise funds for a community water testing laboratory and to send Dr. Mishra to the USA to study successful river cleanup models. There is a great love of the river and an estimated 70000 pilgrims come to Varanasi every day. There is a need to unite the Moslems Buddhists Jains and Sikhs in a grass-roots effort to clean up the river. There is also need for strong national government financial support. The late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi spearheaded the Ganga Action Plan to construct and renovate treatment plants for 24 cities along the river but the program ended with much to be done; monsoons overwhelm the sewage pumps many months of the year. There are fights over regional cost-sharing.