The sacred and the profane: Let the spiritual and the sustainable meet to save the Ganga

Abstract

Let the spiritual and the sustainable meet to save the Ganga In the corridors of Indira Paryavaran Bhawan, the headquarters of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), any officer posted to the Ganga Project Directorate— also known as the National River Conservation Directorate (NRCD)—is either ‘low profile’ or ‘sidelined’. This was not the perception when the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) was launched by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985. He was fresh from an earthshaking electoral victory. His party had bagged 83 of the 85 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh alone. India’s young Prime Minister was hailed by sections of the media for his refreshing ‘approach’ to nature. Mountains and wildlife reserves were his mother’s pet obsessions, but to focus on a river was a novelty. A flurry of activities followed the announcement of the GAP, and the Central Ganga Authority (CGA) was formed to oversee its implementation, chaired by none other than the Prime Minister himself. A Ganga Project Directorate was set up under the aegis of the newly formed MoEF to implement the Action Plan. But then the euphoria around GAP waned as Rajiv Gandhi was sucked into the scandal surrounding the purchase of Bofors artillery guns, and his relations with the electorate entered the phase of disaffection. Read more at: https://openthemagazine.com/essays/open-essay/the-sacred-and-the-profane/