Abstract
Despite accounting for only about 2.4% of the world’s geographical area and 4% of the world’s water resources, India supports approximately 18% of the world’s human population. This puts an unprecedented strain on the land, pushing it beyond it carrying capacity and resulting in land degradation throughout the country. In terms of global averages, thus, not only is water a scarce resource, but land and consequently soil is even more so. This dual constraint poses enormous amount of difficulty in making the Namami Gange Program a real success. The extreme land and water constraints of the Ganga basin agriculture have speeded up the degradation of its agricultural lands, with eroded soils and nutrients running into the Ganga River network and seriously affecting the rivers and other ecosystems. Thus, there is an urgent need to devise and promote appropriate sustainable agricultural practices to protect the basin and its agricultural lands from any further damage. There is a need to find some long-term and better solutions to ensure the river’s sustainability. In this review we have analyzed numerous public as well as experts’ opinion on government policies, across both in and out of the political realm and proposed a comprehensive strategy based up on the actionable points excerpted out of the opinions.