A Shift Towards Integrated Basin Based Approach

In past 170 years the river Ganga has been seen as spiritual entity but is being treated like material water, which makes it a huge challenge to rejuvenate the river. From 1985 to 2015, programs like GAP I, GAP II were initiated whose efforts to clean up the pollution, did not succeed. The piece meal approach and lack of resources resulted in allocation of total Rs. 4000 crores for 30 years, which is very less given the size and complexity of the Ganga basin (Singh, A.K., 2022). To keep this majestic river alive or we should say, to keep the humanity alive a new approach towards Ganga River rejuvenation was required. Learning from the past, the ‘Namami Gange Programme’ has been designed differently, which does not look Ganga as separate river but treat the basin as a single system. The amalgamation of traditional knowledge of water management and new innovative technologies is one of the important approaches this programme offers towards the rejuvenation of Ganga River. Many initiatives and projects have been implemented in the past to rejuvenate the Ganga, and many more schemes and projects are currently being implemented under the NMCG (NMCG, 2021). A timeline of different stages of Ganga Cleaning and rejuvenation is shown in Figure 3.