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.