Minister Bharti has been involved with the Ganga abhiyan since 2011, after she joined back the BJP that she had left in early 2006. Even though her party was not in power, she interacted with the heads of seven Indian Institutes of Technology and then prime minister and environment ministers of the day, maintaining that the cleaning of the Ganga was her life’s mission. As destiny would have it, after the NDA’s victory in the 2014 Parliamentary elections, she was allocated the portfolio of Water Resources (among others), and made chairperson of the Task Force to oversee the rejuvenation of Ganga. The National Mission for Clean Ganga, a fully autonomous body will function under the overall aegis of her ministry, and is financially empowered to take decisions to start the cleaning process. Now that the BJP has returned to power in a resounding fashion in Uttar Pradesh after many years, Ms Uma Bharti is certain that things will move forward at great speed. She says that the earlier Government in UP stalled most of the Ministry’s initiatives, and the rejuvenation and cleaning programmes were met with stiff resistance. 

Having received presentations from many nations on cleaning of river systems, Ms Uma Bharti knows that patience is key. No country has been able to clean its river system in less than three to four decades, especially where rampant industrialization had taken a toll. Also having traversed both ways between Gangotri, the origin, and Ganga Sagar, where the river merges into the Bay of Bengal, she is confident that the people of India will have much to cheer about in times to come. To begin with, inland navigation on the Ganga is being re-started between Ken and Betwa this year. This project aims to transfer surplus water from the Ken river to the Betwa basin through a concrete canal to irrigate India’s drought-prone Bundelkhand region. Many more waterways will be linked in the coming months. They promise to give a fillip to India’s river economy, be they in the form of transportation, tourism, irrigation, drinking water or electricity. 

Minister Bharti speaks to us on what the cleaning of Ganga entails, and why it is so important to the beating heart of India.

(sayantanc@gmail.com)