“The Government’s Namami Gange Programme has revitalized India’s efforts to rejuvenating the Ganga,” Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director in India, said. “The first World Bank project helped build critical sewage infrastructure in 20 pollution hotspots along the river, and this Project will help scale this up to the tributaries. It will also help government strengthen the institutions needed to manage a river basin as large and complex as the Ganga Basin.” The sprawling Ganga Basin provides over one-third of India’s surface water, includes the country’s largest irrigated area, and is key to India’s water and food security. Over 40 per cent of India’s GDP is generated in the densely populated basin. But the Ganga river is today is facing pressures from human and economic activity that impact its water quality and flows.

Over 80 per cent of the pollution load in the Ganga comes from untreated domestic wastewater from towns and cities along the river and its tributaries. For this, sewage networks and treatment plants in select urban areas would be built to help control pollution discharges. These infrastructure investments and the jobs they will generate will also help India’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) crisis.