'Time, money and right approach needed to clean Ganga'

Dr Jasper Wieck, Charge d'Affaires of the German Embassy in India on Thursday said that to help clean river Ganga, you need time, money and the right approach.

"Germany can capitalise on the experiences it has made in cleaning the Rhine river and the Danube river. The lessons we learnt from these cleaning activities is that you need time, money and the right approach. The right approach is the holistic integrated approach," he told reporters here.

"You have to take on board all the stakeholders from the government authorities, the local bodies and also representatives of the industry of agriculture and you have to make sure that the individual households are part of this huge endeavour. Indeed, when you talk about the cleaning of Ganga, you talk about a river basin that is home to more than 600 million Indians and you have to take on board all of them," he added.

Wieck said that the cleaning of Ganga can be a success only if we come up with a holistic approach and efforts.

"It has a lot to do with behavioural changes, how we use water and how we reduce the amount of wastewater and how we avoid the toxification and reduce the toxicities of our wastewater. Only if we are coming up with a holistic approach and efforts then we have a reason to believe it will become a success," he said.

According to Wieck, it took Germany 30 years and 45 billion euros to clean the Rhine river which is half Ganga's length.

He said, "We can only use our experience, it took us 30 years and 45 billion euros to clean Rhine river. Length of Ganga is double its length, so this can give you an essence about problems India is facing in cleaning Ganga."

Earlier today, Union Water Resources and Ganga Rejuvenation Minister Nitin Gadkari said that he is hopeful that by March 2020, river Ganga will be completely clean considering the pace at which its rejuvenation programme was in progress.