Over Rs.6 lakh crore needed to clean Ganga: Experts

A capital expenditure of over Rs.600,000 crore (approx $100 bn) is needed to cleanse river Ganga of the sewage, industrial effluents and solid waste that is thrown into the river, say experts.

The Ganga River Basin Management Plan 2015 (GRBMP), prepared by Indian Institute of Technology Consortium (IITC), suggests that nearly Rs.600,000-700,000 crore is required to address the problem caused by the material dumped into the river, according to a statement by the Oval Observer Foundation on Friday.

The IITC, a cluster of seven IITs (Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Guwahati and Roorkee) that presented the GRBMP to the union environment ministry in January this year, had in a workshop, organised by IIT Kanpur and Oval Observer Foundation here earlier this week, shared a draft blueprint to finance the rejuvenation and restoration of the Ganga.

The blueprint was a collective output of a multi-stakeholder group, IITC+ (IITC Plus) that has more than 150 national and international members, said the statement.

Vinod Tare, a professor at IIT-Kanpur and the coordinator for the GRBMP, outlined that policies required a paradigm shift in the approach to address the underlying problem of Ganga pollution, and stressed the need to focus on developing Urban River Management Plans (URMPs) for the various strands of the Ganga River Basin.

The success of the GBRMP, said the experts, hinged on two boundary conditions like making zero liquid discharge essential for large industrial polluters and the creation of a market for treated sewage.

Only then will the market generate the much-needed confidence to private sector investors that may invest in the water treatment projects, said the release.