Economic Survey: Namami Gange expenditure only half of budgeted outlays

Sewage treatment capacity during the last eight years has been scaled up ten times

In 2008, Ganga was declared a national river. Schemes pertaining to the cleaning of the river have been going on since 1985. This government's track record has been better as it consolidated all programmes under the National Clean Ganga Mission in 2014.

However, data analysis from the Economic Survey 2021-22 shows that implementation gaps remain.

The Namami Gange Mission, which was approved for a period of five years from 2015-20, has been extended. Also, expenditure under the scheme has lagged budgeted outlays. The government had approved an amount of Rs 20,000 crore to be spent on Namami Gange over five years, but a Business Standard analysis shows that since 2014-15 a little less than half or Rs 11,000 crore has been spent on the scheme since.

While the pandemic has undoubtedly dealt a blow to yearly spending on Namami Gange, even if the government could achieve 2019-20 levels of spending, it still would have fallen short of achieving its target. In 2019-20, the government had spent Rs 2,673 crore on the project. Pandemic halved the spend on Namami Gange in 2020-21 to Rs 1,340 crore.

Until December 2021, the government had spent only Rs 898 crore on Namami Gange.

While budgeted spending has decreased, the government has become more ambitious with regard to its targets. Economic Survey 2021-22 highlights that sewage treatment capacity has been scaled up more than 10-times compared to 2014. In 2014, while the government had a target to build 463 million litres per day (MLD) sewage treatment capacity through 28 projects, it has since sanctioned 160 projects with 5,024 MLD sewage treatment capacity.

The compliance status of grossly polluting industries alongside the river has increased from 39 per cent to 81 per cent.

Ganga project is not the only river cleaning project which has run into spending problems. Data from Clean Yamuna Action Plan indicates similar slip-ups by the government with actual expenditure lagging budgeted outlays.