Pollution of the Ganges
Ongoing environmental disaster in India / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The ongoing pollution of the Ganges, the largest river in the Indian subcontinent, poses a significant threat to human health and the environment.[1] The river provides water to about 40% of India's population across 11 states.[2] It serves an estimated population of 500 million people, more than any other river in the world.[3][4]
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It is severely polluted with human waste and industrial contaminants. Today, the Ganges is considered to be the fifth-most polluted river in the world.[5] Stretches of over 600 km (370 mi) are considered ecologically dead zones.[6]
An Indian photographer has noted that no one in India spoke of the Ganges as being polluted until the late 1970s.[7] However, pollution affected the river before wider attention was brought to the topic.
A number of initiatives were undertaken to clean the river, but they failed to deliver significant results.[8] After getting elected, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to work on cleaning the river and controlling pollution.[9] Subsequently, in the June 2014 budget, the government announced the Namami Ganga project.[10] By 2016, an estimated Rs 30 billion (US$460 million) had been spent in various efforts to clean up the river, to little avail.[11]