River Ganga

New Delhi: The Ganga will flow clean and free from pollution by 2020, National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) announced it in a meeting held here recently. According to reports, the NGRBA project has identified the causes behind rising level of pollution in Ganga. Also, an elaborate plan has been rolled out to ensure effective abatement of pollution and conservation of the national river. A senior NGRBA official said, “The framework for the river basin has been prepared, which may include 34 projects. Under the scheme USD 3.2 billion would be forked out for abating pollution in selected cities and it was decided that no untreated waste would be discharged into the Ganga till 2020.” A national level survey, carried out by NGRBA, identified untreated sewage and industrial waste as a major cause for polluting the Ganga. According to the survey, only one-third of the 12,000 million litres per day (mld) sewage, generated in the major cities and towns, is treated b...

The Ganges is one of the major rivers of the Indian subcontinent, flowing east through the Gangetic Plain of northern India into Bangladesh. The 2,510 km (1,560 mi) river rises in the western Himalayas in the Uttarakhand state of India, and drains into the Sunderbans delta in the Bay of Bengal . It has long been considered a holy river by Hindus and worshiped as the goddess Ganga in Hinduism . It has also been important historically: many former provincial or imperial capitals (such as Patliputra, Kannauj , Kara, Allahabad , Murshidabad ,and Calcutta ) have been located on its banks. The Ganges Basin drains 1,000,000-square-kilometre (390,000 sq mi) and supports one of the world`s highest densities of humans. The average depth of the river is 52 feet (16 m), and the maximum depth, 100 feet (30 m). The river has been declared as India`s National River. The many symbolic meanings of the river on the Indian subcontinent were spoken to in 1946 by Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discover...