'We are killing the river in name of development'

ALLAHABAD: "Ganga is languishing in such polluted state that people hesitate to bathe in water even in Prayag," said convener of Ganga Pradarshani, DN Shukla in a conference ‘Ganga Dushehara’: Samagra Chintan Diwas on the occasion of Ganga Dushehra organized.
"We are killing the river in the name of development. Despite the advancement in science and technology, we lack proper utilisation and hence, have not been able to create new methods of producing electricity or irrigation facility instead of creating dams," he said.
"In the upper reaches of the river, hydro-electric projects have caused considerable damage to the Ganga and its natural ecology leading to drying up of long stretches of the river bed and depriving the nearby villagers of their main source of water," he said.
He further said the river is not able to bear the load of the increased population, increased industrial waste, increased non biodegradable products and decreased fresh water input all at the same time. When you talk to people, they talk about their emotions attached with the river Ganga. They feel sad about the slow demise of the river. However, the problem is that people are unaware of the facts and realities. Their concern is genuine but they lack right implementation of the solutions to tackle the problem. And this isn't true only about Ganga but the same sad story is true for all the other major rivers across India.
"So on the day of Ganga Dushehra, birthday of River Ganga, we lndians should take a pledge to free the flow of river Ganga from Gomukh to Ganga Sagar without any restriction," Shukla said. There is an urgent need to change our lifestyle for the sake of our rivers. On this occasion, Pawan Pandey, Vashishtha Narayan Shukla, Rajendra Mishra, Vandana Srivastava, Rajesh Shukla, Suman Shukla, Om Prakash, Rajan Tiwari and others were present.