From Goddesses to "legal persons"

On March 20, there was a judgement by the Uttarakhand High Court which conferred the status of legal personhood to Ganga and Yamuna and "all their tributaries, streams, every natural water flowing with flow continuously or intermittently" with "all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person." The order comes close on the heels of a historic order of the New Zealand Court conferring rights of legal personhood to the Whanganui river. In contrast with the kneejerk Indian judgement, the NZ order was a culmination of one of the longest running legal battles in the country wherein the Iwi Maoris tribe fought since 1870s. Iwi spokesperson poignantly states, "rather than us being masters of the natural world, we are part of it." The ruling gave two parties the rights of representing the river, from the government and from the Maori community.

On the other hand, the Indian court order gives representation of one of the largest basins in the world in the hands of Director, Namami Gange, the Chief Secretary of the State of Uttarakhand and the Advocate General of Uttarakhand. The track record of Uttarakhand and Namami Gange in protecting the Ganga is gory, to say the least. Can forced parenthood remedy this? The order itself shows the callousness of the Uttarakhand government in protecting rivers.

It also functions through an exclusive prism of "Hindu astha". It states that "The constitution of Ganga Management Board is necessary for the purpose of irrigation, rural and urban water supply, hydro power generation, navigation, industries", when overexploitation by these very sectors have nearly killed the rivers!

India has several good environmental laws including the Environment Protection Act, Forest Protection Act, and Wildlife Protection Act, which are being violated all the time even as the ministries, including the Environment Ministry, are being complicit in violations. Can one a Court ruling remedy all this?

All rivers in India, not just Ganga and Yamuna, need protection. They need representation not from indifferent bureaucracy, but by people who love them and are linked to them. Rivers need their natural flow, a right constantly denied to them. A living ecosystem is much more than a person, it nurtures and protects life processes much beyond the anthropocentric view and timescale. Their protection needs to be at par with a status higher than "legal persons."

Representation of bureaucracy as parents of rivers reminds one of Roald Dahl's epic Mathilda, in which the magical girl desperately asks her parents to relinquish their parenthood rights to be with someone who loves her.