By PTI
NEW DELHI: As River Ganga turned into an “easy dumping ground” of COVID-19 victims during the second wave, the NMCG authorised officials to use funds from district Ganga committees to pay for “dignified cremations”, its chief said.
In a book titled Ganga: Reimagining, Rejuvenating, Reconnecting, its co-author and director general of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) Rajiv Ranjan Mishra said the number of poverty-stricken people, who had used up all their money on doctors and medicines to fight COVID-19, nearly trebled within days.
They were in no position to pay the enhanced cremation charges, he pointed out. “I authorised the district authorities to use the funds from the district Ganga committees to fund dignified cremations in case needed. This also triggered action by the state to support such cases with financial help,” Mishra stated in the book.
Explaining the situation, he wrote, “As the number of bodies swelled and multiplied because of the COVID-19 pandemic, overwhelming district administrations and stretching the functional limits of crematoria and burning ghats of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the Ganga became an easy dumping ground for the dead.” Calling the visuals of floating bodies a traumatic and heart-breaking experience, Mishra said his job was to be the “custodian” of the health of River Ganga, to rejuvenate its flow, ensure its return to its pristine purity and to ensure the same for its tributaries, after years of neglect.
“Five years of intense work to save the river seemed to be coming undone in a matter of days,” he rued. Mishra, however, said as per the reports of various district magistrates and panchayat committees, the number of bodies dumped into the river was no more than 300.
“The problem, moreover, was confined only to Uttar Pradesh (between Kannauj and Ballia), and the bodies found in Bihar were those floating from Uttar Pradesh,” he said.
Mishra called himself a victim of an unknown virus, an unprecedented epidemic that had snowballed into a national crisis.
“I was being asked to take responsibility for the rejuvenation of a river that had been further polluted and defiled by the breakdown in health services and the inability of the local bodies to manage the crisis,” he said.
The NMCG head said poor management of funeral services, people taking advantage of the situation to dump bodies into the river instead of cremating them and adverse publicity from the media only added to the discomfort and helplessness.
“Adding to our woes was the fact that the NMCG has no direct power or authority to punish or to initiate action against those disposing of the dead in the river or burying them on the riverbanks.
Our power lay in giving directives, but we are dependent on the state authorities to maintain law and order,” he said.
Noting that floating corpses or the dead being buried on the banks are not an unusual spectacle for those living close to the river, Mishra said poverty, along with the inherent belief in the curative power and religious significance of the river, propelled many.
On May 15, he said, he ordered immediate stoppage of the disposal of bodies into the river and to check probable contamination of water quality.
“It emerged that the water quality was being monitored and analysed at 11 stations in 27 districts of Uttar Pradesh every 10 days, and the Central Pollution Control Board ruled out the survival of the virus in the drinking water of these states because of chlorination and other disinfectant measures,” he said.
Mishra said all doubts were put to rest with a World Health Organisation study that categorically stated that the virus does not spread through water and therefore could not even infect the sewage system.
“This information was a godsend. All our efforts at cleaning and rejuvenating the Ganga had not gone to waste,” he noted.
