After billions of dollars spent on cleaning up the Ganga going down the drain (and mostly into the Ganga in the form of additional garbage), resulting in no reduction in pollution levels, the Center has designed the most ambitious scheme to date to save India’s holiest river: praying to Mother Ganga to clean herself. Rahul Bhullar, secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Forests, explained, “The Ganga cleanses the souls and washes away the sins of millions of devout Hindus day in and day out. So why not leverage her inordinate capacity to purify others to purge herself. It’s an ingenious idea that we should have though of a lot earlier, really.” The Center will now initiate Phase III of the Ganga Action Plan under which millions of sadhus will be deployed along the banks of the Ganga, beseeching her to purify herself even as increasing volumes of raw untreated sewage, industrial sludge, and human debris continue to discharge into the river unabated. The most intense phase of the program will be in the middle stretch of the river between Haridwar and Varanasi, where most of the original glacial melt is siphoned away for irrigation and human consumption through canals, leaving only waste water received from urban and industrial zones in the river. “That is where our faith in the river’s miraculous purification capacity will be severely tested and so we will deploy most of the sadhus in those stretches,” explained Mr. Bhullar. The Government will also encourage the public to participate in the project. “Devotees have so much faith in Mother Ganga’s power to clean anything and everything. So we will request them to pray a little for Mother Ganga too while cleaning themselves,” said Bhullar. The World Bank has agreed to finance a portion of the project in good faith. Confirming this World Bank Preside Robert Zoelick said, “Um…yeah, don’t really understand how this will lead to reduction in pollution levels, but to be quite honest, we were just as clueless about previous grandiose schemes launched by the Indian Government to clean the river that we had bankrolled.” A Hindu religious group, Ganga Sena, however is pissed and will oppose the Government’s initiative. “By asking people to pray to Mother Ganga to clean herself, the Govt. is insinuating that she becomes impure while purifying others. How can Mother Ganga ever become unclean, yaar? People should not get swayed by such invidious propaganda and should go about washing their clothes, performing ablutions, even brushing their teeth in the river with full faith in Ganga mai, who will wash away all their dirt, both physically and spiritually,” said a spokesperson for the Ganga Sena. Goddess Ganga however reacted to the developments with insouciance. “Whatever. Just waiting for Kali Yug to end so that I’m done with this ‘cleaning the sins of other people’ business,” she shrugged when contacted by The Unreal Times for a quote.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 05:42:17 +0000
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