Express Focus -- ENVIRONMENT -- by Indian Express

There’s a nasty surprise in store for the 40 million people who will congregate for the holy dip in Ganga during the eight-week-long Maha Kumbh Mela: the waters of the Ganga and its tributaries are still unfit for bathing. The Ganga Action Plan (GAP), launched in 1985 with great fanfare, with the objective of bringing water quality of the river to bathing levels, is far from reaching its objectives, despite a total expenditure of Rs 901.71 crore over a period of 15 years.In a scathing review of the GAP, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found that the GAP has met only 39 per cent of its primary target of sewage treatment, according to the performance reported by the participating states. Phase I of the GAP was to intercept, divert and treat 882 million litres per day (mld) of waste water, generated in 25 Class-I towns in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, and was scheduled to be completed by March, 1990.However, the National River Conservation Authority (NRCA) which was set up to oversee the implementation of the plan, extended it progressively up to March, 2000.

Meanwhile, it was also decided to approve and launch Phase II, in various stages during April 1993 to October 1996, which extended to the states of Bihar, UP, Haryana, West Bengal and Delhi, which envisaged treating 1,912 mld of sewage, and was scheduled for completion by December 2001.

The performance, however, of the Centre and participating states has been dismal. According to CAG, Phase I of the plan is not yet fully complete even after a delay of 10 years while Phase II is also far behind its schedule with the creation of only 13.7 per cent of the targeted sewage treatment capacity so far.

Typically, there is a bloated organisational structure manned by hundreds of politicians and bureaucrats to oversee and implement the GAP — the NRCA with the prime minister, union ministers and MPs, a standing committee to review progress comprising of the environment minister, Planning Commission, member secretary and project director, a steering committee for fund allocation and programme formulation with chief secretaries, representatives of central ministries, specialised organisations; a monitoring committee, the NRC Directorate, concerned state governments, central government departments and state agencies — all of which are responsible for the 10 year delay.The monitoring mechanism of the GAP, both at the central level and state, was nothing short of inadequate and nobody, from the PM downwards is blameless.

The NRCA, the apex body, which is headed by the PM, has met only twice, in 1994 and 1997. None of the bodies constituted like the NRC Directorate, was able to show any recorded evidence of the results of field visits, review meetings with implementing agencies, and follow-up actions, as enjoined upon it by the cleaning operation.

Worse, the environment ministry discontinued the water quality monitoring, a key instrument for technical assessment of the success of the plan, since September, 1999, reportedly due to fund restraints. Neither has the ministry taken action on the recommendations of an expert committee for control of bacterial load and the objective of reducing the load to desired levels remains to be achieved.There’s more.

Only about 45 per cent of the grossly polluting industrial units along the Ganga had installed effluent treatment plants, and over 18 per cent of them did not function properly nor did they meet technical standards.While the financial outlays for for Phase I were to be borne entirely by the Central Government (Rs 462.04 crore), and to share it equally with the states in Phase II (Rs 1276.25 crore), the Centre decided in November, 1998, to bear the entire expenditure on schemes from April, 1997, as the states found it difficult to provide their matching share.

The CAG audit revealed that implementing agencies in UP, Bihar and West Bengal, diverted Rs 36.07 crore on establishment, purchase of vehicles, computers, custom duty, xerox machines, all of which were not covered under the programme. Excess reporting of funds to the tune of Rs 6.75 crore was put on the GAP by agencies in Haryana and UP, while an unutilised balance of Rs 71 crore were lying with the implementing agencies due to the tardy progress of work.
The CAG found that the states’ achievement in the treatment of sewage under GAP was grossly underestimated as there was no mechanism to evaluate and check the estimations of sewage by states. The core sector schemes are designed to tackle ‘‘point pollution’’ that is pollution which is from measurable sources like drains, sewage pumping stations and sewage systems.

For instance, the sewage estimation of 70 mld in Noida town of UP was incorrect as it did not include the sewage of Shahadra drain which discharges 404 mld sewage in the river Yamuna, a tributary of the Ganga, at Okhla Barrage. The estimate of 200 mld sewage in Varanasi did not include 50 mld sewage by-passed into the river Varuna, which finally meets the river Ganga.In the non-core schemes which comprise low cost sanitation schemes, river front development, electric crematoria, dumping of solid waste and open defectaion, there were some outrageous lapses. For instance, the CAG discovered that the Bihar Rajya Jal Parshad, constructed 40 community toilets for Rs 1.09 crore in nine towns in the campuses of government/semi-government/private institutions, in complete violation of the GAP guidelines that toilets should be made in substitution of those contributing sewage pollution to the river. In Haryana, the Yamuna Action Plan allowed the construction of two bathing ghats in Yamunangar at a cost of Rs 72.64 lakh, but could not be put to public use because the design and site were defective.

In short, the audit observed, the NRC Directorate has failed to provide any satisfactory recorded evidence that it discharged its coordinating and monitoring functions vis-a-vis the participating states and the implementing agencies.