Nuanced interventions, not bureaucratic silos, will help to clean the Ganga | The Indian Express

Nuanced interventions, not bureaucratic silos, will help to clean the Ganga | The Indian Express

Written by Sowmiya Ashok |Updated: May 18, 2019 10:21:22 am

Sowmiya Ashok is an Assistant Editor at The Indian Express. She reports on politics and the environment. She tweets @sowmiyashok

Nuanced interventions, not bureaucratic silos, will help to clean the Ganga

The cleanliness of the river on the ground is driven by engineering. This does not consider the health of the worker, the health of the river from an environmental standpoint or ensuring that the processes in place work smoothly. 

For those men from Bihar, tasked to smash a wall inside a drain, it was wages that would pay for a child’s tuition, a parent’s ailment. (File)

In November last year, three men from Bihar entered a drain in Varanasi. They were promised Rs 5,000 each, quick income in time for their visit home for Chhath Puja. Within the hour, two of them fainted and died from the noxious gases. Their cousin, who escaped with a broken leg, told me that they were daily wagers who worked only on construction sites. They were not equipped to enter drains.