Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to prefer and respect silence, he has been very vocal about the pollution of the Ganga. On November 1, 2010, while chairing a meeting of National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), the PM expressed his desire to see not only a clean (Nirmal Dhara) Ganga but also a continuously flowing (Aviral Dhara) Ganga. At least 30 members present agreed and vowed to work towards fulfilling his dream. Three years later and approximately Rs 2,600 crore of taxpayers’ money down the drain, the tall promise of turning sewage water into a pollution free flow remains just wishful thinking.
NGRBA was raised in February 2009 with the PM as its chairman to ensure conservation of the country’s longest river and to maintain its natural flow through comprehensive planning. However, the authority met only thrice in four years. Apart from PM, other prominent members of the authority include Harish Rawat, Minister of Water Resources, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister for Power, Kamal Nath Minister for Urban Development, Jayanthi Natarajan, Minister for Environment & Forests, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Chief Ministers of Uttarakhand, Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, West Bengal and seven environment experts.