NEW DELHI:The NDA government’s move to unveil a new logo for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Clean Ganga Mission has hit a thematic hurdle. The Ministry of Water Resources headed by Uma Bharti—under whose ambit the scheme falls—is stuck in a debate on whether it should be based on the theme of Ganga rejuvenation or Ganga cleaning.
Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Design (NID) has submitted six logos for the mission, but a final decision on choosing one has been pending for the last six months.
The existing logo was devised under the regime of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when he launched the Ganga Action Plan on January 14, 1986. The NDA government feels that the logo needs to be changed as the scheme now focuses on the river’s rejuvenation.
Top ministry officials, however, feel that the focus should be on cleaning the Ganga, and that the logo should be based on that, while Bharti wants rejuvenation to be an integral part of the theme.
The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) had planned to opt for a youthful and meaningful logo. The main reason behind NMCG not being able to decide on a new logo is the confusion over whether the mission is to clean or rejuvenate the holy river.
After the Modi government assumed power in 2014, a huge push had been given to Ganga cleaning and rejuvenation with a budget of Rs 20,000 crore. A year later, the ministry feels that it first needs to focus on cleaning the river; rejuvenation can be done later.
Explaining the need for a new logo, an official said that the current one is difficult to understand and doesn’t connect with the masses in a country where the Ganga is revered as a mother goddess.
Besides NID, ideas were also crowd-sourced to get people’s views. One idea was to depict a lady holding ‘mother earth’ with the Ganga flowing out from the Himalayas. Another plan was to have a Ganga mascot that would attract people, especially children.
“Complicated logos never work and a logo should depict the organisation and its focus. It should have been finalised and launched months ago. We have had the designs for over past six months, but no final call has been taken,” a Ministry of Water Resources official said. The official explained the reasons behind the delay. The NID logos are more about rejuvenation, which was the NDA government’s buzzword when it had announced the massive Ganga cleaning programme.
Another senior official in the ministry said, “In the past few months, several changes have taken place in the ministry. It is now being realised that rejuvenation is a mammoth challenge, and thus NMCG should limit itself first to cleaning the river. This is the primary reason that has led to the delay in finalising a new logo.”
The dilemma is that if NMCG continues with cleaning the Ganga, it will be similar to the decades-old Ganga Action Plan.
“If rejuvenation is not depicted in the logo, what difference will we depict between the old Ganga Action Plan and the new government’s programmes?” the official asked, and added that the Sewage Treatment Plants under the Ganga Action Plan have been doing the same since 1986.
The Union Cabinet has approved Rs 20,000 crore for the next five years for the Namami Gange Programme, which integrates efforts to clean and protect the Ganga in a comprehensive manner.
This is a four-fold increase in the expenditure in the past 30 years, as the government had incurred an overall expenditure of approximately Rs 4,000 crore on this task since 1985.
The Central government has prepared a three-phased—short-term, mid-term and long-term—plan for 18 years to clean the sacred river. It includes steps such as ensuring 100 per cent sewage infrastructure in 118 cities along the Ganga basin at a cost of Rs 51,000 crore, industrial pollution abatement and sand mining guidelines.