How Varanasi Can Clean Ganga And Revive A Broken City

Varanasi is a city where, in Pankaj Mishra's words, people come either ritually to dissolve their accumulated 'sins' in the Ganges, or simply to die and achieve liberation from the cycle of rebirths. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes in an “uncompromising mission-mode approach” to cleanse river Ganga. Today, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi visited Varanasi. According to the agreement between the Indian and Japanese government, Kyoto will assist Varanasi tackling traffic congestion, inadequate sanitation and dilapidated infrastructure while preserving its heritage. But, are such vague slogans enough clean Ganga and revive a broken city?

In Varanasi where 30,000 bodies are cremated every year, most dead bodies are cremated on wood pyres. This is not because Benares does not have an electric crematorium, but because it is not functional. Millions of people die every year from wood smoke, most of them in India and China. 

In Ganga, 300 million liters of sewage is dumped every day. This is because Varanasi does not treat three-fourth of the sewage it produces. The rest if dumped into the river. The mission to clean Ganga has a long history, and these efforts were often met with failure. In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi offered $ 200 million to clean Ganga. Though many sewage treatment plants were built, they had to be shut down because they were poorly maintained. The waste in the city grew while the treatment plants built over the course of the next three decades became defunct for some reason or the other. Why did such attempts fail in the past? Why is Benares not as successful as Kyoto in building a modern city while preserving its heritage?

There is much debate on whether cities should preserve their heritage. But, even if we admit that a city's ancient heritage is worth preserving, it is clear that these measures are not working. One reason is that when government funds such projects to clean rivers and cities, politicians and bureaucrats use the opportunity to the hilt. But, when the sewage treatment plans are built, for instance, they no longer have an incentive to persist in their attempts to clean the city and the river.

As Swaminathan Aiyar once pointed out, when state governments and urban local authorities are strapped for money, they cut down expenses by cut down the spending on maintenance of such utilities.  Swaminathan Aiyar proposed handing over the cleaning of the river to religious groups and foundations. As people are quite willing to work for a mission in name of their religious beliefs, religious groups are likely to succeed where the governments failed.

Benares, of course, needs more than cleaning Ganga to be a prosperous city. Varanasi needs more mixed use projects and dense developments. The city needs better water supply and sewage system. Benares needs a ring road, wider and more interconnected road networks. In all these aspects, Benares has much to learn from Kyoto. Kyoto has nearly 2000 ancient temples and shrines. Kyoto, even while allowing high-rises, did not allow tall buildings in a way that they will overshadow temples and other heritage structures. This means that regardless of the merits of historic preservation, it is quite possible for a city to become world class while preserving ancient structures.