The Ganges River that dragged down India Escherichia coli exceeded the standard by 200,000 times, threatening the health of hundreds of millions of people
India unveiled the Ganges Action in 1985, a project that aims to launch the world's largest pollution control campaign for a single river, which will cost 10 billion rupees. When the news broke, the whole Western country exploded, with those in favor calling India a "cleaner of the planet" and a "guardian of the environment", while those who opposed it said that so much money simply could not control the pollution of the Ganges for hundreds of years, and that the money was simply a drop in the bucket.
Operation Ganges failed after 15 years, and Indian officials gave four reasons for this.
1: Unallocated funds.
The plan took nine years, from proposal to implementation, and two years of construction was only on paper, and it was not until 1987 that the popularization of science and environmental protection knowledge among coastal residents was carried out. When Slade, the project director, announced his departure in 1992, he said, "We went from 10 billion to 20 billion in budget, but the advertising cost was 5 billion, and it didn't meet the results we expected, and we didn't know that all the money was going."
Abad didn't point this out, but India's ** knows that even the smallest fiscal deficit can make a big difference.
2: Lack of reliable drinking water.
In a complaint, the Environmental Protection and Conservation Organization of India said that 73 cities in India were over-exploited, resulting in a reduction in groundwater depth from -16 in 199835 meters down to -5423 meters, while the water available per person has dropped by nearly 80%. NASA found in 2009 after comparing 6,607 cities in India over the last 30 years"1,071 cities were overdeveloped, and 2,065 cities were overdeveloped"。India's water authorities classify land into four levels, namely "safe", "semi-hazardous", "critical" and "overexploited", while only 8% of the "safe" area is in the foothills of the Himalayas.
Due to the existence of the Ganges, people have a great burden on the scarcity of drinking water, and the rich have access to expensive filtration devices, while the poor need to find raw materials locally. As a result, the Ganges is not only used by local residents for bathing and washing, but also for washing rice and laundry, and as a result, the pollution of the Ganges has become even worse.
3: Uncontrollable release of pollutants.
Industrial pollution has always been the fatal wound of every developing country, and it is like a "dead knot", and India is no exception. Ghaziabad, on the banks of the Ganges, for example, has more than 2 million inhabitants, 14,000 small factories, 145 large factories, and more than 400,000 employees, and claims that only five meet the requirements, only to be slapped in the face: three five-star hotels are compliant, and the remaining two are assembly plants that do not contain any hazardous substances.
In other words, all the factories in Ghaziabad do not meet the requirements of the Ganges, but all kinds of wastewater they discharge are discharged into the river.
In India's seven "holy cities", every factory in Haridwar, like this tannery, discharges black sewage into an inland river and then into the Ganges, emitting a disgusting stench that makes people smell sick, and rats and rats are everywhere in both winter and summer. How much sewage is discharged into the Ganges in India?In 2018, the India Environmental Protection Report explicitly mentioned that "the Ganges is very polluted and sanitation is also inadequate", and that the high-risk and highly polluted water sources put the health of 400 million Indians at risk.
The report tells the world in the form of a chart of the average daily sewage discharge of the Ganges: the 93-meter-tall Lady Liberty is nothing compared to the six billion liters of wastewater per day. According to environmental scientist Armand, the Ganges River is 15 billion to 20 billion litres of sewage per day, as well as 50 to 70 kilometres of non-degradable waste, such as plastic, are estimated by environmental scientist Armand.
4: Managing the Ganges is more important than ecology and life.
There are many reasons for this, but there are probably three main reasons: one is to protect the animals in the Ganges, the second is to ban fishing and sewage discharge, and the third is to contradict religion and culture. But anyone who has eyes will understand how far away it is. A survey of the Ganges River conducted in 1987 showed that there were 350 species so far, and only 143 species remained in 2007, including more than 50% of the Cyprinidae, 23% of the Catfishes, 14% of the Perciformes, and close to 80% in some sections.
That is, the Ganges was so badly destroyed that it is clear from the ecosystem alone: this ferocious carp and catfish will one day become the rulers of the Ganges.
India's protection of Ganges creatures deceived even their compatriots, and according to recorded records, the Frenchman Chris wrote down the results of the Ganges ecosystem in 1828, saying that there were sharks, crocodiles, puffer fishes, turtles, tigers, monkeys, spotted deer, rhinoceros, elephants, and all kinds of animals. But today, the Ganges turtle and the more than 3,000 Ganges dolphins have never appeared again. What kind of "Indian" protection has made this extinct species increasingly scarce and even endangered?I think only India knows it in its own heart.
In 1961, Alabahad had a record of 3,200 tons, including 424 tons of carp, 201 tons of catfish, and 18 tons of black perch, and by 2006, it was close to 100 tons, 38 tons of carp, 40 tons of catfish, and 28 tons of sea bass.
In India, people's needs for life and their needs for the environment are diametrically opposed, because the city's sewer equipment is seriously insufficient, coupled with people's neglect of environmental sanitation, resulting in sewers and washing, washing, cooking, and washing clothes are coexisting. Cities along the Ganges benefit only 16.5 million people, while 400 million people discharge sewage into the river, not to mention the pollutants produced by factories.
The World Health Organization has classified the Ganges as "extreme": the water used for human bathing contains more than 500 Escherichia coli, and the entire water system of the Ganges has exceeded the standard by 120 times in the WHO test, with an average of 60,000, and in some of the larger "holy cities", such as Varanasi and Haridwar, it has reached 100 million, which is 200,000 times the national limit.
Why is the air quality here so poor?
In Indian religion, it is generally believed that "the birth of Shiva, the death of Shiva, the death of the Ganges, is a basic understanding." A Ganges fisherman said to me: Hinduism describes the Ganges as a "holy river" and "Shiva" brought it to earth, so the living should worship "Shiva" and should be buried in the Ganges after death, so that they can become noble people and enjoy more wealth.
This has left India's rivers full of excrement and more people throwing away the garbage in the Ganges, which has made it impossible for India's water-borne diseases to be abandoned, and even in 1817, thousands of dead people were thrown into the Ganges. Even now, pregnant women, lepers, suicides, children bitten by snakes, and even poor worms who cannot afford to buy firewood, are thrown into the Ganges and left to rot. Under such circumstances, how can there be 200,000 times more microorganisms in the Ganges than under normal circumstances?
In 2000, India saw the Ganges Project as a "major failure" of environmental protection that, instead of improving the quality and ecological condition of the Ganges' banks, it discharged more wastewater into the river. Subsequent requests were made to the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, but they only offered assistance in terms of equipment and funds and refused to reconcile on the grounds of religious and cultural contradictions.
But the World Bank has also said that for the Ganges to meet a normal standard, it must continue to draw 3% of India's GDP for a decade, totaling about $800 billion (e.g., 2018 GDP).7 trillion, 3%, that is, 80 billion).
From this it can be seen that the Indians have long discovered a lot of problems, starting from all corners of the city, there is feces everywhere, the streets are full of feces, everywhere there is stinking feces, after the rains, these feces will flow into the Ganges through 32 rivers, thus causing the outbreak of infectious diseases along the Ganges, putting the health of 400 million people at risk, of which 80% of the cases and a third of the deaths are caused by the Ganges.
The Indian state of Uttarakhand listed the Ganges on its territory in 2017 as "legal objects" on an equal footing with humans, hoping to control pollution in coastal areas, but just a month later, the move lasted only a month and declared "no further action" as the population was still unable to get rid of the Ganges bathing and the Ganges' water source, despite knowing that it could lead to 66% of cholera, gastroenterology, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid.
The boatman Wakhand told me that he had been in the fishing business for ten years, mainly to use as a yacht for tourists, and now that there were no fish to eat in the big rivers, most of the fishermen had moved to higher ground. Interestingly, despite the declining production of the Ganges, the Ganges fish fascinated the Indians, who would rather pay ten times as much for the fish to buy the Ganges, and Wakhand would go fishing in his free time, but at the mention of the Ganges fish, he became serious and solemnly warned me that I should never touch it.
Gangesus fish have evolved a rare immunity during their long-term industrial and living environments, giving them some resistance to antibiotics. After eating Ganges fish, ordinary people will experience a series of physiological changes, and diarrhea is only one of the smallest.
Do you think the Ganges will be clean again?"Finally, I put a question to Wakhand, and he lowered his head, seemed to be thinking about something, and then said that without any change, the Ganges would destroy the environment of India, destroy the economy of India, destroy the flesh of Indians.
Looking at the big nets cast by the fishermen, watching the fish being eaten, I suddenly understood that Wakhand was right, that if this continued, the environment and economy of the Ganges, as well as the health of the four billion Indian people, would collapse.