<div>Cleaning up Ganga has been a key election manifesto promise made in 2014 by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Though the Narendra Modi-led government completed more than an year in office, it is still struggling to come up with a concrete plan to clean up the river that swallows millions of tons of industrial waste every day. </div><div> </div><div>According to <em>Economic Times,</em> the government is working on a voluntary self rating scheme for the industry, gram panchayats and ashramas discharging wastes in the river. According to the report, the scheme will link the release of funds from municipality on the basis of the ratings that different bodies have.<br> </div><div>The blue print of the scheme has excited the waste management companies. However, experts remain indifferent to the government’s efforts due to the voluntary nature of the proposed scheme, which according to the newspaper, is in the making, under the title Nirmal Ganga ratings.</div><div> </div><div>Priyavrat Bhati, head of Centre for Science and Environment’s Industry Programme says,”Only those who are not polluting would go for a voluntary pollution rating. Unless and until you impose a low on everyone, why would someone abide by it?”</div><div> </div><div>According to a 2012 Central Pollution Control Board report, successive governments have spent over Rs 20,000 crore on various clean-up projects. The first Ganga clean-up project was announced in 1986 by with an expenditure of over Rs 800 crore in the first phase. The second phase of the project cost the government around Rs 500 crore. However, after three decades since the first Ganga clean- up plan the river is more polluted than ever before.</div><div> </div><div>The NDA government in its first budget had allocated a little over Rs 2,000 crore to the Ganga cleanup plan under the title Manama Ganged. Apart from this, the government plans to spend Rs 20,000 crore over the next five years.</div><div> </div><div>Sameer Rege, CEO of Mailhem Ikos Environment Pvt. Ltd, a waste management company, is excited about the opportunities the proposed voluntary scheme will throw for his company.</div><div> </div><div>“Companies that are serious about having ratings will go for waste management. So far most of the waste management projects came through the municipalities. However, now even the private sector companies would be interested in starting their own projects”</div><div> </div><div>Ganga has largest river basin in India in terms of catchment area, which constitutes 26 per cent of the country’s land mass and supports about 43 per cent of its population.</div>
