Some allegations have been made that GAP officials have concocted data. A C Shukla of the botany department of Kanpur University contends water quality data forwarded by different government agencies showed considerable variance and this is evidence of their "unreliability". S K Mishra of the Sankat Mochan Foundation at Varanasi, who is an associate professor of hydraulic engineering at Benaras Hindu University, even accused pollution control board officials of "fudging" data because monitoring by the foundation's own laboratory -- Swatcha Ganga Laboratory -- showed much higher pollution levels in the Ganga than the government's figures. For instance, government figures show the dissolved oxygen level -- the higher the level, the cleaner the water -- upstream of Varanasi has risen from 5.6 mg/litre in 1986 to 7.5 mg/litre in May this year, while, the DO level downstream rose from 5.9 mg/litre in 1986 to 7.2 mg/litre in May.

Foundation figures based on samples collected from eight sites in Varanasi show DO levels in May never rose above 6.5 and were as low as 2.5 mg/litre in some places.

K J Nath, director of the Calcutta-based All India Institute of Public Health and Hygiene which monitors the health of riverside residents, said it is not possible to quantify GAP's impact on health. "Water- borne and water-washed diseases are the main cause for illness in these areas and some of them, like skin and eye diseases, have shown an upward trend during 1985 and 1989." Similarly, the incidence of diarrhoea in Varanasi has increased but other ailments showed a downward trend during the same period. Nath commented, "We do not have evidences to show that either the increase or the decrease is due to the GAP."

Long-term prospects
Three major doubts are being expressed about the programme's prospects of success. The first queries whether state and municipal officials can maintain and operate Ganga clear-up schemes on their own and using their own resources. The GPD estimates a minimum of Rs 13 crore will be required annually for this purpose, but unofficial figures set the total at around Rs 25 crore. And, a senior GPD official coutioned, the cost of maintenance will shoot up with each passing year. The second area of doubt is indiscipline among both people and officials in the use of facilities. Sewage can be pumped into sewage treatment plants, but in most municipalities, sewage -- much of it solid garbage -- is dumped down manholes even in sewers still being built. In some cases government officials and operators of plants and pumps have been caught damaging them deliberately so they can make some money on repairs. The third area of concern is rapid urbanisation as the assets being created are linked to the needs of the urban population, currently living along the river.

But what will happen as these cities grow? Even Bagchi of CMDA expressed concern about maintenance costs, saying, "When all the facilities are in place, it will require about Rs 10 crore per year in West Bengal alone to run them. I am not convinced that the state government and municipal agencies have this kind of money." GPD officials concede the response so for from state governments has been dismal. "We have been able to create all these facilities only because it is a totally Central sector programme, but now that the states have to maintain them, they are developing cold feet," said a senior GPD official, who asked not to be named.

Dipankar Chakravarty, professor of environmental science Jadavpur University, put the blame squarely on GAP itself. "Isn't the GPD aware of the resource crunch? Don't they know that we cannot afford electrical-mechanical schemes that are so energy intensive? I think from the very beginning, no one was serious about running these schemes," he said citing the case of the bheri(fish farm) at Mudiali, where city sewage is treated by exposing it to sunlight and lime, which reduces BOD to tolerable levels. The treated sewage is then used for fish farming, which employs about 250 families.

R K Mehrotra of Allahabad Municipal Corporation says it would be difficult to operate the treatment plants even if the funds are available because "in summer most of these cities are subjected to loadshedding and then the sewage has to be released in the river untreated. There is no alternative as long as the power crisis continues." Operators at a municipal sewage treatment plant near Jajmau, an industrial suburb of Kanpur, admitted they were discharging untreated water into the Ganga for upto seven each day because of power cuts. They had a generator but it was powerful enough only to open riverside gates, but not to operate the Sewage treatment plant.

There are also pockets which suffer from faulty planning as, for example, in Kanpur, where the pumping station at Sheesamau has been lying idle because bad alignment has made it impossible for gravity sewers to carry water to it. Raghunath Singh Trivedi of the nagar mahapalika contended untreated water is still into the river because of a "problem," but an expert committee is reviewing this problem which is not limited to just one pumping station but to the entire stretch of the river along the city. Vinay Shankar most of the untreated sewage is being diverted and discharged into the river, downstream of the city. But Shankar noted GAP's objective is only to intercept the waste water that flows into the existing sewers. But the quality of water in Kanpur and Varanasi indicates that because a large portion of these cities are unsewered, effluents simply stream into the river. This is particularly true of slum colonies and of those agricultural lands on the fringes of these cities that have been colonised recently and without proper government approval.

GAP's critics argue that these problems arose because the authorities did not pay any attention to planning, especally to planning underground sewers, because sewage treatment plans can work only if the sewers remain unclogged. "This is asking for too much because we all know that this cannot be done," commented Mishra. "And, if this cannot be achieved, the whole plan runs aground."

B L Gupta, works manager of UP Jal Nigam in Allahabad, which is doing most of the sewer laying work, contended people were dumping garbage into sewer inlets and manholes because municipalities no longer bother about regular garbage collection. Even dead animals he added, are found in sewers and in Jajmau, where extensive sewer-laying is being done in worker colonies, many of the new sewers can be seen literally choked with garbage.

But this pivotal emphasis on sewers also means it is difficult to replicate the GAP experience elsewhere because "none of the Indian cities is fully sewered, leave alone the fact that existing sewers don't work," says G D Agarwal, former member-secretary of the Central Pollution Control Board. Agarwal contended the critical role of pumps in these schemes is a problem because of frequent breakdowns, which means untreated water is flushed into the river. So important is the role of pumps, the Ganga projects founder-director, K C Sivaramakrishnan, described it as a "pumps- and-pipes scheme."

But M C Mehta, a Supreme Court lawyer who specialises in environmental cases, commented aunstically that the only beneficiaries of the pumps-and-pipes scheme are the suppliers and the officials who award the contracts. "There schemes are like milch cows. Not only do the officials make money on construction, there is a lot of money to be made every year on maintenance," he said.

Urban solid waste is another problem for the river. A major portion of this waste emanates from the large number of small industries located in urban pockets. Chakravarty pointed out that many of the large units may have set up treatment plants, but they continue to contribute to Ganga pollution because they subcontract their "dirty work" to small units. "It is cheaper and it helps the big unit look clean, but the river gets hurt," he said.

However, GAP's major shortcoming is the lack of provision in it to tackle urban growth. Sewage treatment plants, for example, are just not designed to tackle the extra sewage that will be generated during the next decade. In Varanasi, for instance, even as Ganga clean-up work is going on, a World Bank-aided drinking water project is coming up that will add another 100 mld to the city's sewage. But there is no provision to deal with this extra load in GAP's Varanasi segment and so, the water will flow untreated into the river. Cities along the Ganga are all expanding rapidly but their officials give little thought to civic infrastructure, which these municipal bodies would not be able to set up in any case because they are impoverished. In April, for instance, Kanpur Nagar Mahapalika had to suspend all work temporarily, for lack of funds.

GAP also suffers because of pressure from groups like land developers who circumvent the system to protect their vested interests. A Varanasi land-developer, it is said obstructed the Assi drain intended to be one of the main carriers of the city's sewage.

All these are some of the fundamental problems facing GAP, convincing critices like Chakravarty that the whole concept of a centralised treatment facility is impractical in India. "We know that sewage farms are working well wherever they have been started and so we should have settled for similar low cost, self-sustainable systems. But more than cleaning the river, the government wanted GAP to be grandiose and spectacular -- and that is what it has become," said Chakravarty.

Replicating GAP
Can GAP be a model for cleaning up other rivers in the country? "Of course," responded Vinay Shankar, although be conceded it would not work if sewers are logged and pumps fail to function or if the scheme caters only to sewered areas. "Once the sewage treatment plants are operational, we are sure everything will be all right," he said. But others say the faecal coliform count was not likely to drop, because it would not be possible to control it under GAP.

The Central Ganga Authority, which is chaired by the prime minister, is to meet shortly to clear GAP's second phase, which seeks to divert and clean up the main tributaries of the Ganga -- Yamuna, Hindon, Gomti and Damodar -- in addition to dealing with the remaining 500 mld waste-water from the Ganga. While there is a flurry Pariavaran Bhavan over the impending meetings, there are many like Raghunath Singh and Mehta who want GAP evaluated before more money is sanctioned. "Once they get the money for the second phase, the colossal waste in the first phase entailed will be forgotten," said Mehta.

Agarwal, with somewhat similar views, argued the very idea of water-based conveyance of sewage for treatment is impractical in India because of the high costs involved. "It is just compounding the problem," he said. The sewage, pointed out, is merely carried a long distance, then treated with high-energy inputs and, after all this, there is still the solid waste to be disposed. "Why can't we think of a dry disposal system, instead?" he asked.

Dry disposal would be more effective, but it would require much more disciplined consumption of water by the urban rich. Said Agarwal, "The Ganga will remain dirty as long as wasteful urban lifestyles continue to be subsidised." But the government seems to be little inclined to enforce sanitation discipline on the urban population.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment and Forests has submitted a National River Action Plan to the Planning Commission for inclusion in the Eighth Five- Year Plan allocations. The plan seeks to clean up 22 of India's most polluted rivers. Which raises the question : can the country afford a project that could well result in replicating GAP's mistakes?