River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's FutureIndia is killing the Ganges, and the Ganges in turn is killing India. The waterway that has nourished more people than any on earth for three millennia is now so polluted with sewage and toxic waste that it has become a menace to human and animal health. Victor Mallet traces the holy river from source to mouth, and from ancient times to the present day, to find that the battle to rescue what is arguably the world's most important river is far from lost. As one Hindu sage told the author in Rishikesh on the banks of the upper Ganges (known to Hindus as the goddess Ganga) - 'If Ganga dies, India dies. If Ganga thrives, India thrives. The lives of 500 million people is no small thing.' Drawing on four years of first-hand reporting and detailed historical and scientific research, Mallet delves into the religious, historical, and biological mysteries of the Ganges, and explains how Hindus can simultaneously revere and abuse their national river. Starting at the Himalayan glacier where the Ganges emerges pure and cold from an icy cave known as the Cow's Mouth and ending in the tiger-infested mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal, Mallet encounters everyone from the naked holy men who worship the river, to the engineers who divert its waters for irrigation, the scientists who study its bacteria, and Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister, who says he wants to save India's mother-river for posterity. Can they succeed in saving the river from catastrophe — or is it too late? |
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Page vii
... Delhi landladies Meher Wilshaw and Rasil Basu for the use of the haven of their house and garden; my ever-dynamic agent Kelly Falconer; the editors and staff at Oxford University Press, including Matt Cotton, Luciana O'Flaherty, Kizzy ...
... Delhi landladies Meher Wilshaw and Rasil Basu for the use of the haven of their house and garden; my ever-dynamic agent Kelly Falconer; the editors and staff at Oxford University Press, including Matt Cotton, Luciana O'Flaherty, Kizzy ...
Page xi
... Delhi after it was sabotaged by protesters in February 2016. Villagers in Gusiyari in the drought-stricken Bundelkhand region carry water home at sunset from the village's only functioning sweet-water well, April 2016. Film poster from ...
... Delhi after it was sabotaged by protesters in February 2016. Villagers in Gusiyari in the drought-stricken Bundelkhand region carry water home at sunset from the village's only functioning sweet-water well, April 2016. Film poster from ...
Page xii
... Delhi, I5 August 2014. 17. On the edge of India. A boy stands on one of the shifting islands of the Sunderbans at the mouth of the Ganges. 18. Three men sleep by the Hooghly River in Calcutta. 19. A woman tends her vegetable patch next ...
... Delhi, I5 August 2014. 17. On the edge of India. A boy stands on one of the shifting islands of the Sunderbans at the mouth of the Ganges. 18. Three men sleep by the Hooghly River in Calcutta. 19. A woman tends her vegetable patch next ...
Page xv
... Delhi almost unnoticed by the mass of its population. In a way, I was right. No one I met knew anything about boats in Delhi, although my interest was further piqued by an old photograph reprinted in the Hindustan Times showing weekend ...
... Delhi almost unnoticed by the mass of its population. In a way, I was right. No one I met knew anything about boats in Delhi, although my interest was further piqued by an old photograph reprinted in the Hindustan Times showing weekend ...
Page xvi
... Delhi's 25 million inhabitants. Okhla, at the downstream end of Delhi, is particularly vile. As the remains of the river churns across the weir, it forms giant heaps of foam. At dawn the surreal heaps of white spume reflect the orange ...
... Delhi's 25 million inhabitants. Okhla, at the downstream end of Delhi, is particularly vile. As the remains of the river churns across the weir, it forms giant heaps of foam. At dawn the surreal heaps of white spume reflect the orange ...
Contents
1 | |
8 | |
Holy Waters | 23 |
How to Build a Megacityand Save the Ganges | 39 |
Varanasi Indias Capital for a Day | 45 |
Varanasi Broken Promises | 63 |
Toxic River | 74 |
Superbug River | 96 |
A Bollywood Star Ganga on Film | 175 |
Exotic River Foreigners on the Ganges | 183 |
Storms and Sandbanks Boats on the Ganges | 198 |
Trade Artery No More Calcutta and Bengal | 207 |
Mission Impossible? How to Clean the Ganges | 229 |
Beautiful Forest Where Ganga Meets the Ocean | 253 |
Notes | 265 |
Bibliography | 296 |
Dolphins Crocodiles and Tigers | 114 |
People Pressure Why Population Growth Is Not a Dividend | 136 |
Water and Wells Why the Taps Run Dry | 149 |
Dams and Droughts Engineering the Ganges | 160 |
Publishers Acknowledgements | 302 |
Picture Acknowledgements | 303 |
Index | 305 |
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Common terms and phrases
Allahabad antibiotic resistance antibiotics Asia August bacteria Bangladesh banks bathe Bay of Bengal Bihar boats British Calcutta canal cent century Chambal cleaning the Ganges climate change culture dams Delhi delta dolphins downstream east effluent environmental Financial fish floods flow Ganga Ganges water Gangetic Gangotri Gaumukh gene gharials ghat glacier goddess groundwater Haridwar heavy metals Himalayas Hindu holy Hooghly human Indus industrial Interview irrigation Kanpur kilometres Kolkata Kolkata Port Trust Kumbh Mela live million Modi's monsoon mouth Mughal Muslim Narendra Modi north India official Pakistan Patna pilgrims pollution population port prime minister problem projects pumping religious resistance river sadhus Sagar Sanskrit Saraswati says September 2016 sewage treatment Shiva Singh Sinha stream Sunderbans tanneries temple Thames tigers tion told town toxic treatment plants tributaries Uma Bharti upper Ganges upstream Uttar Pradesh Varanasi Victor Mallet village waste waterways wildlife Xuanzang Yamuna