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? |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 90
Page xi
... banks of the Ganges at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad in 2013, arguably the largest gathering of humans in history. 8. Varanasi on the Ganges at dawn. IO. II. I2. I3. I4. IS. Boatmen row their craft along the foamy and polluted Yamuna ...
... banks of the Ganges at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad in 2013, arguably the largest gathering of humans in history. 8. Varanasi on the Ganges at dawn. IO. II. I2. I3. I4. IS. Boatmen row their craft along the foamy and polluted Yamuna ...
Page xv
... bank —WWF2 This book began by accident. Within two days of arriving with my family to live in Delhi during the monsoon of 2012, I noticed a baffling but enticing symbol in the map book kept in the door of the car: next to the Yamuna ...
... bank —WWF2 This book began by accident. Within two days of arriving with my family to live in Delhi during the monsoon of 2012, I noticed a baffling but enticing symbol in the map book kept in the door of the car: next to the Yamuna ...
Page xvi
... banks, the cheerful god Krishna would play his flute amid a troupe of adoring gopis, the female cowherds who attend him. The blue god would be wise to avoid the place today. Almost all the Yamuna's water is diverted above Delhi for ...
... banks, the cheerful god Krishna would play his flute amid a troupe of adoring gopis, the female cowherds who attend him. The blue god would be wise to avoid the place today. Almost all the Yamuna's water is diverted above Delhi for ...
Page xviii
... banks are great cities, some living, others ruined and abandoned, that have been there for thousands of years and date back to the era when India was the world's largest economy, greater than China or the Roman Empire and three times ...
... banks are great cities, some living, others ruined and abandoned, that have been there for thousands of years and date back to the era when India was the world's largest economy, greater than China or the Roman Empire and three times ...
Page xix
... banks and ultimately of attaining the open sea with all its possibilities. Nor is it even true that the Ganges becomes steadily dirtier the furtherit flows; the varied nature and volume of the water added by its tributaries—notably the ...
... banks and ultimately of attaining the open sea with all its possibilities. Nor is it even true that the Ganges becomes steadily dirtier the furtherit flows; the varied nature and volume of the water added by its tributaries—notably the ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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