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 36
Page xvii
... kilometres to the north. 'There was a lake here that's been filled in', he said. 'Ganga water.' The Ganges has a numinous presence even in far-away England. During my research, I stumbled across the curious story of how Ganges water was ...
... kilometres to the north. 'There was a lake here that's been filled in', he said. 'Ganga water.' The Ganges has a numinous presence even in far-away England. During my research, I stumbled across the curious story of how Ganges water was ...
Page 2
... kilometres across north India from the mountainous haunts of the snow leopard to the mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal and their man-eating tigers. This glacier is where it all starts: the water emerging from the ice is unfettered by ...
... kilometres across north India from the mountainous haunts of the snow leopard to the mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal and their man-eating tigers. This glacier is where it all starts: the water emerging from the ice is unfettered by ...
Page 3
... kilometres, and in places the sediment is over a kilometre deep, forming a vast store of fertility for rice, wheat, and other crops as well as one of the world's biggest reservoirs of groundwater. North India is already extraordinarily ...
... kilometres, and in places the sediment is over a kilometre deep, forming a vast store of fertility for rice, wheat, and other crops as well as one of the world's biggest reservoirs of groundwater. North India is already extraordinarily ...
Page 4
... kilometres from source to mouth. River measurements are complicated because of arguments over the 'true'source of a river and the way one accounts for different tributaries, but some Indian researchers say it is only the twentieth ...
... kilometres from source to mouth. River measurements are complicated because of arguments over the 'true'source of a river and the way one accounts for different tributaries, but some Indian researchers say it is only the twentieth ...
Page 5
... kilometres, in a single season. Over decades and centuries, it has wandered much further.The same is true of most of its tributaries, including the Yamuna and the Brahmaputra. One reason is INTRODUCTION: KILLING THE MOTHER GO DDESS S.
... kilometres, in a single season. Over decades and centuries, it has wandered much further.The same is true of most of its tributaries, including the Yamuna and the Brahmaputra. One reason is INTRODUCTION: KILLING THE MOTHER GO DDESS S.
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