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 59
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... industrial zone of Okhla in south Delhi is still called Sailing Club Road—I was surprised to find an immaculately kept building and garden called the Defence Services Sailing Club. Across the lawn, sailing dinghies were stacked neatly ...
... industrial zone of Okhla in south Delhi is still called Sailing Club Road—I was surprised to find an immaculately kept building and garden called the Defence Services Sailing Club. Across the lawn, sailing dinghies were stacked neatly ...
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... industrial waste from greater 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 ...
... industrial waste from greater 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 ...
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... industrial automation to climate change and religious conflicts, it dawned on me that writing about the Ganges from source to mouth would be a good way of telling at least part of the almost impossibly complicated but exciting story of ...
... industrial automation to climate change and religious conflicts, it dawned on me that writing about the Ganges from source to mouth would be a good way of telling at least part of the almost impossibly complicated but exciting story of ...
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... industrial toxins? Is it true that Hindus insist their Ganga is so pure that she cannot be sullied by such pollution? Can the river be saved? In this book I explain that Indians are killing the Ganges with pollution and that the ...
... industrial toxins? Is it true that Hindus insist their Ganga is so pure that she cannot be sullied by such pollution? Can the river be saved? In this book I explain that Indians are killing the Ganges with pollution and that the ...
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... coming of the monsoon in June, the original river is all but exhausted by the time it reaches the industrial town of Kanpur, known to the British as Cawnpore, in Uttar Pradesh. It is only in Allahabad, where it is replenished by.
... coming of the monsoon in June, the original river is all but exhausted by the time it reaches the industrial town of Kanpur, known to the British as Cawnpore, in Uttar Pradesh. It is only in Allahabad, where it is replenished by.
Contents
Holy Waters | |
How to Build a Megacityand Save the Ganges | |
Dolphins Crocodiles and Tigers | |
Why Population Growth Is Not a Dividend | |
Why the Taps Run | |
Engineering the Ganges | |
Ganga on Film | |
Foreigners on the Ganges | |
Boats on the Ganges | |
Calcutta and Bengal | |
Indias Capital for a | |
Broken Promises | |
Toxic River | |
Superbug River | |
Mission Impossible? How to Clean the Ganges | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
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Common terms and phrases
Allahabad antibiotics Asia August bacteria Bangladesh banks bathe Bay of Bengal Bihar boats Bollywood British Calcutta canal cent century Chambal city’s cleaning the Ganges climate change country’s dams decades Delhi delta dolphins downstream east effluent environmental factories 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 Port Trust Kumbh Mela living mangrove million Modi’s monsoon mouth Mughal Muslim Narendra Modi north India official Pakistan Patna pilgrims pollution population prime minister problem projects pumping religious resistance river sadhus Sagar Saraswati says September 2016 sewage treatment Shiva Singh Sinha stream Sunderbans tanneries temple Thames there’s tigers toilets told town toxic treatment plants tributaries Uma Bharti upper Ganges upstream Uttar Pradesh Varanasi Victor Mallet village waste waterways wildlife Xuanzang Yamuna