Demand to decommission polluting habitats, industries along Ganga, rehabilitate sufferers

Counterview Desk
An Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) and Indian Indsitute of Management (Kolkata) alumni, Chandra Vikash, convener, Global Academy for Indigenous Activism (GAIA), has in an open letter to Union Minister for River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation Nitin Gadkari sought urgent intervention to save "Mother Ganga and people's livelihoods from the greedy and criminal polluter class", insisting, there should be a "decommissioning of all polluting habitats, industries, and infrastructure in a scientific and phased out manner."
Written on behalf of BK Jha, Gauri Sarin, Nirmala Pandey, and other Ganga activists, the letter wants that those suffering from the "existential and even pathological dependence and addiction" by this tiny polluter class should be appropriately rehabilitated.

Text of the letter:

As Ganga minister, you must be aware that according to various recent studies conducted by IIT Kanpur, IIT Banaras Hindu University, Sankat Mochan Foundation, and feedback from local communities, Ganga Maiya ("jisne Modi ko Varanasi bulaya tha" -- "she summoned me to Banaras") is not only far more polluted, her incessant mutilation by new dams, bridges, and concretization of the river banks (in the name of cosmetic beautification), our Divine Mother is in poor health, anemic with the emaciated and constricted water flows and dying.
We need to attend and take care of her just as we would take care of our birth-giving mother, who bears us for nine months in her womb and nurtures us as infants with her milk.
But just as only diseased or monstrous children would eat away the breasts of their feeding mother rather than suckling on her breasts, modern greedy and diseased industrialized humans are behaving like those diseased and monstrous children. Interlinking of Mother Ganga and other rivers is like interlinking your intestine with your arteries.
Most ironical is that these sick people, in their delusion, call this cancerous disease as Development and claim a moral authority to spread it all around. Many of such sick people like Modi are unaware that school children and youth world over led by 16-year old environment activist Greta Thunberg are calling their lies and cheating of the younger generation and sending them to panic and nervous breakdown.
Millions of protesters in a large number of countries from Britain to Australia, China, Russia, Japan and Africa, the Americas and Canada are protesting against this monstrosity and even courting arrests in large numbers. It is likely that if this outrage of the school children and youth is not duly addressed, this could spill over as planned pogrom of the Polluter Class.
The National Green Tribunal in its recent statement has raised alarms that Prayagraj faces epidemics due to the pollution and sewage left behind by the ill-conceived "Divya" Kumbh Mela in gross violation to the indigenous cultural and spiritual traditions.
In this context, we must all salute the fasting Sant Brahmachari Atmabodhanand (26-year old youth from Kerala) who has taken a sankalp (pledge) to leave even water (jal tyag) from May 2, 2019, after more than 180 days of having quit food. He is absolutely right in all his demands and concerns as shared in his recent letter to Modi -- who has no time to visit Matri Sadan, as he is busy with narcissistic interviews to sycophants like Akshay Kumar on whether he likes mangoes or not.
According to him, even as Modi has been a disastrous failure in creating the 5 crore jobs that he promised, 2-times more indigenous livelihoods have been already or are in the process of being destroyed. This is due to the state-sponsored loot, plunder, daylight robbery (by terrorizing the indigenous people and communities who protest or even raise a voice) of the natural resources in the Ganga basin and the culture and civilization that it has been nurturing since at least thousands of years of our known and validated history.
We, Ganga activists, strongly appeal to you to firstly acknowledge that pollution (including dams, bridges and concretisation of river banks etc. that impede the free-flow or Aviralta of the river in all its majestic glory) of all kinds is a social hazard that loots and plunders the natural resources that belong to the indigenous people and communities and siphons them away to a few and shrinking numbers of greedy and immoral hoarders as fiat money in their banks controlled by them.

Swami Atmabodhanand

Next is to acknowledge that the "Ulti Ganga" (flowing in opposite direction) by which these greedy and immoral hoarders -- the polluter class -- are given social recognition and status must be immediately reversed and they must be criminalized according to the volume of their crime and their current social status - higher the status, greater the punishment for the same crime.
On humanitarian grounds, however, we, Ganga activists, acknowledge that a large number of people have been trapped into an existential and even pathological dependence and addiction by the tiny polluter class. To ensure a safe passage for them, the decommissioning of all polluting habitats, industries, and infrastructure, must be done in a scientific and phased out manner.
Accordingly, based on our rich cultural heritage of living in harmony with nature and taking cognizance of the depleted state of our natural resources, we must set up an elaborate network of Resettlement & Rehabilitation Habitats (RRH) around the country, where the sick and diseased people can be treated and cured to good health and vitality.
To restore the indigenous livelihoods, similarly, we need an elaborate network of Social & Cultural Entrepreneurship Academies (SEA) to be set up around the country and neighboring regions in every village, town, and city based on natural and indigenous principles and the geo-climatic conditions.