The first Prime Minister of India, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Once had said that from her source to the sea, from old times to new, the Ganga is the story of India’s civilisation.
Now, the sunonumous of Indian civilization, the Holy River Ganga, is literally dying because of the water pollution, over-extraction of water, wasted tributaries and climatic changes are killing the mighty river.
This river may be called as the lifeline for the people living in more than five states in North India.
Conservation group WWF made this grim projection that the Ganga, Indus, Nile and Yangtze are among the ten most dying out rivers of the world.
The Ganga River basin covers almost a third of India’s land area. But the condition of the river has become worse because of continuous indiscriminate extraction of water with modern tube wells from the river. The damming of its tributaries for irrigation is also reducing its flow to a dangerous level.
The climatic change poses another threat to the life of the Holy River. Sejal Worah WWF program director said that Glaciers account for as 30 to 40% of water in the Ganga and this goes up to 70-80% in the case of Indus. And the serious threat to the rivers that these glaciers are melting day by day and reducing the flow of the rivers.
This is not a threat only to Human but to several other species live in the Ganga due to the continuous degeneration. The river is home to more than 140 fish species, 90 amphibian species and the endangered Ganga river dolphin.
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