This river is still being polluted

The book under review is packed with information about the Ganga Action Plan, but readers are none the wiser at the end of it, says DARRYL D'MONTE.

DIDN'T the poet ask, perennially and pertinently, "Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge?" This book is crammed to the gills with information about the Ganga Action Plan (GAP), replete with tables, maps and voluminous data, but we are none the wiser at the end of it. The truth about the much-vaunted programme is elusive - not unlike the belief that the holy river is impervious to pollution, notwithstanding the millions of gallons of human and industrial filth that pour into it by the hour as its traverses its 2,500-km course. Did the plan launched by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and followed up by her son, Rajiv, succeed to an extent in ridding the river of some of its rubbish? We will never know by reading this book. It is also ungrammatically titled, with a noun instead of a verb.

One can easily apply to economists what Oscar Wilde said about a cynic, a person who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. At the best of times, the "dismal science" is riddled with assumptions which make its prognoses highly dubious. Cost- benefit analyses, on which mega-schemes such as the Sardar Sarovar dam are based, are an even more esoteric practice indulged in by these scientists. The late economist Sudhir Sen once coined the expression that economists were "resource- illiterate". A classic case in point is the valuation of a forest: if it was to be clearfelled for an infrastructure project or dam, an economist would measure the value of its standing timber, rather than value the ecological role of trees in conserving soil and water.

The two authors are economists from the University of Bath and the Institute of Economic Growth respectively and the book is based on a research project funded by the Overseas Development Administration of the British Government through the Ministry of Environment and Forests in Delhi. They claim that this is "the first of its kind in India and probably one of the few studies made abroad using a multi-disciplinary approach ... (it) provides insights into the role of different disciplines of academics in the measurement of benefits from the improved water quality of a major river like the Ganges".

The authors seem to be far too beholden to their sponsors to undertake an independent enquiry of any kind. This is a pity because, by their own admission, "the GAP has been perhaps the largest single attempt to clean up a polluted river anywhere in the world". As for it being a multi-disciplinary study, it does rely, apart from economists, on reputed technical institutes like the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Calcutta and the Industrial Toxicology Research Institute in Lucknow. But the study should surely have employed the services of ecologists and social scientists, who would have endowed it with a more holistic approach.

When it gets into a measurement of "non-user" benefits from the clean-up, the exercise gets quite bizarre. The questionnaire asks: "How much money would you and your family pay per year to enjoy the non-user benefits of a Ganga river (sic) which is a bathing quality throughout?" The respondents are meant to tick off a sum ranging from Rs. zero to Rs. 2,000. The econometric models which ensue with acronyms such as BLOG, CLOG, PLOG or ILOG leave one with a fair taste of the fare dished out in this book.

It is not that economic exercises cannot heighten our understanding of the degradation of the environment. For instance, the studies conducted by the World Bank and Tata Energy Research Institute in Delhi of the proportion of India's GDP lost due to environmental damage - it was around five or six per cent, from memory - surely drive home the point that we simply cannot afford to do nothing to stop environmental destruction.

If one only had to put an economic value to the health disability caused by pollution, the lessons would be clear. With the Ganga, the debilitation caused to the millions of people who bathe and drink the water could surely be computed in a comprehensible manner.

The only respite this reviewer found in the book were the intriguing names of fauna which inhabit this great river. He wondered, for instance, where in the dusty corridors of bureaucracies in Delhi or Mumbai he had come across a "Smooth- coated Indian Otter" who was always giving him the slip when asked for information. And he has more than his fair share of encounters with "Finless Porpoises". But perhaps the prize catch of all, too close to the bone, figures among the riverine bird species: the "Indian Skimmer" who has to review books without reading them too minutely?

Cleaning-up the Ganges: A Cost-benefit Analysis of the Ganga Action Plan, A. Markandya and M. N. Murthy, OUP 2000, p.300, Rs. 595.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : The 'Hind Swaraj' of Indian cricket
Next     : It's blue this summer