Back in 2014, earlier than the launch of the Namami Gange program, Mishra sat with Modi to debate his hopes to wash the Ganges. Mishra’s basis has since offered its personal proposals for remedy tasks, however has been ignored. The Pollution Control Board and state authorities dispute the inspiration’s information; Mishra, in the meantime, says that the federal government’s figures, that are averages of samples taken from throughout the width of the river, don’t mirror the fact skilled by bathers on the ghats, the place sewers discharge into the Ganges and the water is slower. “They will never recognize our laboratory because they know that it will be a big trouble for them. But we have all the data since 1993.”

Mishra additionally claims that industrial pursuits are stopping the federal government from taking much more decisive motion to chop air pollution. “Ganga happens to be a very fertile cow. So, everybody’s milking in the name of Ganga,” he says. (Allegations of corruption have plagued India’s many Ganges cleanup campaigns, though Mishra didn’t share any particular proof of corruption. India’s Ministry of Jal Shakti, or water ministry, didn’t reply to WIRED’s requests for remark.)

Most politicians and engineers in India, when requested, will let you know {that a} completely pure Ganges, of the kind that Mishra is aiming for, is nearly actually inconceivable. (“Religious people don’t follow logic,” SK Barman, a mission supervisor for the state water firm’s Ganga Pollution Prevention Unit, advised me. “We have to achieve salvation somehow. Moksha, moksha, moksha.”) But in driving the dialog, it’s additionally clear that with out Mishra and the numerous different environmental activists throughout India campaigning for the Ganges restoration, the difficulty could be worse.

A yr since I used to be final in Varanasi, it’s clear that India’s sanitation drive continues to be removed from the place the federal government’s narrative would have the general public consider. According to a public data request by the Indian information group Down to Earth, in 2023, 71 % of the Ganges’ river monitoring stations have been reporting “alarmingly high” ranges of fecal coliform micro organism. Over 66 % of drains within the state of Uttar Pradesh, the place Varanasi sits, nonetheless empty into the Ganges and its tributaries.

There is little question that the Namami Gange mission has made progress, and never simply within the variety of bathrooms put in and remedy crops made operational. Nearly each member of the general public I spoke to in India—in Varanasi, Kanpur, and in New Delhi—confirmed that anecdotally, air pollution points are enhancing. It wasn’t that way back that lifeless our bodies could be often discovered within the river, and sewage within the wet season flowed up onto the ghats. Today, there are elevated sightings of aquatic life, such because the Ganges river dolphin.

And at 2022’s state elections, Modi’s BJP celebration remained in energy—a major signal forward of 2024’s presidential election. In March 2023, Modi’s authorities confirmed Namami Gange Mission II, a further $2.56 billion of expenditure on increasing this system and persevering with to finish already commissioned infrastructure.

As for Mishra and the opposite activists advocating for a clear holy river, their marketing campaign continues, irrespective of how unpopular it makes him with the federal government and Modi-leaning press. “I have heard, ‘Why? Why don’t you say the Ganga is clean?’ Mishra says. “I cannot say that. We are totally committed to the Ganga, and we cannot mislead people. For me, the Ganga is the medium of my life.”

It’s a holy mission, I say.

“It’s a holy mission, and it’s a scientific mission.”

This article seems within the January/February 2024 difficulty of WIRED UK journal.