Residents turn 'whistleblowers' to save Ganga

VARANASI: When the world was celebrating Earth Day on Sunday with a commitment to save the planet, a small group of locals, both adults and minors, adopted the role of 'whistleblowers' and took a novel initiative to stop pollution. With handmade cotton bags in hands and blowing whistles, they assembled on the Harishchandra Ghat, the place named after King Harishchandra whose ancestor Bhagirath brought the holy Ganga from the Heaven to Earth as per Hindu mythology.This band of whistleblowers not only collected wastes thrown along the bank and in the river in bags but also warned other people present there not to pollute the Ganga by blowing whistle.
The bags filled with wastes were emptied in the nearby waste bins of the Varanasi Nagar Nigam. From Harishchandra Ghat, the group moved towards Dasaswamedh Ghat, drawing attention of the people and distributing cotton bags and whistles with an appeal to blow whistle if they saw someone polluting the river and to collect at least one kg of waste from the ghats.
"It is a modest initiative in the beginning, but it is a practical approach to save the river from pollutants thrown into it every day," believed former Central Information Commissioner OP Kejriwal, who led the whistleblower campaign. According to him, the whistleblower campaign launched under the banner of Mukti Mahasangh, a federation of social organisations, will be a daily phenomenon. The volunteers will spend 90 minutes along the ghats every day in the morning and evening.
"The day when the number of waste removers will be more than the waste throwers, the Ganga will become clean," opined Kejriwal, adding that it was wrong to curse the government for river pollution. Rather, every individual would have to play a role in the Ganga cleaning work.
Rajiv Srivastava of Vishal Bharat Sansthan said the municipal sewage should not be discharged into the Ganga. "We pay sewage tax not for dumping the sewage into the Ganga. The municipal authorities should think seriously about it and divert the sewer and drains away from the Ganga," he said. The wastewater could be used in irrigation after treatment instead of being discharging it into the river, he pointed out.
The social organisations associated with the federation will also begin the whistleblower campaign at other places including Ghazipur, Chandauli and Mirzapur.