Save Ganga Movement: A Gandhian Non-Violent Movement For A Non-Violent Culture Of Development

Abstract

Abstract of the article “A Gandhian Non-violent Movement for a Non-violent Culture of Development” Rejuvenating and preserving the Ganga and its tributaries and their source the Himalayas and the Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery and their source the Western Ghats is absolutely necessary to ensure lasting water, food, air and health security to our masses, and saving our national river Ganga would be a major step in the direction to save all our other great rivers which are also in the process of slow death. We must make the Ganga aviral ensuring adequate environmental flow with sediments in the river throughout the year and adopt throughout our country the policy of zero discharge of treated or untreated sewage, industrial effluents, hospital wastes, etc. into the rivers, and promote in a massive way organic farming, reuse and recycle of wastewater after proper treatment and conversion of sewage into natural manure. The highly earthquake-prone, eco-fragile and ecologically, aesthetically and religiously invaluable Uttarakhand region of the Ganga Basin must be declared “Ecologically Fragile and a Sanctuary for Himalayan Flora and Fauna” and also “our national Spiritual Heritage Zone”, and its rivers “wild rivers”. In the long run, we must make serious efforts to solve the problems of eco-hostile industrialization, urbanization, and population-growth, which constitute the root of our problem of environmental degradation in general and the slow death of our river mothers in particular, by a radical change from our current ideas of development and growth to a Gandhian alternative, which essentially involves retelling the basic ethics of our ancient civilization as well as of all great religions in the context of our technological age, and is the surest and perhaps the only solution to our impending catastrophic global ecological crisis and the problem of our present all pervasive deep rooted moral and spiritual crisis.