‘Congress will drown in intolerance talk … it’s used Rohith, blocked Mumbai water plan … Clean Ganga visible soon’

Uma Bharti is Cabinet Minister for water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation. Speaking with Pratigyan Das, Bharti discussed India’s worryingly low water reservoirs, tackling floods, Ganga pollutants – and Congress on intolerance:

Where do you stand on the current intolerance debate?
This debate will drown the Grand Old Party – if Congress is talking about intolerance, then they must answer on Emergency. Indians haven’t forgotten the atrocities committed by Congress during Emergency.

Congress is taking up issues which will push them to the wall – not us. Do you think people will appreciate a party which supports a person who says in Kashmir, the army is raping women?

What about Rohith Vemula’s suicide – isn’t that serious?
It’s a shame for the country that a Dalit committed suicide. I feel very sorry for his mother – but Rohith didn’t name anybody.

Opposition is playing politics over his death. Such politics won’t pay. People are more concerned about development and jobs.

This became non-serious when opposition blamed Smriti Irani and PM Modi – no one believes a boy committed suicide because of them.

You mention development – isn’t there friction between your ministry and environment ministry on Ganga projects?
Well, we may have differences – but that doesn’t mean we are against each other. It’s wise to share views – discussion doesn’t mean opposition.

My ministry’s views are clear – we are not against hydropower projects. But there must be an ecological flow, which means the flow of rivers should be equal from start to end. Don’t kill the river with projects – if you create a reservoir, you freeze the river basin.

A dam and reservoir will be maximum 100 years – but a river is a million years old!

India’s water reservoirs are at an all-time low – isn’t that a crisis?
It’s a matter of concern – but can be solved. We need water management. For example, Brahmaputra has surplus water, so Arunachal, Assam, etc., face floods. River basin management is the key. My ministry is doing this now. It’ll take five or six years – we need to divert surplus water to areas that face crisis. That’s interlinking of rivers.

Unfortunately, Congress is playing politics over this. It’s creating problems in Damanganga Pinjal and Par Tapi Narmada projects. If Damanganga gets a green signal, Mumbai gets sufficient drinking water till 2060 – but Congress has created ruckus over this.

Outside politics, why don’t we have rain water harvesting?
Tamil Nadu experimented very successfully with this – India should follow it. PM Modi is also very keen on this, having done it successfully as Gujarat CM. Rain water harvesting is the need of the hour – it should be made compulsory.

What are key challenges in Clean Ganga?
The key challenge was to make the whole package successful. Ganga’s pollution has many dimensions – catchment areas, hydropower projects, sewage, industrial waste, pipe leakages, tributaries, etc. Our biggest challenge was to understand these problems, sort them out and then create respective solutions – we learnt lessons from the failures of the last 29 years.

After taking over as minister, the first question Modiji asked me was, why did we fail over these 29 years and how the presentation i’d submitted wouldn’t fail?

I asked him for six months. He liked my new presentation and gave a Cabinet nod for a Clean Ganga task force.

It’s more challenging to clean Ganga than Rhine though. The pollution levels in Murray Darling, Rhine and Thames almost equal Ganga – they took nearly 30 years to clean.

We have just begun.

How can waste continually dumped in Ganga be monitored?
We’ve separated human-generated waste. Results will be visible by October. For industrial waste and sewage, we’ve formulated a totally different approach after learning from earlier failures.

This used to work on the EPC model, resulting in schemes remaining incomplete. Contractors took money, leaving things to local bodies – which didn’t bother.

Now, the Central Pollution Control Board has become very strict. We’re giving crores to monitoring, rural development for cleaning villages nearby and sewage treatment – and the money is being spent in a transparent manner.

But National Green Tribunal notes more slogans, less action on Clean Ganga.
They’re right – so far, this was the story.

But after two years, they won’t be saying the same thing – their views will change.

Courtesy-Times of India