Namami Gange Shows Tangible Results: Nearly 50 Per Cent Of Ganga Has "Very High Biodiversity Levels"

The Narendra Modi government had introduced the Namami Gange programme, aimed at making the Ganga nirmal and aviral, in 2015. Five years later, there are signs that the effort has yielded some tangible results.

One of the “main pillars” of the programme listed on its website is biodiversity.

The basin of Ganga is India’s richest basin in terms of fish species — a study conducted by the the Zoological Survey of India in 1991 put the number at 375.

Over the years, the increasing pollution in India’s holiest river made the survival of aquatic life difficult. In 1996, the iconic Gangetic Dolphin (Platanista gangetica gangetica), called ‘Tiger of the Ganges’, was categorised as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The number of Dolphins in the Ganga in the early 19th century was around 10,000. This came down to 3,526 by early 2000. The species, India’s national aquatic animal, had disappeared entirely in Haridwar and most of the Yamuna.

Now, five years after the launch of the mission, a survey of Ganga conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has found that 49 per cent of the river has “very high biodiversity levels” and the sightings of biodiversity indicators, such as the Gangetic Dolphin and Otters, have increased over the last few years.

Six stretches of the river with high biodiversity levels have been identified by the WII in the study as Devprayag to Rishikesh (61 kilometer) in Uttarakhand, Makdumpur to Narora (147 km) and Bhitaura to Ghazipur (454 km) in Uttar Pradesh, Chhapra to Kahalgaon (296 km) in Bihar, Sahibganj to Rajmahal (34 km) in Jharkhand and Baharampur to Barackpore (246 km) in West Bengal.

#NamamiGange #Biodiversity

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