India to get World Bank support for Ganga River rejuvenation

The World Bank has agreed to provide a loan amount of $400m to the Government of India to enhance support for rejuvenating the Ganga River.

Consisting of a $381m loan and a proposed Guarantee of up to $19m, the total loan amount will enhance support for the government’s Namami Gange programme that seeks to ensure the river turns clean and perennial.

The river is currently facing pressures from human and economic activities that impact its water quality as well as flows.

Untreated domestic wastewater from towns and cities along the river and its tributaries lead to more than 80% of the pollution in the Ganga River.

As part of the Second National Ganga River Basin Project (SNGRBP), pollution in the river can be controlled while strengthening the management of the Ganga Basin.

The ongoing National Ganga River Basin Project helped establish the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) as the nodal agency to manage the river. It also financed sewage treatment infrastructure in several riverside towns and cities.

The National Mission for Clean Ganga was established under the project in addition to creating 1,275 MLD sewage treatment capacity.

Furthermore, 3,632km of sewage network was built under the project.

World Bank Country Director in India Junaid Ahmad said: “The government’s Namami Gange Program has revitalised India’s efforts to rejuvenating the Ganga.

“The first World Bank project helped build critical sewage infrastructure in 20 pollution hotspots along the river, and this project will help scale this up to the tributaries.  It will also help government strengthen the institutions needed to manage a river basin as large and complex as the Ganga Basin.”

To ensure well maintenance of the infrastructure assets, the project will build on the Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM) of public private partnership introduced under the ongoing NGRBP.

The government will pay 40% of the capital cost to a private operator under this model for building a sewage treatment plant. Rest of the amount is paid as performance-linked payments over 15 years to ensure that the operator runs and maintains the plant efficiently.

The Ganga Basin, which includes India’s largest irrigated area, provides over one-third of the country’s surface water. More than 40% of the country’s GDP is generated in the densely populated Basin.

Only Rs18.25bn ($244m) was spent in cleaning the Ganga between 1985 and 2009 in phases of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP). Suresh Prabhu, who served as Union Environment Minister in 1998-99 had implemented phase-II of the plan.