The second interesting solution to address the polluted Ganges mentioned in the VICE video is that the river was given a status of personhood by a court in Uttarakhand—a north Indian state where part of the Himalayas is and where the headwaters of the Ganges begin. On 21 March 2017, the sacred Ganges and Yamuna rivers were given the same legal rights as human beings and considered sacred. This means that the pollution of the rivers will legally be considered on par with harming a person. According to Shadan Farasat, a lawyer and Advocate-on-Record in the Supreme Court of India, the river could sue someone. This would be done via the 3 legal custodians of the river who were appointed by the Uttarakhand court to look after the conservation and protection issues for the rivers/tributaries.
I initially thought that this solution would be effective through taking legal action on behalf of the Ganges, especially against companies that discharge pollutants into the river, since they are major point-sources of the pollution.
However, Farasat deems this giving of personhood status as merely symbolic. He shares the same sentiments as Himanshu Thakkar, an engineer coordinating the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, who criticised the practical feasibility of this solution:
“There are already 1.5bn litres of untreated sewage entering the river each day, and 500m litres of industrial waste, … All of this will become illegal with immediate effect, but you can’t stop the discharge immediately. So how this decision pans out in terms of practical reality is very unclear.”
This highlights how pollution in the Ganges comes from many point sources, given its expansive and inter-regional (and international) nature. In retrospect, even if industrial companies were sued for their pollution of the Ganges, another core problem is the relative lack of infrastructure for water treatment and sanitation facilities to tackle the vast amount of sewage being released into the river. The numerous people who depend on the Ganges for everyday resources and those who are polluting it are also not necessarily mutually exclusive. Who would the Ganges—or rather, the board of custodians—even begin to sue with so many different pollution sources? Unless there is some alternative to dumping sewage into the river and solutions to tackle the root problem of industrial pollution (e.g. governance across the whole river in addition to developing more and better infrastructure), the consensus by experts across different disciplines in India like Farasat and Thakkar was that giving the Ganges personhood status would be ineffective.
Furthermore, I doubt that custodians from Uttarakhand would be very popular with stakeholders downstream of the Ganges given the very different circumstances they are faced with. It is much easier said than done to criticise the downstream pollution when the extreme extent of pollution is not a lived reality for oneself.
In any case, no lawsuits were actually filed on behalf of the river. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of India stepped in and revoked the personhood rights of the Ganges and Yamuna only a few months after the status was given.
As India’s economy grows, the implications of the Ganges’ pollution will worsen. While this approach may have worked for New Zealand’s Whanganui river (see links below), it was unlikely to work for India given the vastly different economic, political and social contexts. Though this personhood solution was not really given time to work, the logistical limitations would inhibit its utility.
Read about how the inspiration for this solution came from New Zeland’s Whanganui river in these The Guardian articles:
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