The Indian government’s initiative to rejuvenate around 75 small rivers, primarily in Uttar Pradesh, using funds under the national rural job guarantee scheme, will be showcased at the second meeting of the National Ganga Council. The conference, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair in Kolkata, will be the first since 2019. The council is responsible for cleaning the Ganges. It includes the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, as well as several Union ministers, including the finance, rural development, and power ministers. The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), which implements the government’s Namami Gange programme, has circulated the meeting’s agenda to the Union ministries and the five states involved. It has proposed making urban river management plans and river-sensitive master planning mandatory for river cities as one of the agenda items for the meeting. Gomti, Sai, Mandakini, and Varuna are among the key small rivers being rejuvenated in Uttar Pradesh.
According to the meeting’s agenda, work on six rivers was undertaken in Uttar Pradesh under the national rural job guarantee scheme during 2018-19, 19 in 2019-20, six in 2020-21, and 14 in 2021-22. Over the last four financial years (2018-19 to 2022-23), work on the Gomti River was taken up across four districts in Uttar Pradesh: Pilibhit, Sitapur, Lucknow, and Shahjahanpur. The initiative to rejuvenate small rivers is expected to aid the Namami Gange programme in cleaning the Ganges and boosting regional tourism.
The project also highlights the government’s efforts to address anthropogenic activities, such as waste dumping and encroachments, that have led to the death of many small rivers in India. The success of the Kuttamperoor River rejuvenation project in Kerala, where public participation and government intervention led to removing encroachments, deepening of the channel, and constructing bunds on both sides, could inspire similar projects in the future. Restoring water flow in the Kuttamperoor River has brought many freshwater fish species back to the river and is expected to help control floods in the region. The river dedication programme was held at the Kuttemperoor Devi Temple ground near Mannar, and former Budhanoor grama panchayat president P. Viswambhara Panicker, who spearheaded the rejuvenation project, was honoured at the function.
