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For India’s devout Hindus, the sacred River Ganges is always clean and always pure — even if its waters are a toxic stew of human sewage, discarded garbage and factory waste.

The belief that the Ganges washes away sin entices millions of Hindus into the river each year, and huge crowds of pilgrims are currently passing through the town of Haridwar for the three-month Kumbh Mela bathing festival.

But concern over pollution along the length of the 2,500-kilometer-long river is growing, and the city of Kanpur — 800 km downstream of Haridwar — is the site of one of the worst stretches of all.

Factories in the industrial city chug millions of liters of polluted water into the river daily, rubbish forms into solid floating islands, and a foul smell wafts over the water’s murky surface.

The situation is “acute and critical,” said DK Sundd, executive director of the Sankat Mochan Foundation, a nonprofit group working to clean up the river.

“The problem is worst in Kanpur. The city generates nearly half the volume of sewage and industrial waste as compared to the fresh water flow in the Ganges,” he said.

Most communities located on the river from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh lack proper sewage treatment facilities, and the river has for years “been misused as a convenient sink for raw waste,” Sundd said.

Next to one Hindu temple in Kanpur, domestic waste water spills out of a giant drain, merges with a stream of white foam and flows into the river.

Ganges water is considered by many to be blessed, and has for centuries served as an essential component of Hindu ceremonies, from childbirth to death — when ashes are often scattered in the river after cremations.

Worshippers like Ram Sharma, who regularly wades in the water for an early morning bath with only a cloth tied around his waist, are proof that for many Indians faith outweighs science.

“How can you call this water dirty?” Sharma asked incredulously.

“For us it is holy water,” he said as he dipped his cupped hands in the river and took a slurp.

Further down the banks, Mahinder Pal Singh rolled up his pants and stood knee-deep in the water praying.

“You won’t find water this auspicious anywhere upstream,” he said proudly.

He may be right — Sundd points out that the polluted segments are separated by cleaner stretches, one of them being Haridwar, the site of this year’s Kumbh Mela.

“Ganges water is well known for its extraordinary resilience and recuperative capacity,” Sundd said.

In Kanpur, one challenge that the holy water must overcome is the leather industry, which employs around 50,000 people in more than 400 tanneries using chemicals such as toxic chromium compounds.

“Nobody knows how much waste water they generate but everybody accepts that tanneries produce more than nine [million liters a day], probably between 20 to 30 MLD,” said Ajay Kanujia, a chemist at the Jajmau plant.

Imran Siddiqui, the director of Super Tannery, one of Kanpur’s largest tanneries said his company had set up a state-of-the-art primary effluent treatment plant as part of its “moral responsibility.”

The government has spent more than $160 million to clean up the river since initiating in 1985 the Ganga Action Plan, which uses the Hindi name for the river.

In February last year the government established the National Ganga River Basin Authority to monitor conservation efforts, and in December the World Bank announced a $1 billion loan to support clean-up schemes for the river.

But years of state-funded attempts have “failed miserably,” said Rakesh Jaiswal founder of the Kanpur-based NGO Eco Friends.

“We do not have a vision for the river — what’s practical and what’s achievable,” he said.

 

Agence France-Presse