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| No party has Tawi on agenda | | | | Suryaputri Tawi is pride of Jammu but it is stinking and crying. Entire filth and foul of not only city but also of its adjoining areas is going to Tawi unchecked and the government is yet to come up with any cleansing plan. In run up to the elections all parties are coming up with hundreds of promises on what they are committed to do for Jammu and Kashmir or Jammu particularly. No one has protection, cleansing and beautification of Tawi drawn on the agenda. Inspiration in this regard could have been drawn from Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s concern for the Ganga. It goes without saying that Tawi is as important for Jammu as Ganga is for India. The Prime Minister’s recent announcement that the Ganga would henceforth be the country’s national river and a high-powered Ganga River Basin Authority would be set up to clean it up and stop further degradation of the river is at the same time a promise and an admission of failure. The Ganga Action Plan, which was launched with the same purpose 28 years ago, has not had much impact on the health of the river. There are different views on how useful the Authority has been. Some experts have felt that it helped to contain the deterioration of the river marginally. But the majority have maintained that it could have done much better. Under the plan, Rs 1,500 crore has been expended on the river and there is consensus that the full value of the expenditure has not been realised. The Comptroller and Auditor-General has made scathing remarks about misuse of funds and bad implementation of plans and the Supreme Court has criticised different ministries for lack of co-ordination and even enthusiasm. If the new Authority with the prime minister as its chairman and the chief ministers of the states through which the river flows and representatives of other agencies as members will address the shortcomings of the earlier attempt, it may make a difference this time. But the point often missed in projects like these is that the implementation of plans should be decentralised. None of the states which have a stake in the Ganga have a good system of local self-government and this is the root cause of the failure of the Ganga Action Plan. The people on the banks of the river, through whose lives it flows, have the biggest stake in its upkeep . Cleaning up the river should not be the only agenda of the new Authority. The river can serve as an economic lifeline for the north Indian hinterland by connecting it to the sea for trade and thus give a real stimulus to development. It is unfortunate if the setting up of the Authority and conferment of national status on the river has a political angle, with elections in three riverside states scheduled now. The Ganga is mixed up with religion and sentiments and any attempt to tap into them for political gains in undesirable. |
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