The Great Ganga Cleanup: A Timeline

Considered to be one of the endangered rivers of the world, river and flood experts have raised concerns over the contamination of River Ganga. As the Government gears up to make River Ganga pollution free, here is a look at the Namami Gange journey

Features, World Water Day Special

 

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Written By Gopi Karelia

 

| March 20, 2017

 

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It is India’s lifeline, cutting across 5 states and providing water to 40% of India’s population across 11 states, but the Ganga is in distress. For centuries it has been revered and worshipped but today it is among the most polluted rivers in the world, full of waste from industries, religious offerings to cremation activities. In 2014, the government launched the ₹20,000 crore Namami Gange project to clean and beautify the Ganga.

Within the first month of the project, 704 industries were examined by the National Ganga River Basin Authority and out of those, forty eight industries were asked to shut down.

In 2014, various river surfaces faced a rise in pollution levels due to lack of waste disposal techniques. It was then, that the Namami Gange project began the cleanliness work in 5 locations- Varanasi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Mathura and Patna.

The Great Ganga Cleanup: A Timeline

It is India’s lifeline, cutting across 5 states and providing water to 40% of India’s population across 11 states, but the Ganga is in distress. For centuries it has been revered and worshipped but today it is among the most polluted rivers in the world, full of waste from industries, religious offerings to cremation activities. In 2014, the government launched the ₹20,000 crore Namami Gange project to clean and beautify the Ganga.

Within the first month of the project, 704 industries were examined by the National Ganga River Basin Authority and out of those, forty eight industries were asked to shut down.

In 2014, various river surfaces faced a rise in pollution levels due to lack of waste disposal techniques. It was then, that the Namami Gange project began the cleanliness work in 5 locations- Varanasi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Mathura and Patna.

The Great Ganga Cleanup: A Timeline

1. May 2015 | Centre allocates  ₹20,000-Crore for the next five years. It also introduces a three-tier mechanism to improve implementation of this flagship initiative. 
   Read: http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/centre-okays-rs-20-000-crore-budget-for-namami-ganga-scheme-762770  
2. November 2015 | River Ganga to be one of the cleanest rivers by October 2018 assures Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti. 
   Read: http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/ganga-to-be-one-of-the-cleanest-river-by-october-2018-uma-bharti-1244165    
3. January 2016 | The Central Government launches the Ganga Task Force Battalion deployed at Garhmukteshwar to ensure that citizens do not pollute the river.
4. July 2016 | In presence of Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari and Narendra Singh Tomar, Water Resources Minister, Uma Bharti launches the ‘Namami Gange’ initiative with 300 projects in more than 103 locations in five basin states of river Ganga. 
   Read:  Namami Gange Projects Worth Rs. 250 Crore Launched In Uttrakhand
5. September 2016 | Parameswaran Iyer, Secretary of Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry assures that all the villages across Ganga will turn Open Defecaton Free by the end of 2016. According to ministry officials, 1300 villages have already gained the ODF status post the clean Ganga initiative. 
   Read: Villages Along The Ganga To Be Open Defecation Free By December
6. October 2016 | More than 5000 idols were immersed across Ganga during Durga Puja in Bihar thereby raising the pollutions levels lakes, rivers and ponds. Despite several appeals from Bihar State Pollution Control Board’, people contaminated water with harmful elements such as mercury, zinc oxide, chromium and lead 
   Read: Immersion Of Idols Increasing Ganga’s Pollution Level In Bihar
7. October 2016 | National Green Tribunal (NGT) says central and state officials clueless on the amount of waste generated in the Ganga and do not know how many drains are polluting the river. 
   Read: Authorities Clueless On How Many Drains Carry Sewage Into Ganga: NGT
8. October 2016 | Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board blames residential and commercial building for a poor waste management system. Multi-storied complexes built along the floodplains of Ganga and Yamuna have failed to introduce a mechanism for municipal solid wastes thereby contaminating the rivers. 
   Read: ‘Encroachments On Floodplains Release Sewage Into Ganga, Yamuna’
9. December 2016 |  NGT orders Uttar Pradesh authorities to compile industries operating between Haridwar and Unnao. The report must consist of details on quantum and quality of waste being generated into the rivers. 
   Read: National Green Tribunal Directs UP Authorities To Give Details Of Industry Clusters Near Ganga
10. December 2016 | In first of its kind decision, the government seeks to introduce a new bill under Ganga Act to punish those found polluting the river. 
    Read: Government Planning To Penalise Those Found Guilty Of Polluting Ganga
11. January 2017 | The Supreme Court orders the central government to prepare a fresh report on the status of the ongoing Ganga cleaning programs in the five states through which the river passes. 
    Read: Update Report On The Status Of Ganga Clean-up: SC To Centre
12. January 2017 | The Union Water Resources Ministry announces deploys 20,000 youth known as ‘Swachhta Doots’ in Uttarakhand, Uttar   Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal to spread the cleanliness message.  The Rs. 10 crore project aims to train the youth to motivate people to refrain from polluting the Ganga. 
    Read: 20,000 Youths To Be Trained And Deployed As ‘Swachhta Doots’
13. January 2017 |  Corporate India joins the ‘Namami Gange’ project as part of their CSR activities. 
    Read: Government Seeks Corporate Assistance To Clean Ganga
14. January 2017 |  Corporate India joins the ‘Namami Gange’ project as part of their CSR activities.
    Read: Government Seeks Corporate Assistance To Clean Ganga
15. February 2017 | NGT questions the government agencies on execution of the Rs. 20,000 crore ‘Namami Gange’ project. The tribunal says that public money is being misused in the name of cleaning the Ganga. 
    Read: Public Money Wasted, Not A Drop Of Ganga Cleaned: National Green Tribunal
16. February 2017 | NGT questions the government agencies on execution of the Rs. 20,000 crore ‘Namami Gange’ project. The tribunal says that public money is being misused in the name of cleaning the Ganga. 
    Read: Public Money Wasted, Not A Drop Of Ganga Cleaned: National Green Tribunal
17. February 2017 | Copper and chromium level rises in several tributaries of Ganga due to illegal processing of electronic waste. National Green Tribunal orders an investigation over dumping and burning of e-waste. 
    Read: Is Electronic Waste Being Dumped Along The Ganga? NGT Orders Probe
18. March 2017 | Under the ‘Namami Gange’ project, the government allots an additional Rs. 1050 crores to build sewage treatment systems. Two Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) to be constructed in Patna to ensure timely waste disposal. 
    Read: Projects Worth Rs. 1,050 Crore Announced To Clean Ganga
19. March 2017 | National Mission for Clean Ganga launches a mass movement ‘Ganga Swachhata Pakhwada to create awareness and a sense of ownership among the people living along the banks of River Ganga about cleanliness and sanitation.
    
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    New initiative launched to keep Ganga clean. #NamamiGange

    11:05 AM - 15 Mar 2017

     
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20. March 2017 | Government declares 3234 villages Open Defecation Free under the Namami Gange.
    
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    Swachh Bharat 

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    3234 villages have been declared #ODF under the Namami Gange initiative which aims to provide a clean environment. #SwachhataPragati

    10:30 AM - 19 Mar 2017

     
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21. 2017 | In a landmark judgement, Uttarakhand High Court grants a legal human status to River Ganga and Yamuna. 
    Read: http://swachhindia.ndtv.com/ganga-yamuna-living-human-entities-hc-5650/

Open access: The sorry state of Indian repositories

Open access: The sorry state of Indian repositories

India may not have a national open access policy in place, but the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR), The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), The Department of Science & Technology (DST), the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), The University Grants Commission (UGC) have open access policies that clearly mandate researchers to deposit their papers in institutional repositories. National institutes such as the IITs and IISc, too, have repositories and similar mandates.

Yet, of the 69 Indian repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) and Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), only 12 added “at least one item during a month” during the period July 2016 to June 2016. Seventeen repositories did not add even a single item during the course of the year of study, while 40 were “irregular” in adding items to the repositories, says a correspondence published in Current Science.

Worse, some of them are not repositories in the strict sense — they do not host research papers, pre-prints or post-prints. Instead, they have theses, dissertations, book chapters, patents, annual reports, technical reports and research proposals to name a few.

Lagging behind

“Open access institutional repositories are clearly lagging behind despite the mandate,” says Dr. G. Mahesh from the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources, New Delhi, and one of the authors of the article. “Individual researchers are required to deposit their papers in the repository but they don’t. It is very difficult to motivate them to do it.” One of the reasons why researchers do not deposit their papers in a repository is because they no longer hold the copyrights. “In over 95 per cent of cases, the researchers have already transferred their copyrights to the respective journals,” he says. “Ideally, pre-prints of papers should be deposited in a repository. A large majority of publishers of subscription journals have no problem in researchers depositing preprints in a repository.”

Since researchers transfer their copyrights to publishers when a paper is accepted, it is not possible to deposit the papers in a repository.

“Researchers get greater visibility when they deposit their pre-prints in a repository as anyone can read them. The institutions too gain. So it difficult to say why researchers don’t do it,” he says.

It is another matter that except in the case of the IISERs, individual researchers in most of the national institutes and government labs under CSIR, ICAR and ICMR do not even regularly update their publication list. It is not uncommon to find the publication list of many researchers, including those at IISc, not updated since 2013 and 2014!

India building a supercomputer juggernaut

India building a supercomputer juggernaut

The as-yet-unnamed giant could win a spot in the top ten global list, and improve weather forecasting

Come June, India will likely unveil its most powerful supercomputer. If its processors operate at the full capacity of 10 petaflops (1 followed by 15 zeroes of floating point operations per second), a clock speed a million times faster than the fastest consumer laptops, it could earn a place among the world’s top 10 fastest supercomputers.

Though India has built or hosted supercomputers since the 1990s, it held a ‘top 10’ spot only once, in 2007, thanks to the EKA built by the Computational Research Laboratories, which is part of the Tata group. This position was lost, though several ultra-fast machines exist in Indian academic institutions: they feature in the 100s or 200s in global rankings.

The as-yet-unnamed machine will be jointly hosted at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune and the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting at Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

For the first time, colleges and other research institutions can log in and harness its power to address problems, ranging from weather modelling to understanding how proteins fold. “The tender [to select the company that will build the machine] is ready and we hope to have it [the computer] by June” Madhavan Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, told The Hindu.

₹400 crore sanctioned

The government has sanctioned ₹400 crore for the project this year. Most of the machine’s computing power will help in monsoon forecasting, using a dynamical model. This requires simulating the weather for a given month — say March — and letting a custom-built model calculate how the actual weather will play out over June, July, August and September.

The processing speed of supercomputers is only one of the factors that determine its worth, with power usage and arrangement of processors, being other key metrics that determine the worth of a system.

Top500, the global authority tracking the fastest 500 computers, said in its latest report that China and the U.S. were “pacing each other for supercomputing supremacy.”

Top math award goes to Yves Meyer

Top math award goes to Yves Meyer
The theory of wavelets he helped develop finds wide applications today

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the Abel Prize for 2017 to mathematician Yves Meyer of the Ecole normale superieure Paris-Saclay, France, for his “pivotal role in the development of mathematical theory of wavelets.” The theory of wavelets that he started and made fundamental contributions to finds wide-ranging applications from image processing to fluid dynamics.

Mathematician Shobha Madan, visiting professor at IISER Mohali, recalls how in the 1980s Meyer and his students were working on the “Calderon programme.” “Meyers recognised the connection with wavelets and then there was a boom in work in this area. I heard him lecture on this in 1984, in Ecole Polytechnique, and he was so enthusiastic, like a child, giving examples of how it came to him,” she says.

In an e-mail, Terence Tao, University of California, Los Angeles, described Meyer’s work thus: “One can use wavelets to efficiently break up many types of digital data (e.g. sound files, image files, or video files) into a small number of simple pieces, which one can then process for many further applications (e.g. image compression, fingerprint identification, solving physical equations such as the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid mechanics, or Einstein's equations of general relativity)…”

Prizes in mathematics have often celebrated work in “pure mathematics” while this one talks about the ensuing applications as well. “The Abel prize has been in existence for about 14 years. In most of the previous years, the prize was awarded largely for very deep work in theoretical (or "pure") mathematics, without much emphasis on how applicable the work would be outside of mathematics. This year’s award is notable for recognizing both Meyer’s contributions to pure mathematics (for instance, in solving some major open problems in harmonic analysis) and to applied mathematics,” says Professor Tao.