Ganga Amantran Abhiyan

Recently, Jal Shakti Minister launched the ‘Ganga Amantran Abhiyan’, a month-long exploratory open-water rafting and kayaking expedition, covering nearly 2,500 kilometers from Devprayag in Uttarakhand to Ganga Sagar in West Bengal.

Features of the Project

• This was the first ever effort by the National Mission for Clean Ganga to raft across the entire stretch of the river and also the longest ever social campaign undertaken through an adventure sporting activity to spread the message of river rejuvenation and water conservation on a massive scale.
• The expedition drew attention to the ecological challenges being faced by the Ganga.
• It covered the five Ganga basin states, namely Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal with stops at Rishikesh, Haridwar, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Sonepur and Kolkata.

Importance of this Project

• To Connect with Stakeholders: The government has carried out various initiatives to restore Ganga’s flow and cleanliness during the last five years. It has started to show positive results but any such movement that needs sustainability cannot be achieved until and unless it becomes a public movement or Jan Andolan. In order to connect with the various stakeholders directly or indirectly connected to Ganga, this mega event was organized.
• Public Awareness: The team, during the expedition, took up public awareness campaign on the locations at which they stopped. They also organised mass cleaning drives, interacted with students of the villages, cities along the river and conveyed the message of river conservation.
• Census and Water Testing: Apart from the awareness campaign, the team from the IITR collected water samples from across diverse ranges of the river for the purpose of water testing, while members of the Wildlife Institute of India undertook flora and fauna census for the year 2019.