cr 1 t is a great captainLMAO <| sep |> Call them during regular business hours . <| sep |> Does it work if you reboot into nonjailbreak mode . <| sep |># Saving the Ganga is not an election issue in U P s u t r a g a ngauttarpradeshimgleadimg . jpgA man is deep in his 40 minute morning prayer ritual at the Assi Ghat in Varanasi . For millions of Indians , mostly uppercaste , the Ganga is an article of faith , a mother who is worshipped at least twice a day . Burhaan Kinu Hindustan TimesSumit Kumar has spent all his life by the Ganga but unlike millions of other Indians , the jeevandayini river isn ' t an article of faith for him . The 40 yearold is forced to bathe and wash clothes in the slushy , smelly river water because his village on the outskirts of Varanasi has just one hand pump . About 100 km away , Imtiaz Anwar mines sand from the riverbed near Allahabad . His small village by the river comprises mostly Muslims and Dalits who earn Rs 500 per family for every truck filled . He is forced to abandon his home and take refuge by the bandha road for a month every year because of everadvancing floods a consequence , experts say , of indiscriminate sand mining . We have no time to worship Gangaji , he says . They aren ' t the only ones . The 2 , 500 km long river worshipped as mother and goddess for millennia now increasingly resembles a polluted stagnant stream that hurts the marginalised communities who live on its banks . More than 1 , 000 km of the river flows through Uttar Pradesh , which goes to the polls early next year a virtual semifinal for the 2019 general elections . But cleaning the river is rarely an election issue , despite the Ganga ' s symbolic importance . Many agree that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has initiated steps to clean the river but are unhappy with the BJP , especially in regions dominated by weaker and backward castes . We have three ministers from here , including Anupriya Patel . But no one comes here . We are forced to use dirty water , says Mukesh Yadav in Mirzapur . Politicians have actively fanned the faithbased attachment to the Ganga . In the run up to the 2014 general elections , Modi declared in Varanasi that Maa Ganga had called him . A decade earlier , Congress president Sonia Gandhi took a dip in the river , generating waves of interest . But the Ganga ' s symbolic place far outweighs its substantive impact . A mesh of open drains , uncovered sewer lines and channels of waste water from tanneries all discharge effluentladen water into the Ganga . Uttar Pradesh contributes more than half of all waste into the river . Ganga cleaning could be as big as the Ram Janambhoomi issue . But some parties don ' t talk about it because they feel it is religious and they want to be seen as secular , says professor DN Shukla of the University of Allahabad . But away from the media glare , parties are locked in a fierce fight to win over the weakest castes , seen largely as backing the Bahujan Samaj Party BSP . News travels fast in election season and even faroff villages have heard of the Samajwadi Party feud . Most of them say they will make up their mind closer to the polls . But amid the politicking , the Ganga is getting filthier . Take Kanpur , Uttar Pradesh ' s biggest city . Its 400 plus tanneries release more than 100 million litres of waste every day into the Ganga and its tributary , the Pandu the effluents carving a graceful waterfalllike arc as they mix with the river right before residential neighbourhoods inhabited mostly by Dalit and Muslim tannery workers . No one settled on the river bank is healthy here . Tanneries release toxic wastes despite having treatment plants , says Rajendra Nishad of Wazirpur village . None of the 20 odd villages in the vicinity have sewers . The problem of tannery pollution has festered for at least two decades now , with successive governments backing away from reforms because of a powerful lobby . The result just 23 of the areas 400 plus units have functional effluent treatment systems . Untreated water from a tannery unit flows through an open drain in Wazidpur village near kanpur . Hundreds of similar drains empty out into the Ganga , often near ghats , affecting the health of the mostly Muslim and Dalit tannery workers . Burhaan Kinu Hindustan TimesOn Monday , India ' s national green tribunal attacked the state government for not shifting the tanneries out of the city a proposal that has been in the works for 10 years . Should political will take precedence over the fundamental right to environment and health , the court said . But it is still unclear if anything will move on the proposal . A 2013 report by India ' s pollution watchdog admitted that nonfunctional plants were releasing untreated sewage that contaminated the river and groundwater . There is no definitive government data on the amount of effluent released but experts say it is at least 80 % more than the official treatment capacity . No one grows any crops on Ganga water anymore , says Shakeel Khan of Majhwan village in Mirzapur district . In Varanasi , Ganga tributaries Varuna and Assi that give the holy city its name resemble slushy drains . The people who live alongside one of them now known locally as Assi nullah are mostly weaker castes who say they have dull stomach aches all year . Modiji said he will change the river in five years , now it feels like not even a brick will move in 25 years , says Bablu Lal , standing in the shadow of a giant sewage treatment plant , work on which started six years ago but never completed . Such plants dot the Ganga ' s banks along Varanasi giant pink structures that sometimes leak effluents right onto ghats and the river . Many of them have murals of gods painted on them . Experts say most of them don ' t work because of a chronic power shortage and that between 60 and 80 % of Uttar Pradesh ' s cities don ' t have underground sewerage connections . There are at least 80 spots in the city where drains directly merge into the river . You can often see pilgrims and villagers bathing nearby , says Pradeep Kumar Mishra , a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology BHU Varanasi . Though tanneries are numerous , chemical plants and paper factories are Ganga ' s worst polluters As of 2013 , there were 764 factories and plants dumping more than 5 lakh cubic meters of waste water into the Ganga and its tributaries , Kali East and Ramganga , every day . Though more than half of the factories were tanneries , they accounted for just four percent of the total waste water . The worst polluters were the pulp paper 39 %, chemical 19 %, and sugar 19 % industries . Industry River Tributary State Chart Key Each circle represents a factory or plant along the Ganga or its tributaries . Color shows industry Size shows waste water produced m 3 day 250 5 k 5 k 15 k 15 kSOURCE Pollution Assessment River Ganga , Central Pollution Control Board , July 2013 Faith and economy India ' s holiest river supports more than 500 million people as it flows through almost 100 cities some of these relationships dating back centuries and cutting across religions . India ' s culture revolves around the Gangajaal . Even Mughal rulers such as Shahjahan and Aurangzeb used it for drinking and cooking , said Shukla . Without the Ganga , north India would be a desert . In Varanasi , the ghats are centres of economic activity . The panwallahs , hotel operators , flowersellers and local seva samities have been here for generations . On the famous Dashashwamedh Ghat , a wellchoreographed ceremony unfolds every evening with loudspeakers extolling the virtues of the prime minister and Swachh Bharat the seven main priests officiating the ceremony are all Brahmins . A woman washes clothes in her village of Sarai Julena on the outskirts of varanasi . Despite the proximity , the dalitdominated village complains of lack of access to the holy town and dwindling incomes because of pollution killing fishes . Burhaan Kinu Hindustan TimesBoatmen and fishermen are the other riverdependants who say their livelihoods have been hit by the mounting pollution choking aquatic life . But for many , faith is unshaken . Ganga is our mother . How can she need cleaning ? asks Dharm Puri Baba , an ashsmeared sadhu on the ghat . The holy man , who has his own website , email ID , business card and akhada , says he leans towards Modi but hasn ' t heard of Mayawati . Ganga has also triggered competitive ghat politics . In response to the rockstar evening aarti , a counter morning aarticumyoga session has come up at Assi Ghat , a few kilometres away , supported by the state government . But mostly , the river is left selling everything from water to appliances on giant billboards , while aarti organisers rope in banks and corporates as sponsors . A caste burden Hindu mythology says life begins and ends at the Ganga . In Varanasi , the distance between the two is less than 2 km connected by a centuriesold stone path that leads to Manikarnika ghat . The fire burns here 24 hours as the doms who are Dalits help hundreds of bodies achieve moksha by cremating them near the Ganga . We sometimes give money to those who come to cremate their loved ones but are penniless . We have been here since the times of King Harishchandra , says Dom Raja Jagdish Chaudhury , the head of the 5 , 000 member clan . He says he is trying to push the next generation out of the profession . The burden of caste bias flows down the Ganga villages of fishermen , doms and other low castes often don ' t have access to the ghats , bridges or clean water . Version 0 . 5 b Function I post the article ' s text as a comment if the website is adblocker unfriendly . I accept commands ! Powered by