Rivers and Life - Ganges

The Ganges is the most spiritually revered river on Earth. For Hindus, Mother Ganga is a sacred spirit to be worshipped. It rises in an ice-cave in the Himalayas and empties into the Bay of Bengal, where its delta has nurtured the Sundarbans, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world. The holy river is a source of cleansing for sins, a place of purification. But the Ganges has become so badly polluted that it is dangerous to bathe in it let alone drink from it. The river supports nearly half a billion people and nearly one billion litres of mostly untreated sewage enters the river everyday. Industrial pollution has added a deadly cargo of pesticides, arsenic, mercury and even plutonium. The river of pilgrimage, ritual and magical floating candles has become a river of death, annually poisoning as many as 1.5 million children under the age of 5, struck down by waterborne diseases such as dysentery and diarrhoea. With hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travelling to sip the holy water, the scale of the health threat is massive.