MISSION PERSONALIZED !

Last week senior BJP leader and 'Margdarshak' Murli Manohar Joshi said the way the Ganga clean-up was going it might not happen in 50 years. That would have hurt the ruling party establishment, assuming it attaches any worth to a veteran leader already put to pasture in the course of Modi's rise to the top. Joshi specifically pointed to the need to maintain a minimum required flow of water in the river. That is a scientific fact recognised by the National Mission for Clean Ganga, established in 2011 under the UPA, which renewed Rajiv Gandhi's efforts by setting up the National Ganga River Basin Authority in 2009; the authority also did not produce any substantive results. Why there is high hope that the NDA would succeed where others have failed? Because Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Varanasi promised to do that after a prayer on the banks of the river, making it look like a personal mission.

 

A prime ministerial commitment can indeed invest a project with additional momentum. However, in the past one year the only thing new achieved is the transfer of the project from the Environment Ministry to Uma Bharti's Water Resources Ministry.