Futile deadlines

An afforestation drive in five states along the banks of the Ganga is over with just 22 per cent of the target being met

- VIVEK MISHRA

YET ANOTHER project conceptualised to safeguard the Ganga is over without even nearing its target. A Right To Information (RTI)-based investigation by Down To Earth (DTE) finds that the first phase (2016-21) of an afforestation drive along the banks of the Ganga is over after managing to plant trees only in a little over 22 per cent of the target area.

Trajectory of Himalayan rivers keeps changing. The Ganga, too, has shifted northward, which requires forestry to be done in the vacant catchment area, as per a 2016 meeting of the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), which works under the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti. Forests have the ability to hold water and release it slowly into rivers an important component of ensuring uninterrupted flow in rivers and improving the overall hydrological cycle.

This was the reason NMCG, in 2014, asked the Forest Research Institute (FRI), Dehradun, to prepare a detailed project report for an afforestation drive along the Ganga. FRI took two years to prepare a list of areas using, for the first time, geographic information system and field surveys, in which 8,394,600 hectares (ha) along the Ganga were scanned. The report, submitted by FRI to NMCG in March 2016, said that afforestation was to be done on a stretch of 2,500 km along the banks of the Ganga and its tributaries, covering 134,106 ha in five states-Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.