Jamshedpur: After a month-long rafting expedition called “Mission Gange”, over 55 tons of garbage and waste were removed from the Ganga by a 40-member team, said the team leader and Everester Bachendri Pal. The team found the Ganga polluted all through its ‘Mission Gange’ expedition route of 1500 km from Hardwar to Patna, Ms. Pal added.
The objective of the “Mission Gange” was to clean the river Ganga and spread awareness on waste management, Ms. Pal had said before commencing the expedition.
We have pulled out over 55 tons of garbage and waste from the river in course of our month-long expedition which began from Hardwar on October 5 last, said the country’s first woman who reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1984.
The team left Jamshedpur on October 01. The garbage and waste pulled out of the river were disposed of by respective municipalities of the seven towns the team reached, she said.
We had a good experience in making aware hundreds of people, including school children, who joined us at every destination about the need for clean Ganga , she said.
She advocated intense awareness campaign to clean the river and said the central government had already taken up several measures for the purpose.
The 40-member team, which included Everesters Premlata Agarwal, first Indian woman to climb all the seven summit of the world, Hemant Gupta, five IIT graduates, a radio jockey representing various parts of the country, Binita Soren and favoured ‘Shramdaan'(voluntary work) by the common people to make the river free of pollutants.
The expedition started from Haridwar on October 5 and the team sailed through the river along Bijnor, Farukhabad, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Buxar and ended the expedition in Patna.
The expedition was being supported by the Government of India and Tata Steel and the 40-member team also included 26 employees of the Tata Steel, the sponsor of the event.
NDTV – Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign lends support to the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). Helmed by Campaign Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan, the campaign aims to spread awareness about hygiene and sanitation, the importance of building toilets and making India open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, when he launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in 2014. Over the years, the campaign has widened its scope to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and menstrual hygiene. The campaign has also focused extensively on marine pollution, clean Ganga Project and rejuvenation of Yamuna, two of India’s major river bodies.
