ganges river ecosystem?

Answer 1

Try this site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganges

Answer 2

The Ganges collects large amounts of human pollutants as it flows through highly populous areas. These populous areas, and other people down stream, are then exposed to these potentially hazardous accumulations. While proposals have been made for remediating this condition so far no great progress has been achieved.


A Hindu ceremony in VaranasiThe major polluting industries on the Ganges are the leather industries, especially near Kanpur, which use large amounts of chromium and other chemicals, and much of it finds its way into the meager flow of the Ganga. Unfortunately, this is a boom time for leather processing in India, which many view as a form of eco-environmental dumping on the third world, and with the lax and lubricable implementation systems of the Uttar Pradesh government, it does not seem likely that this will go down. The World Bank report of 1992, which focused on the environmental issues, mentions the dissolved-oxygen and the river-borne decomposing material at two focal points on the Ganga.

However, industry is not the only source of pollution. The sheer volume of waste — estimated at nearly 1 billion litres per day, of mostly untreated raw sewage — is a significant factor. Also, inadequate cremation procedures contributes to a large number of partially burnt or unburnt corpses floating down the Ganga, in addition to livestock corpses.

The Ganga Action Plan has been set up under the Indian government bureaucracy and is attempting to build a number of waste treatment facilities, under Dutch and British support, and to collaborate with a number of voluntary organizations. Surprisingly, the Hindu political parties in India are not very active in the efforts to clean up the Ganga, and it is not very high on the general religious agenda. India's government has already spent over $33 million to address the overwhelming sewage problem. In December 1984, an action plan was prepared for the immediate reduction of pollution load on the river Ganga. The Cabinet approved the GAP (Ganga Action Plan)in April 1985 as a 100 per cent centrally sponsored scheme.

A well-known self-purificatory characteristic of Ganga water is mentioned in connection with the discovery of bacteriophages.