What Does It Take to Clean the Ganga? Gendered Dimensions of Protest and Policy Perspectives

In the last two decades, pollution in the river Ganga has become a serious issue, affecting the socio-economic activities and the health of the communities living on the banks and adjacent areas of the river. The impact has been greater on women, because their day-to-day activities for survival are intimately connected with this water resource. The response of the government has been to drastically improve its environmental policies. Social activists on the other hand continued to mobilize civil society in regional protests, which finally led to the beginning of the ‘Save Ganga’ movement. Yet, both the strategies to clean the river pollution have been colossal failures. An analysis was undertaken of various government policies, reports and court judgements on the river’s pollution and a primary survey was done on three sites: Garhwal in Uttarakhand and in Varanasi and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh to gauge the nature of women’s participation in the movements. It was found that there was greater participation by women in the hilly Garhwal region than in the plains of Uttar Pradesh. The research proved that women’s knowledge and experiences in environmental conservation had led to greater sustainability, in contrast to the results of the modern-technocratic approach of state officials and so-called environmentalists. The article seeks to locate the failure of the project of cleaning the river to the lack of gender sensitive environmental policies and insufficient participation of women in ecological activism.