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Is the Ganga drying up?

Sharat Pradhan in Gangotri

The Gangotri glacier -- the source of India's most revered river -- is receding, giving rise to concern that the Ganga could dry up in a few thousand years.

The sants at Gangotri have been complaining of the negative change for years, claiming the river will disappear within the next 5,000 years. Scientists also feel the river could dry up, but they feel it will last far longer than the sants suggest.

Geologists specialising in glaciology have confirmed the "continuous recession of the Gangotri glacier" over the past several decades.

"The first formal study by the Geological Survey of India was done in 1935 and the more recent one in 1990," says Deepak Srivastava, director of the Geological Survey of India's Glaciology division. "And there is no denying that this glacier has been receding at a rate of 10 to 30 metres per year over this half a century."

One of the largest glaciers in the Himalayas, the Gangotri glacier begins at a height of about 7,100 metres above sea level and descends about 30 km to some 4,000 metres. It covers about 143 square km and its estimated volume in 1990 was 28.75 cubic km.

While the snout of the glacier, known as Goumukh (mouth of the cow) has been a place of Hindu pilgrimage for times immemorial, earlier records and subsequent scientific documents have recorded its recession.

"Hindu scriptures clearly show that the Ganga actually descended on the earth at Gangotri, which is why a temple was built over here in the later years", says Swami Sunderanand, a saint from Andhra Pradesh, who has made Gangotri his home for the past 50 years. Of course, there is no recorded evidence about the date the glacier was at this spot.

The first-ever scientific study on the Gangotri glacier was carried out in 1842 by two British scientists, Hogson and Herbert. They put the source of the Ganga at a spot some two km downstream of where Goumukh is today.

GSI studies show that while the rate of retreat was slow between 1935 and 1958, it speeded in subsequent years.

"Recession in terms of total areas was of the order of 2,530 square metres in 1935; that increased by two-and-a-half times between 1956 and 1962 period; and five times between 1962 and 1971," reads an official GSI study. It goes on to add, "The recession process slowed down between 1971 and 1977, only to revert to its earlier pace after 1977".

Perhaps it is the sudden change in the trend between 1971 and 1977 that caused scientists to hope the meltdown is a temporary trend.

"The Gangotri glacier will not just melt away and Ganga would live for all times to come," says Srivastava. "If there is recession and melting largely due to global warning, there is also a certain amount of snowfall the area receives annually. So some kind of balance is bound to be maintained." But he fails to explain the recession beginning at least decades before global warming became a recognisable phenomenon.

Ravi Kumar, another senior scientist at the GSI regional headquarters in Lucknow, attributes the change to "increasing human activity and indiscriminate deforestation in and around the region." To buttress his argument, he points out the increased rate of recession in the recent years.

Swami Sunderanand backs this view too and is waging a one-man war against the increase in human activity in the Gangotri-Goumukh region.

"When I came here in 1947, even this Gangotri town was covered with green. Now it has turned into a concrete jungle," he says. "The 18-km trekking route (now 19 km owing to the recession) to Goumukh was also full of trees; today it is not only barren but also littered with garbage, including toxic packing material."

Though fears about the eventual drying up of the source of the Ganga appear far-fetched today, scientists do not deny there is nothing one can do to arrest the process.

"Nature will take its own course where the melting of Gangotri glacier is concerned," says another scientist.

Sure, but does man also have to help shove it into extinction?

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