It indeed is India's river of sorrow. Not for the calamities it causes, but for the apathy - political and public - that is slowly choking life out of it. A report tabled by the comptroller and auditor general of India has revealed the rather shoddy state of the National Democratic Alliance's not-so-pious pledge to clean the Ganga. An ambitious deadline had been set for 2018. The report now confirms what had always been suspected: that India would miss the target that it had set to save one of its most important rivers. It is not as if the problems that beset the Ganga are insurmountable. But the challenges, some of which have been mentioned in the CAG report, are serious. For instance, the CAG has been critical of the National Mission for Clean Ganga, the nodal agency for the project, for failing to spend a substantial amount that had been earmarked for the initiative. Such a lapse is inconceivable, given the fact that welfare measures in India are often crippled by the paucity of funds. River conservation zones had not been identified till May this year in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. This is yet another act of omission because these sites are integral to the regeneration of the Ganga. Again, of the Rs 951 crore that was given to five states to set up sewage treatment plants, build toilets for families and raise awareness, a little under half the amount has remained unspent, leading to a concomitant increase in toxicity in the waters. But it is not only a matter of failing to spend funds. Sewage treatment plants are being delayed in some cases because of problems regarding land acquisition; industrial effluents continue to contaminate the river, owing to slips in monitoring - possibly the result of a corrupt nexus between politicians and businessmen; feeder channels are yet to be cleaned as well.

The Bharatiya Janata Party - cleaning the Ganga is its political priority - has, expectedly, come up with a solution. The minister for water resources has reportedly suggested that preventing people from throwing funeral ash into the river could curb contamination, a statement that somewhat captures the government's befuddlement over the magnitude and complications of the task. But it needs to be done, not only for the Ganga but also for India's other dying rivers. Otherwise New India would be staring at a disaster that even the BJP cannot stall.