By Vishwa Mohan, TNN From Times of India

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NEW DELHI: As India stares at the mammoth task of cleaning the Ganga and looks for inspiration outside the country, it is the Rhine river of western Europe which has caught the attention of policy-makers here, due its record of rejuvenation despite once being one of the most polluted river systems of the world.

India initially looked at many success stories while making its plan to clean the national river. However, the Rhine scored over Thames (England), Seine (France), Danube (central and eastern Europe), Mississippi (USA) and river Singapore.

Germany, which played a significant role in rejuvenating this river system which passes through many countries in western Europe, had made a number of presentations and impressed officials who have been looking for some workable solutions to clean Ganga.

A team of officials from the water resources ministry will now travel to Europe next week to see how countries including Austria, Switzerland, Germany, France and Netherlands managed the river system which once saw discharge of industrial effluents and solid waste from cities like Basel, Strasbourg, Worms, Mainz and Cologne.

“This is, however, a thing of the past. The Western European countries had fought many odds and achieved what now we are planning to do with Ganga and Yamuna”, said an official, noting Rhine is much cleaner despite having many chemical industrial units along its bank.

The lesson from Rhine in Europe will be clubbed with what India would learn from Australia on maintaining the Murray-Darling Basin which is one of the largest river systems in the world.

“As far as maintaining the ecological balance and overall development of the big river basin of Ganga is concerned, we are looking at Australia’s example. The composition\nature of the Murray-Darling basin and the way Australia maintains it can be a big lesson for us”, said the official.

Besides Germany and Australia, the third country which would present an important solution is Israel which is the world leader in drip irrigation technology as well as in efficient use of water resources.

Experts from Israel also made presentation to officials of the water resources ministry here last week. They discussed how they could help India in adopting drip irrigation in the Ganga basin so that substantial amount of river water does not get diverted for irrigation.

Officials here believe that the efficient use of water for irrigation would ensure adequate water in the river and it would help in maintaining the river’s ecological flow – an important feature of the river system to naturally deal with pollutants.

Amid discussions and an ongoing operation to set up adequate number of Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) and effluent treatment plants in cities\towns along Ganga to deal with the discharge of solid waste and industrial effluents, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday appealed to Indian scientists to take it as a challenge.

Describing the Ganga cleaning\rejuvenation a “scientific project”, he asked them to come up with “innovative solutions” to achieve this goal. He made this remark while discussing the issue during an interaction with scientists from the country’s top institutions.

For more on this story go to: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/For-Ganga-inspiration-flows-from-Rhine-once-among-dirtiest-rivers/articleshow/48567864.cms