cleaning the river called India

Business Standard is too serious a paper to be taken lightly; on week days it does seldom plays with words unlike the bigger  economic paper, the Economic Times. So, when it runs two editorials, Can Ganga clean government? and Can government clean Ganga? one below the other, India must take note.

Business Standard has rightly called for immediate removal of A Raja from the Union cabinet. It has argued that the UPA government at the Centre would not fall by removing him, nor will the succession politics within DMK undergo a major change. If Sonia and Manmohan are not removing him, can we surmise that they have some big stake in Raja's continuance? Sorry, that was not what the editorial said, that is India News sentiment. [And I have been after poor Raja for a bit too long, see this!]

Talking of cleaning the river Ganga, one agrees with the paper that mere money, technology and governmental effort are never going to clean the river. It is people's river [like all natural rivers] and must be treated that way; it is the people who will clean it by doing right things and shunning wrong actions. But perhaps the coordinating role has to be the government's. If the government can ensure that, other things will follow. As for money, do we need World Bank money or massive [and always non-functional] sewage treatment plans to clean Ganga, the river that washes sins? Dear government, only if you had taken the pains to reach people for money, labour, ideas, etc, the holy river would have been pure by now.