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Natural systems, such as a riverine ecosystem, often figure in our imaginations as entities that are non-human, static, external to us and existing in isolation. The surprising lack of the Ganga, Indias most sacred river, in my personal imagination of the city in which I was born and raised, Patna, got me thinking about how our personal imagination of nature connects with our social associations with a place. I became interested in how our imagination of an ecological resource, such as the Ganga, can impact the state of the resource. A river is neither outside society nor is it just a thing out there in nature1 (Lahiri-Dutt 2000) but is instead a vibrant and dynamic system

PARUL DUBEY (Batch 2015-17)

Stories from the Ganga Ghats: Its People, Ecosystem Services, Imaginations and Meanings

Ganga: Tradition in the face of modernity

1 Lahiri-Dutt, K. 2000. Imagining rivers. Economic and Political Weekly, 35(27) : 2395-2400

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constructed as much by culture, needs, and subjective imaginations as by ideas of science and objective realities.

The cultural constructions of resources in general, and rivers in the case of my field study in particular, act as windows into the collective imaginations, perceptions and meanings that users of a river build around the river through their interactions with it. Perceptions and meanings attached to a river then can have important, direct and indirect influences on our acceptance of degradation, possibilities of preservation and collective action, and on individual and collective ability to see oneself as the polluter, and to influence the identification of blame for the rivers degradation.

My field study was set in my hometown Patna, in seven ghat locations in the city (L.C.T Ghat, Bans Ghat, Kali Ghat, Gandhi Ghat, Rani Ghat, Gulbi Ghat and Nariyal Ghat). The objective was first to get a sense of what kinds of services people who frequented the ghats derived from the river and what kinds of meanings they associated with it. Then, I sought to try and find possible patterns of such meaning making, that is, whether or not certain categories of users

relate to the river in set ways. For the purpose of the study, three broad interaction types were defined: direct (who derive something of value directly taken from the river such as fishermen, boatmen, water sport providers, Domraj2), locational (who derive something of value by virtue of being located along or near the river, but not directly extracting a resource found in the river such as vendors, farmers, residents of hut settlements along the ghat boundary), non-extractive or indirect (who derive neither locational nor direct resource use based utility but happen to be residing alongside the river such as apartment residents, students, ghat visitors). A mix of informal conversations and formal semi-structured questionnaire guided interviews. A total of 30 semi- structured detailed interviews were conducted, along with 20 less detailed but insightful informal conversations with a variety of informants encountered on the ghats.

The ghats, once lively spaces of trade, of rituals, of play, greenery, fresh air and clean brimming waters, have undergone drastic changes given the shift in the course of the river away from the city between 1975 and 2000. This shift has been northward and then later southward, by

2 A Domraj is a person from the Dalit community, who occupies a central role in cremation ceremonies

Farmers on L.C.T Ghat

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as much as 3 km. The shifting of the Ganga has altered the relationship people had with the ghats and has several human induced drivers over and above the natural shifts in a rivers course that occurs over long geological periods. I asked interviewees questions about what the river gave them, what it meant to them, how had they seen the river change through the years, why they thought it had changed, what could be done and by whom, what memories (good or bad) did they have of the river, what their imagination of a river was, how was this general imagination different from that of Ganga if it was so and so on to arrive at a basic set of services and associated meanings that users derived from the resource.

The services users identified included those that could be placed into the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment standard classification of provisioning, supporting, regulating and cultural. These services collectively saw the rivers as a source of water, transport, livelihood, food through agriculture and irrigation, cooler air and greenery, better rainfall, fish, tourism, and sheltering dolphins and bird populations. It was also seen as a space for recreation and relaxation, for carrying out and expressing religious rituals and beliefs, and as a source of experiencing spiritual release and hope. The

interviewees also revealed utilities from the river of a different kind, associated with values, emotions, and feelings associated with them.

Other benefits identified included cleansing of ones sins and the purifying abilities of the Ganga, safety and protection, destruction of evil, salvation, social mobility and providing a sense of home, belongingness and acceptance. Ganga was also and most importantly a living entity: a mother, a goddess, a source of divinity. Another service talked about was Ganga representing traditions in an otherwise modern urban space and the river providing a personal private escape route in such a public, commonly owned space. Ganga as a play area for children, a place for morning and evening walks, and as a site for growing vegetables for the ghat farmers were also valued services. A sense of pride at historical belongingness with the river was also expressed.

This list of valued utilities above varied across different people interacting with the river in different ways. For instance water, a service nearly everyone identified, meant a range of things. It was a means to conduct daily chores like washing, cooking, bathing and drinking (locational) for some, a source of protection and safety for fishermen who spent weeks on

Ganga hai toh Jeevan hai, Fisherman, L.C.T ghat

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their boats in the river on their own (direct) and a home to those whose villages were far away from where they fished (direct). It was a source of livelihood for some (direct and locational), a medium for fulfilling religious commitments and a source of beauty to some (indirect) and a mode of transport (direct and locational) to others.

Similarly, while the river as a thinking, living entity and its imaginations as a feminine figure was near universal across all categories, the implications of this living motherly femininity varied across categories. The chief implication of it is the strong and rooted faith in the rivers inherent purity, the rivers ability to cleanse and forgive ones sins like that of a good mother and the consequent belief in the Ganga as impossible to pollute. The fact that stories and folklore suggest the river was brought down from heaven to cleanse the world of all sins, the image of women in general and mothers in particular, as being sacrificing, forgiving, and willing to take the blame of wrongdoings unto themselves from their children, and notions of the divine power of Ganga as a goddess, together make up this powerful idea in the minds of users that even though there is dirt in the river, the river is not dirty.

Ideas of what constitutes waste and pollution differed across categories too. The most important of these distinctions was the exclusion of religious waste in the list of polluting substances in the minds of users and contradictory notions of what was clean and what was pure. Bathing in the river made one pure, but one then had to go back home and take a bath to become clean. Soap was washed into the river to wash utensils and the utensil then filled with the soapy water as pure Ganga Jal! While such complications and confusions were visible across interaction types, notions of inherent purity were stronger in categories that have locational and indirect interactions than in informants who depend on the river in a more direct sense.

For instance, one of the informants, Ajay Mahto, a displaced farmer on the L.C.T Ghat said, , | (No matter how dirty the water is made, everything becomes pure in Ganga)

A priest at the L.C.T, Ravindar Kumar Mishra Ghat talked about what constituted pollutants as he said, Ganga ki gandhigi

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(The river is getting polluted because of throwing garbage into it. We take bath in it only for mothers blessing)

A fisherwoman, Sarasati, talked about waste as follows, (Waste is waste and this is polluting Ganga. The river is much dirtier than it used to be before. We get a much lesser catch now) Deep Narayan, a visitor at the Gandhi Ghat, when asked about the Gangas state of pollution said, , , (This is Ganga, if you believe she is pure, then she is pure; if you believe she is impure, then she is impure)

Further, many informants talked about the medicinal qualities of Gangas water, claiming that its water cures illnesses, prevents diseases, increases immunity and improves digestion. Such medical benefits were articulated more often by locational and direct users, who spent more time in and around the river (particularly fishermen who spent weeks in

water at a stretch) than by indirect users, whose interaction were limited to using the water for prayers, or simply relaxing beside the river. The purity conflict and the reality-imagination dichotomy can be viewed here too. The indirect users did believe the water could heal with its purity, but when asked if they use the river for drinking water, they vehemently (sometime laughing with disbelief at the question) denied the safety of drinking Gangas water on a daily basis. The direct categories, for instance the fishermen, asserted the medicinal traits of the water, but accepted its polluted state and the undermining of its healing qualities now, evident to them more due to the ill effects of pollution on the fish they depended on, than on themselves.

Another aspect of life along the ghats that different users talked about was the periodic flooding of the Ganga. To some like the farmers and vendors, floods (and Ganga) meant destruction and suffering. To those in the huts along the ghats and the priests, the floods were a blessing by Maa Ganga that they welcomed despite the inconveniences it caused. To the indirect users, floods were just a natural phenomenon with its associated inconveniences. Further, there were those who had been displaced from their homes and lands

Pure waste

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for construction of the Digha Bridge (a bridge connecting northern and southern parts of Bihar) and have now been settled temporarily and without any amenities on the L.C.T Ghat. To them the river represented disruption, anger, resentment, abandonment and alienation now as opposed to their fond memories of it when they had lands in their own villages which were also along the Ganga.

To priests in particular, given Ganga was the beginning and end of all life, it was a source of immense knowledge. To mostly the indirect users, Ganga seemed to represent a guilt free garbage disposal space. While no one explicitly said so, the notion of Ganga as self-cleaning as well as sin cleaning, gives those along the ghats but not in direct or long term interaction with it, a space to dispose of unwanted goods without the guilt of dirtying it, and with the satisfaction of having purified themselves and their garbage. Instances of many ghat visitors coming to the ghats only to conveniently bow to the river first and then throw in plastic bags full of things into it, were markers of such a service provided by Ganga. Also, even as the river has moved away, and is barely the beautiful, clean, brimming river it used to be, its sacredness and peoples popular imagination of it is being used by businesses to flourish.

The illegal and dangerously built apartment constructions, the brick kilns, the recreational spots and supporting infrastructures like roads and parking spaces, or the Ganga Resort are all examples of such capitalization on peoples social associations with Ganga.

Further, indirect interactions tended to value the river culturally and in terms of beauty, spiritual and religious journeys while direct interactions tended to value the Ganga as their lifeline, as their saviour, protector, home and provider - with locational users being in between this spectrum. The former relation with the river and the associated uses (aesthetic, spiritual, religious experience) can be shifted to another resource. As a result, changes in the condition of the river are less of a problem in the minds of people seeking sacredness or aesthetic experiences from the river, than in the minds of those who derive livelihoods from the river such as its boatmen and fishers for whom substituting what they get from the river from an alternative will be very difficult. Policies to address Ganga and its polluted state should therefore try to harness the cooperation of users who derive direct benefits as stakeholders.

Also important was the observation that the cultural imagination of Ganga is much

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stronger than the direct reality of the river as a polluted ecological resource. The absence of supporting and regulating services from the river in the imaginations of people, particularly the educated middle class (here the indirect categorys class of users), is also evident. Those in direct interaction with the river showed greater sensitivity to there being services other than livelihood (provisioning) and aesthetics (cultural). Next, direct and locational interaction users seemed more willing to see themselves as culprits, and seemed to imagine and suggest solutions to degradation in terms of collective cooperative management and policies that restrict sand mining, industrial waste discharge and so on. The indirect interaction users seemed to categorically blame the government for pollution and demanded bans on public baths, washing, and last rites rituals as well as ghat beautification efforts as solutions. Direct and indirect categories of users could hence prove to be more effective partners in both policy interventions to protect it as part of state initiatives as well as effective community based common pool resource managers.

Lastly and most importantly, what struck me the most throughout the study is the strange disconnect people seem to have between an imagination of Ganga as a bubbling, brimming,

sparkling, clear stream of water gushing and flowing through the plains, and the reality of the river which is clearly different with changing courses, dirty, even toxic waters, a thinning stream and diminishing current/flow. So strong is this imagination and so ingrained the will to hold on to it, that despite easily being proved false, the imagination is what stays. This is problematic because it hampers the ability to recognise supporting and regulating services provided by the river in addition to others and allows the divinity discourse to become dominant. It prevents us from realising that if the river dies, it will affect life itself which no amount of mental images or prayers will restore, that not only will a goddess leave in anger but an entire source of life would wither away, causing impacts on health, livelihoods and local ecologies.

Imagination vs reality