Clean Ganga Fund: Rs.

66 crore and
counting
Clean Ganga Fund (CGF), an initiative launched by the NDA government as part of its ambitious
mission to cleanse the Ganga river, has received donations to the tune of over Rs. 66 crore till
August this year.

The Union Cabinet gave its approval for setting up of CGF in September 2014 with the aim of
utilising the collection for various activities under the ‘Namami Gange’ programme for cleaning
the holy river.

Utilisation of funds

* Cleaning up of the Ganga

* Setting up of waste treatment plants

* Conservation of biotic diversity of the river

* Development of public amenities

* Activities such as Ghat redevelopment and Research and Development and innovative projects.

Contributions

According to official sources, CGF has received around Rs. 66.20 crore till August 14 this year.
Of the amount, Public Sector Undertakings alone have contributed about Rs. 13 crore between
April and mid-August 2015.

Private companies have contributed over Rs. 45 lakh in the current fiscal, while individual
contributions stood at Rs. 15 lakh during the period. Individual contributions, the sources said,
range from anywhere between Rs. 55 and over Rs. 5 lakh.

Non-Resident Indians too have shown interest to make the river Ganga pollution-free. NRIs from
Australia, Singapore and the USA have contributed for the purpose. They have donated Rs. 6.60
lakh between September 2014 and March this year and around Rs. 2.50 lakh from April to
August, 2015.

The government received contributions of over Rs. 50 crore in the period between establishment
of GCF and the end of the last fiscal.

“People from all walks of life are donating. The trend of donations to CGF shows that it is
picking up,” an official source claimed.
The central government had announced 100 per cent tax exemption in Corporate Social
Responsibility activities for donations to Clean Ganga Fund.

The Union Cabinet had given its nod last year to set up CGF for voluntary contributions from
residents of the country, NRIs and Persons of Indian Origin and others to harness their
enthusiasm to contribute towards conservation of the river.

The government had announced that the fund would be managed by a Trust to be headed by the
Finance Minister, and the secretariat of the Trust will be set up in the Ministry of Water
Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation under the Clean Ganga Mission
Director.

Take a bus
Last weekend in his “Mann ki baat”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought up road safety,
saying “One accident takes place every minute in India”. The data from the Ministry of Road
Transport supports his statements: In 2012, five people died every day, on average, in road
accidents in Delhi, four in Chennai and two in Bangalore. While “driver error” is cited as the
leading cause, congestion is surely the leading enabler. Simply put, if we have too many vehicles
on the road, they are more likely to bump into each other. We’re driving slower too – congestion
has more than halved average driving speeds in many metros in the past 10 years. Yet we also
have more people moving into cities and getting wealthier, leading to more vehicles in the road
each year. What to do?

We saw last time that metros were perhaps too expensive for all cities in India given the high
levels (about 60%) of two wheelers in the traffic. Why is this? The cost per km for a two wheeler
driver is One rupee per kilometre, making a fare of Rs. 40 per person per trip too expensive. Let
us therefore look at other successful (and the less successful) examples of Bus Rapid Transport
System (BRTS).

Buses are unglamorous and considered “uncool”. And there’s the pity. Public imagination is
unfortunately caught up with metros and electric cars – neither of which will provide the solution
that buses can for the twin problems of climate change and congestion – if and only if certain
conditions are met.

What are those? Well, the poster child of a BRTS is the Transmilenio operating in Bogota in
Colombia. Up to 1,500 buses carry 1.4 million riders daily in its 100+ km network. Success can
also be found closer to home in the Ahmedabad BRTS.

The salient features of these good systems are (a) dedicated lanes – this is the key point for a
successful rapid transit system: you want a system that is predictable and fast? Give it a separate
lane (or two). Allowing irate car drivers, giggly teenagers on scooters and cows to share a lane
with a bus system is to make it a slow bus system. (b) Offline ticket collection mechanisms:
Successful BRTS have ticket dispensers in the stations, and the passenger cannot board a bus
without a ticket. (c) Predictable and Frequent Schedules on clean and convenient buses: If a bus
comes only every hour and sometimes not even then, it is unlikely a person with access to private
transport will choose to travel on the bus.

This was the hallmark of the TVS Bus service that served Madurai in the past. Buses were clean
and they ran on time to a published schedule. “You can set your watch by the TVS bus” was the
popular adage, and that contributed in no small measure to the success of the service. Most
modern BRTS have low floor or flat floor buses that are level with the platform allowing for
easy and quick boarding (d) a meaningful network: the Transmilenio has 112 km length in its
network; Ahmedabad’s’ Janmarg has 85 km in its network; with a station every 500m.

In contrast, the hugely unpopular and unsuccessful Delhi BRTS had a ridiculously small 5.8 km
in its network. If we were to examine how to fail, the Delhi BRTS would show us the way: Short
network and shared lanes -- police rarely notice let alone punish those who get into the
“dedicated lanes” for the buses. Add to this the lack of coordination with the metro schedules.
On-board ticket collection allows Mrs. Kapoor to fiddle for change in her commodious handbag
forever. Steps in the buses cause delays in boarding. Lack of public engagement leads to lengthy
media campaigns against the BRTS. Why do we even feign surprise at its failure?

We need an affordable rapid transit system in many of our larger cities. Evan Auyang, the
Deputy MD of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company – one of the largest bus operators in the world
and one of the providers of public bus services in Hong Kong, says that a rapid bus transit
system is a great choice for a country with limited capital to spend and an essential part of the
urban public transport mix. Prof. Shivanand Swamy of CEPT, who designed the Ahmedabad’s
BRTS says much of the resistance to a BRTS comes from the image of a slow, low cost system
that takes away road space from a car. Politicians would love to spend on a glitzy metro instead
as a concrete, but perhaps not credible, testament to their actions. This resistance needs to be
overcome, because as he says, we cannot have mobility for the masses if we don’t make space
for the climate-friendly, economical bus. In his words: “Dream of a metro; try and build a
BRTS.”