It was not the spending of hundreds of crores of rupees in cleaning the Ganga that made the average Indian who takes a dip in the river, sit up and acknowledge something that the world had known for long. The Ganga was polluted. And highly polluted at that.

At Patna, a few days after celebrating the venerated Chhath festival on the banks of the Ganga, several devotees had eruptions, red spots and other skin irritations all over their bodies. Apparently, it was the