On February 20, the Uttar Pradesh government issued a statement which quoted a Padma Shri awardee scientist to “debunk doubts” about the purity of Ganga water amid the Mahakumbh. This came days after the Central Pollution Control Board had pointed out that faecal coliform levels in the river were 13 times above the standards considered safe for bathing.
Citing “scientific evidence” by Dr Ajai Kumar Sonkar, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also hit back at critics in the UP Vidhan Sabha.
It did not matter that Sonkar’s work did not pass the basic tenets of accepted scientific research – peer review and publication.
No such study, in fact, was published in any scientific journal. The only evidence that this study actually exists is a video on Sonkar’s YouTube page in which he performs an unmonitored experiment on alleged samples of Ganga water which he had collected himself.
But even before this video was out on February 25, vast sections of the legacy media, including a prominent news anchor, several newspapers and digital media outlets, had already amplified Sonkar’s claims to underline the Ganga’s purity.
‘Every river has self-cleansing property’
Aaj Tak’s Sudhir Chaudhary, in his primetime show Black and White on February 24, dedicated a major segment to discussing Dr Sonkar’s work.
“Ganga ka paani ekdum shuddh”, said the headline of the segment that featured an interview with the scientist. Based on the study, Chaudhary said the Ganga has certain viruses called bacteriophages that “destroy the bacteria before they can flourish”. He said there are “not 10, not 20, not 50 but rather 1,100 such viruses which do not let the Ganga get polluted under any circumstances” and that “even if 8 crore people in the world bathe in the Sangam, the water in the Ganga cannot be infected or become dirty”.
Notably, bacteriophages are not unique to the Ganga. They can be found anywhere bacterias are found, and high levels of bacteriophages can only exist in the presence of high levels of bacteria. In fact, bacteriophages are often an indicator of faecal contamination by sewage water.
Chaudhary also went on to question that if the “Ganga water was actually so polluted [as the CPCB report claims], these 63 crore people would have fallen sick or had some sort of infection…but all these people are perfectly healthy”. He mentioned the celebrities and politicians who had taken a dip in the river, and how they all believed that there was “nothing more pure than taking a dip in the Ganga”.
In a conversation with Newslaundry, environmentalist Vimlendu Jha pointed out the problems with this study and its portrayal by the media. “Dr Sonkar’s study doesn’t claim that there is no coliform level, he just claims that there is an extra self-cleansing property that the river has. There is, of course, a self-cleansing capacity, but that is with every river. If the environmental flow of a river is maintained, and if there is a release of fresh water, automatically the aquatic life will increase and that rejuvenates the river. If there are 40 or 50 crore people who are defecating there, who are bathing there, then to say that the Ganga is clean is just not humanely possible.”
“There is data since (former PM) Rajiv Gandhi’s time to show that the Ganga is polluted. If it had such self-cleansing properties, what was the need to spend thousands of crores of rupees on Ganga cleaning projects?”
When asked about the claim that more people would have fallen sick if Ganga was really as polluted as the CPCB report suggests, Jha said, “Just because people do not faint and die in Delhi, does not mean that Delhi’s air is not polluted. Contaminated water has long-term impacts. That does not mean mortality, it means morbidity of some kind.”
In 2017, an NGT verdict had underlined that several factors such as untreated waste, water extraction, and impacted water flow were affecting the Ganga’s self-cleansing properties.
What the others said
Several prominent outlets like News Nation, ETV Bharat, Times of India, Economic Times, Business Today, MSN and MoneyControl – were quick to publish articles quoting Dr Sonkar and about his study without any investigation or fact-checking.
News Nation uploaded a video interview with Dr Sonkar on February 22 where the reporter went on to say that the test conducted by him in his lab “dismisses all claims of Ganga contamination”.
ETV Bharat published an article stating that Dr Sonkar conducted a “daring” experiment by drinking the water to prove that it was safe for consumption. “His findings completely disproved the claims that Ganga water is not suitable for bathing and drinking,” read the piece.
The Times of India reported on the study using words like “confirmed” and “revealed”, instead of saying the study had claimed or stated.
MoneyControl referred to Sonkar’s claim as a “groundbreaking discovery” while Business Today said the findings were highlighted during Mahakumbh where millions of people had taken holy dips without impacting the river’s “germ-free status”.
Update at 2.20 pm on March 5: Responding to questions by Newslaundry through his team at Pearl India, Sonkar said that the analysis “was not a formal research study but rather an investigation inspired by the CPCB’s findings”.
“This analysis of the Ganga’s water, conducted during the Kumbh festival, was not a formal research study, but rather an investigation inspired by the CPCB’s findings. Water analysis is a routine activity in my laboratory, and such day-to-day reports typically aren’t published in scientific journals. The same applies to the CPCB report, which also has not been published in a journal. To offer an analogy: if a doctor tests a patient’s blood, urine, and stool and provides a report, would the patient ask the doctor in which medical journal the report was published?”
“As for the claim that fecal coliform bacteria cannot proliferate below 20°C and produce organic acids, these are established scientific facts. You can easily verify this information through independent research using the internet.”
“Finally, considering millions of people were taking dips in the Ganga, many of their skin microbiomes – such as Staphylococcus, Propionibacterium, Streptococcus, and Corynebacterium – would naturally have entered the water. Why wasn’t this detected in the CPCB report? Fecal coliform is an intestinal bacterium, and it does not naturally reside on human skin.”
Read the full response here.
Newslaundry had reported on the Kumbh and all the ground realities behind the government’s tall claims. (Here, here, here, and here.) So if you want to do something to make the media better, join us today.
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