The IET India IoT Panel consults with the National Mission for Clean Ganga

The members of the IET India IoT Panel, an IoT focussed panel of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) India, were invited to consult the Government of India’s National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) to discuss the ways to clean Ganga and its tributaries in a comprehensive manner. Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman of the IET India IoT Panel, Mr. Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head of the IET, Mr Vivek Mehrotra, Chairman of the IET India IoT Panel’s Ganga Rejuvenation Working Group and other senior members of the IET India IoT panel met Shri Upendra Prasad Singh, Director General, NMCG recently to discuss the four main areas of concern with respect to NMCG. The leaders discussed and tried to identify ways to improve the water flow in Ganga, better treatment of pollutants via sewage and effluent treatment plants, need for controlling unregulated sewage, open defecation etc., and handling chemical run off from agricultural lands (fertilisers and pesticides) as well as effective means to manage cremetorial wastes in Ganga.

National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) is the implementation wing of National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), but now works under the control of Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation. NMCG aims not only at cleaning the river Ganga and its Ghats but also is setting up various biodiversity centres, crematoria and other construction and modernizations of Ghats along the banks of river Ganga. With an aim to support NMCG to put an end to the growing problem, the IET India IoT Panel, the only neutral body, that focuses not only on technology but the application aspect of IoT in various segments, formed a Ganga Rejuvenation Working Group which aims to device a high level plan on how the panel could contribute towards alleviating these pain points. The working group will also create a pavilion at the IoT India Congress 2017, which is an annual event organised by the IET, with a special focus on the National Clean Ganga Mission.

Commenting on the panel’s focus on Clean Ganga Mission, Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman, IET India IoT Panel said, “Ganga, the sacred river of India provides water to about 40% of India’s population but unfortunately it is amongst the most polluted rivers in the country. There have been various movements and action plans since 1986 to save Ganga, however, we see that the health of the river has been deteriorating. In order to support the government’s efforts to resuscitate the river, the IET India-IoT panel is devising an IoT solution which will help in the river rejuvenation, cleanliness and conservation of our precious national resource. The solution will monitor the waste disposed to the river and control it. We are very excited about this project which will help in the revival of one the most sacred river on Indian soil.”

Vivek Mehrotra, Chairman of Ganga Rejuvenation team, IET India IoT Panel and Regional Director, GE Digital also commented, “Cleaning Ganga river and maintaining its cleanliness is a huge task which requires multilevel collaboration from the society, universities, industries and government. With great support from the Government and other relevant bodies, the IET has joined hands to bring in the latest from industries to support this mission. Concepts like Internet of Things (IoT) and how it can help achieve this mission by brining-in together not only the ‘things’ but also the ‘people’ could be of great success. Proving the real time information of pollution status to the river, enabling and assisting the industries & societies to find alternate means of disposal of waste can help reduce the pollution to a greater extent.

The IET team met with Mr. Upendra Singh, DG NMCG to understand his vision and discuss how it can be achieved collaboratively. The idea is to create several groups of smaller task forces involving people from universities, colleges and society, at the local level around the river basin, in this mission at multiple directions including spreading the awareness in addition to IoT based system deployments. We have to start small to see the results quickly and replicate the success to the entire river basin.”

Mr. Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country head of the IET, India mentioned, “We are excited to be a part of this initiative. It is important that we apply advanced technologies like internet-of-things to solve such problems that the country has been facing from a long time. The IET sees IoT as a strong tool to influence our future well-being. The members at the IET IoT Panel are already involved at various projects that involve usage and implementation of IoT solutions and a large number of those solutions impact common citizens in India. We encourage more interested people to become part of the IoT movement in India with the IET IoT Panel.”