The environmental cost of disposing the dead in the Ganga

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Editor's note: This is the 11th edition of Thirty-six, The Morning Context’s weekly newsletter on countless ecosystems in flux across India. Images of corpses lying around on the banks of the Ganga captured the media’s attention during the second wave of the pandemic. Critics said it was proof that Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath was playing down the spread of COVID-19 in the state. Indeed, even as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the lives of residents, the Uttar Pradesh government was busy mounting a PR offensive. It denied oxygen shortage in hospitals, built walls around crematoriums and refused to accept its role in superspreader events like the state-wide panchayat elections in April.  But the practice of disposing of the dead in the river is an old tradition. Some people do so for religious reasons, others because they can’t afford to cremate the dead. An estimated 3,000 bodies are recovered from the Ganga every year.  There was a time when this didn’t matter. The mighty Ganga could wash off everything: man, animal, sewage or sin. But over the last few decades, the …