How do we protect living entities?

The government wants to clean River Ganga which is holy to all Hindus and provides drinking and irrigation to hundreds of millions of people. To that end it has constituted a National Ganga River Basin Authority and empowered it to authorise projects costing up to Rs 10 billion. In March, the Uttarakhand High Court declared both Ganga and Yamuna living entities and appointed the Chief Secretary and Advocate General of the state to represent the rivers. Everyday millions of gallons of untreated industrial waste is discharged into the Ganga. The Yamuna passes through Delhi which discharges 850 million gallons of raw sewage into the river everyday. The river is practically dead. India is not the only country with a problem of how to dispose of vast amounts of sewage. The US also has a similar problem. In St Louis, 13 billion gallons of sewage contaminated rain water flows into the Mississippi River after every rain storm. This happens 50 times a year. St Louis is to spend $4.7 billion over 23 years to build a system of huge sewers to collect rain water which will then be treated. $4.7 billion converts to about Rs 305 billion at today's exchange rate but since labor costs in India are low a similar system in Delhi should cost much less. There is no patent on sewers so we can easily copy what St Louis is doing. In St Louis authorities are demolishing deserted houses and converting the vacant land into rain gardens, which will soak up water and prevent a run off. That would be impossible in Delhi because of population pressure on land. How many men are employed to build the tunnels in St Louis? Just 30. In India there would be thousands with picks and shovels, resulting in poor construction. Paris started building sewers in the 13th century and today has over 1,300 miles of sewers, which have become a tourist attraction. London built its sewers in the 19th century. In the 1944 Warsaw uprising against invading Nazi troops sewers were used extensively by Jews and Polish resistance fighters. Apart from cleaning up our rivers treating raw sewage can give huge economic returns because the effluent can be used for agriculture. This is already happening in other parts of the world. Every year everyone in India prays for adequate monsoon rains and predictions of a normal monsoon lifts the stock market. Moving from sewers to roads, London roads have subtle messages for people with weak vision. The UK government also publishes a Highway Code which lays down guidelines for road users and is mandatory for passing driving tests. Banning sale of alcohol within 500 meters of highways will hardly save lives if no one knows how to drive. Its all out there. All we have to do is copy.