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River of Life, River of Death: The Ganges and India's Future 1st Edition

by Victor Mallet (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 48 ratings
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India is killing the Ganges, and the Ganges in turn is killing India. The waterway that has nourished more people than any on earth for three millennia is now so polluted with sewage and toxic waste that it has become a menace to human and animal health.

Victor Mallet traces the holy river from source to mouth, and from ancient times to the present day, to find that the battle to rescue what is arguably the world's most important river is far from lost. As one Hindu sage told the author in Rishikesh on the banks of the upper Ganges (known to Hindus as the goddess Ganga): "If Ganga dies, India dies. If Ganga thrives, India thrives. The lives of 500 million people is no small thing."

Drawing on four years of first-hand reporting and detailed historical and scientific research, Mallet delves into the religious, historical, and biological mysteries of the Ganges, and explains how Hindus can simultaneously revere and abuse their national river.

Starting at the Himalayan glacier where the Ganges emerges pure and cold from an icy cave known as the "Cow's Mouth" and ending in the tiger-infested mangrove swamps of the Bay of Bengal, Mallet encounters everyone from the naked holy men who worship the river, to the engineers who divert its waters for irrigation, the scientists who study its bacteria, and Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister, who says he wants to save India's mother-river for posterity.

Can they succeed in saving the river from catastrophe - or is it too late?
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Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0198786174
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0198786177
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    December 19, 2017
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    8.6 x 1.4 x 5.5 inches
  8. Print length
    344 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book is well written and easy to read, even for a non-specialist audience...there is much to learn from River of Life, River of Death, and it is to be hoped that Mallet will repeat his journey down the Ganges in a decade or two to update us on the fate of this extraordinary river." -- Kenneth Bo Nielsen, University of Oslo, Pacific Affairs

"Victor is one of those rare foreign journalists who not only likes and understands India but, in addition, has the capacity to see its faults as well as impartially assess the efforts it's making to correct them. This means his coverage of India is always informed and thought-provoking. Even when sympathetic he's never biased. I, therefore, implicitly trust his views and I have always learnt a lot from his writing."--Karan Thapar, journalist, television commentator and interviewer

"To try and fathom the wonders and follies of India through a river is grand ambitionand Victor Mallet pulls it off!"--Gurcharan Das, author of India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good

"An extraordinary and fascinating combination of history, geography, environment, politics, religion, and much more. Written with affection for and understanding of a country of special importance. This is a river of unsurpassed significance on the world stage, whose flow and life is traced from the Himalayas to the Sunderbans and the Bay of Bengal. Not just the story of an often difficult past but also of hope for a possible healthy and attractive future."--Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government at LSE

"The book, like the Ganges, is stately, somewhat meandering, but fascinating and nourishing, and well worth a visit." -- Peter Admirand, newbooks.asia

About the Author

Victor Mallet is a journalist and author who has reported for three decades from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, first for Reuters and then for the Financial Times. From 2012 to 2016 he was based in New Delhi as the FT's South Asia Bureau Chief, and is currently in Hong Kong as Asia News Editor. His highly praised book on the south-east Asian industrial revolution and the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, The Trouble with Tigers (HarperCollins), was first published in 1999. He twice won the Society of Publishers in Asia award for opinion writing. In India, he was awarded the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism as a foreign correspondent for a 2012 feature about the rise of Narendra Modi.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (December 19, 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198786174
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198786177
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.11 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.6 x 1.4 x 5.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 48 ratings

About the author

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Victor Mallet

Victor Mallet

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Victor Mallet - https://victormallet.org - is an author and journalist who has reported for three decades from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, first for Reuters and then for the Financial Times. From 2012 to 2016 he was based in New Delhi as the FT South Asia bureau chief, and is currently in Hong Kong as the FT Asia news editor.

River of Life, River of Death - his new book on the Ganges - is to be published by Oxford University Press in October 2017. The Trouble with Tigers (HarperCollins), his highly praised book on the south-east Asian industrial revolution and the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, was first published in 1999.

He twice won the Society of Publishers in Asia award for opinion writing. In India, he was twice awarded the Ramnath Goenka foreign correspondent's award for excellence in journalism – in 2012 for a feature about the rise of Narendra Modi, and in 2015 for a magazine cover story on the Ganges.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
48 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ramesh G
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Sad Story of Nonsense
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2020
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'..this may sound nonsensical. Well, India is a country of nonsense'
- many if not most Indians may agree with this observation, by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, remarking on India's numerous, maddening contradictions .
There is very little in Victor Mallet's book on the Ganges that will surprise even the casual observer of Indian life - we talk big 'Clean India' etc, 'Modi-ji' and his RSS buddies pass laws to purify India's culture for Hindus, while all along the most iconic natural symbol of India's culture, from Vedic times, the Ganga river is in substantial parts nothing more than a stream of feces, corpses and leather tannery pollution.
As old as India, Indians talk a lot, wring their hands, praise Hindu Vedas, the God Shiva and Vishnu, but blame someone something else for the sewer running by their feet.
why praise a book that only tells you what you already know!? -
the solutions are also well known - eliminate open defecation, treat the sewage (imagine that!), dont let tanneries dump chromium directly into the river water.
But Mallet provides interesting insights - Why do people still believe, as Mark Twain apparently observed, that drinking Gangajal is self purifying, even as corpses float by in sewage flowing into the holy river?
How does the growth of 'superbugs' - antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria, exchanging genes in high speed evolution, not yet kill millions in India and around the world?
apparently the secret could be in the bacteriophages - these are like viruses, which thrive in the sewage attack and live on the superbug bacteria - this titanic struggle of Nature keeps the humans alive in its midst.
it is small miracles like this that keep life going on in India, can we count on it for ever?

Used to be that we thought that Indian govt, the local authorities just did not have the resources, but the shocking, perhaps not shocking, truth is that funding is there, the grand public announcements are made, great gestures are proposed, but then nothing happens, the sh it still flows on!
the hope I suppose is that someone somewhere, among India's cricketers, Bollywood stars, or even ordinary people will care enough to do what is already known as solution.
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Amy Lentz
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful look at a river that is vital to millions
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2018
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Excellent well researched book on the Ganga river and the importance it plays in millions of lives. I started reading on a recent trip to India and thoroughly enjoyed!
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Rajiv Chopra
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. Depressing for an Indian
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2019
This is, at once, an excellent and most depressing book for an Indian.

Victor Mallet has written the book very well. I would say that his treatment has been exceptional. He dives into side topics like the treatment of the river, in Hindi movies. He talks of the mythology. This does give the reader a more rounded view of the river, and this is the aspect of the river of life that he is talking about.

It also helps to alleviate the depression we feel when we read about the pollution, the callousness of the Indian officials, and the way in which many people deceive themselves with a religious view

The book is approachable, despite the huge amount of research that has been done. It is a book that should be read by many Indians.
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Benjamin Mastaitis
5.0 out of 5 stars The Ganges needs help!
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2018
This is an excellent book and illustrates the immense challenges we face in dealing with the human impact on our natural world. The Ganges is culturally very important to Hindus in India, but the book tells how this devotion to the "Ganga" has played a role in making it a virtual open sewer its entire length. The book details the Ganges' rich cultural history and also details the industries, such as the tanneries and industrial plants at Kanpur, that continue to dump untreated chemicals in the river. Also the book illustrates the problem of improper sanitation and waste water treatment in India. It boggles my mind, reading it, why wealthy foundations and groups cannot combine their resources to build modern sanitation facilities in India. It would benefit the people and help to restore the Ganges and keep filth and waste from flowing into the ocean. This is of course a problem the world over but this excellent book shines a spotlight on a critically important issue for all of us who live on our fragile planet.
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Ramanan Laxminarayan
5.0 out of 5 stars Clear and present danger to the Ganga and to our way of life
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2017
Just finished reading Victor Mallet's book on the Ganga and its sad conclusion that our ignorance and indifference will eventually kill ALL our rivers.
Mallet describes how the Ganga and its tributaries - whether in Uttarkhand, UP, Nepal, Bihar or West Bengal - being choked to death by diversion, plastic, sewage, effluent and pretty much every form of abuse one could heap on them. Nothing is more central to the identity and survival of India than our rivers. Thanks, Victor - for a moving work of love and for reminding us again that when the catastrophic end arrives, it will be because we didn't speak up when it counted.
6 people found this helpful
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Innotatio Technologies Private Limited
5.0 out of 5 stars I thoroughly enjoyed this lovely book
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this lovely book. The way Victor has narrated the historical aspects of it, blended it with the current state of affairs and the problems faced and then presented possible solution approaches, is really admirable. It is refreshing to get such a close perspective from someone who has been in the country only for few years. The book grips me with its accurate narrative of the religious sentiments behind Ganga skilfully blended with the beautiful description of its journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal while making one feel the pain of its abuse over decades. A must read......
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Kishan Kumar
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice and smooth reading
Reviewed in India on January 26, 2022
Verified Purchase
The writing style is good. It keeps you busy and targets something new in every chapter. I also got a good overall perspective over the problems that is faced by rivers including the Ganga. I'll not say that it is a pretty good travelling themed book if u intend to buy it with that in your mind, but I'll say its very much informative kind of book which will give you a lot of knowledge about rivers.
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Kishan Kumar
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice and smooth reading
Reviewed in India on January 26, 2022
The writing style is good. It keeps you busy and targets something new in every chapter. I also got a good overall perspective over the problems that is faced by rivers including the Ganga. I'll not say that it is a pretty good travelling themed book if u intend to buy it with that in your mind, but I'll say its very much informative kind of book which will give you a lot of knowledge about rivers.
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lisa
5.0 out of 5 stars Climate change catastrophe in India
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 5, 2019
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First class analysis and understanding of India
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Flying Bird
4.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2023
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The writer seemed very adament to dig out the Ganga River's history and its present peril situation. He took help of many references and interviews, which makes the worth reading and add it to the bookself as a valuable book.
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Kiran Ransing
4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening
Reviewed in India on November 16, 2022
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Barring a few incorrect cultural references, the book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the state of Ganga in the past and present. From the cover of the book my first impression was it must be a book about the pollution of the Ganga and remedies thereof. However, to my surprise author takes us on a Ganga voyage since the Ashokan era circa 300 BCE. Victor Mallet has done a lot of hard work in compiling all the possible references about Ganga from every imaginable source including around 7-8 Bollywood films. The frequency of quotes does make it difficult to keep the flow of reading nevertheless the reader is forced to sail through the hindrances, like the Ganga does today, with the tinge of curiosity to make Ganga breathe again.
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Kiran Ransing
4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening
Reviewed in India on November 16, 2022
Barring a few incorrect cultural references, the book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the state of Ganga in the past and present. From the cover of the book my first impression was it must be a book about the pollution of the Ganga and remedies thereof. However, to my surprise author takes us on a Ganga voyage since the Ashokan era circa 300 BCE. Victor Mallet has done a lot of hard work in compiling all the possible references about Ganga from every imaginable source including around 7-8 Bollywood films. The frequency of quotes does make it difficult to keep the flow of reading nevertheless the reader is forced to sail through the hindrances, like the Ganga does today, with the tinge of curiosity to make Ganga breathe again.
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One person found this helpful
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peter shaw
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2018
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Very good service and good book.
One person found this helpful
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