In 2018, the Indian ascetic G.D. Agrawal died on the 111th day of a hunger strike protesting the continued pollution of the Ganges River. Mr. Agrawal had subsisted for over one hundred days on only honey, lemon, and water, and in his final week of life he gave up all sustenance, including water. Although hunger strikes are a common part of public life in India, deaths are relatively rare, a fact that illustrates G. D. Agrawal’s intense commitment to his goal.
Mr. Agrawal certainly had a point. The Ganges is one of the most polluted rivers in the world, and this has direct negative impacts on the health and safety of the millions of Indians who depend on the river. The water is filled with dangerous bacteria that kill thousands of Indians a year, and water-borne diseases in the Ganges river-basin cost Indian families an estimated $4 billion a year. Even worse, the bacteria are becoming resistant to standard anti-biotics. Anti-microbial resistance, as this phenomenon is known, has been called a slow-motion pandemic, with the potential to cause 10 million deaths by 2050. The next global health disaster could be evolving in the polluted Ganges right now.
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