The Union Budget 2026-27 has once again underlined the government’s intent to clean and rejuvenate the Ganga, but a closer look at allocations shows that the approach remains firmly infrastructure-driven, with limited attention to restoring the river as a living ecological system. Despite repeated political commitments to revive the Ganga in its entirety, spending priorities continue to favour sewage treatment plants, wastewater networks and externally funded engineering projects over measures that address river flow, floodplains, biodiversity and livelihoods.
The budget, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2026, allocates Rs 3,100 crore to the National Ganga Plan under Namami Gange Mission-2 for the coming financial year. While this marks an increase over the revised estimate of Rs 2,687 crore for 2025-26, it still falls short of the earlier budget target of Rs 3,400 crore, signalling that planned spending in the previous year was not fully utilised.
Higher allocation, muted political emphasis
Even as allocations have risen on paper, rivers did not find a mention in the Finance Minister’s Budget speech. There was no reference to the Ganga, Yamuna or broader river rejuvenation initiatives, raising questions about the political priority accorded to ecological restoration. The Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation has been allocated Rs 19,912.98 crore for 2026-27, marginally higher than last year’s revised figure but significantly lower than the original estimate of over Rs 25,000 crore for 2025-26.
This gap between projected and actual spending points to delays, rollovers and a continued reliance on incremental increases rather than a decisive financial push.
Engineering solutions dominate funding
A substantial portion of the Ganga budget continues to be channelled into externally aided projects backed by agencies such as the World Bank, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Asian Development Bank. These projects, which have received an allocation of Rs 600 crore for 2026-27, focus largely on sewage treatment plants, drainage interception and urban wastewater infrastructure, often implemented through public-private partnerships.
The prominence of foreign-funded projects reinforces a model that treats river pollution primarily as a technical wastewater problem. Meanwhile, the programme component funded through domestic budgetary support has been set at Rs 2,500 crore, covering administration, monitoring and smaller interventions, but without a clear line item for large-scale ecological restoration.
Rivers viewed as project sites, not ecosystems
What is notably absent from the budget is any significant funding for maintaining environmental flows, protecting floodplains, regulating sand mining or supporting river-dependent communities. These elements are widely recognised by scientists and environmentalists as essential for long-term river health.
Instead, the Ganga increasingly appears to be managed as a project site, where success is measured by kilometres of pipelines laid and treatment capacity added, rather than by improvements in ecological integrity. While official narratives continue to describe the Ganga as a living entity, the budgetary architecture suggests a narrow focus on pollution control infrastructure.
Mega water projects overshadow river rejuvenation
The imbalance becomes clearer when the Ganga Mission is compared with other water-sector priorities. The Polavaram irrigation project alone has been allocated Rs 3,320 crore for 2026-27, exceeding the entire Ganga Mission budget. River interlinking has received over Rs 1,900 crore, while large irrigation schemes under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana continue to command thousands of crores.
These comparisons indicate that national water policy remains tilted towards dams, canals and large-scale engineering works, with river rejuvenation occupying a relatively modest financial space.
Other rivers left further behind
Beyond the Ganga, funding constraints are even more stark. Other rivers depend on the National River Conservation Directorate, which has limited resources to support pollution control in basins such as the Yamuna (outside the Ganga basin), Gomti, Sabarmati and Mahanadi. For 2026-27, project funding for rivers outside the Ganga stands at around Rs 550 crore, a fraction of what is allocated to the Ganga alone.
As with the Ganga, this funding is largely directed at sewage and wastewater infrastructure, leaving little room for ecological restoration. Taken together, the Budget suggests that while river revival remains a powerful idea in public discourse, government spending continues to prioritise infrastructure-led cleaning over restoring rivers as dynamic, living ecosystems both for the Ganga and for India’s wider river network.