Sarthak Goswami’s ‘pooja ya dhong’ critique points to documented sewage failures in the Ganga at Rishikesh

In a June 18, 2026 Instagram reel, digital creator Sarthak Goswami argues that revering the Ganga as “maa” sits uneasily with conduct that pollutes the river. He cites an example from Rishikesh in which a person documenting untreated sewage entering the Ganga was reportedly answered by someone insisting that he say “Ganga Maa,” and he also criticises people who leave puja material and plastic in rivers. The reel’s caption frames the question as “Pooja ya Dhong?!”

The reel establishes Goswami’s commentary, not the underlying environmental facts. Independent official evidence, however, supports the central concern about sewage management in Rishikesh. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s performance audit of Uttarakhand’s implementation of the Namami Gange programme, tabled on March 10, 2026, found major gaps in sewage infrastructure. For Rishikesh including Tapovan and Muni Ki Reti, the audit recorded 34,756 households but only 9,966 sewer connections—28.67 per cent—and attributed the partial connectivity to a lack of sewer lines and deficient treatment capacity.

The audit also found operational problems that go beyond household connections. It documented sewage-treatment plants in Uttarakhand that were releasing untreated sewage because of capacity, damage or operational failures. Separately, the Central Pollution Control Board recorded a compliance failure at the 3 MLD Swargashram sewage treatment plant in Rishikesh: the plant was operational but not complying with discharge standards, and treated sewage was being discharged into the Ganga contrary to its consent condition. CPCB directed Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan to improve operation and maintenance and comply with sewage-discharge norms.

This makes the reel’s broader environmental criticism substantially grounded: the gap between symbolic reverence for a river and its physical protection is not only a matter of individual littering. In Rishikesh, official records document infrastructure, connectivity and treatment failures that can undermine river-cleaning goals despite public expenditure and formal pollution-control programmes. The stronger public-interest issue is therefore institutional as well as behavioural: religious respect, individual waste practices, sewer connections, treatment capacity and plant operation all affect the condition of the river.

There is also a factual basis for concern about religious waste entering water bodies, although the reel generalises from common behaviour rather than quantifying its prevalence. CPCB’s revised idol-immersion guidance warns that plastic and other materials associated with religious immersion can degrade water quality and calls for safer materials, designated immersion arrangements and proper solid-waste disposal. That supports the environmental principle behind Goswami’s criticism, but it does not establish how frequently worshippers in Rishikesh throw plastic or puja material into the Ganga, nor does this reel itself document a specific Chhath Puja pollution event.

The evidence therefore supports a bounded conclusion. Goswami’s specific anecdote about a commenter correcting “Ganga” to “Ganga Maa” has not been independently traced here, and the reel alone cannot prove the exact untreated-sewage scene he describes. But the underlying claim that Rishikesh has faced serious sewage-treatment and sewer-connectivity failures affecting the Ganga is independently documented by the CAG and CPCB. The significance is that river protection cannot be reduced either to ritual behaviour or to rhetoric: official infrastructure and enforcement outcomes are measurable parts of the same public responsibility.