A river writes back: On granting rivers the rights they deserve

As the north-eastern states face devastating floods, rivers are wreaking havoc. Meanwhile, other parts of the country are experiencing the opposite — drying rivers that are severely impacting soil health, agriculture, and the livelihoods of millions who depend on them. The critical role of rivers in shaping, sustaining, and nurturing life has captured the imagination of writers, artists, and scholars for centuries.

In ancient Hindu thought, the Ganga is not a river — she is a mother, a bearer of life, and a silent witness of history. For thousands of years, poets, priests, and pilgrims have gathered at her banks, offering both flowers and ashes.

But in the courtroom, such reverence has not translated into responsibility. For Indian rivers today, personhood is poetry — but not yet law. And yet, the idea is not as far-fetched as it once seemed.

In 2017, the Uttarakhand High Court declared the Ganga and Yamuna “living entities” with the rights of a legal person. For a brief moment, the river had standing in a court of law.

It could, in theory, sue a polluter, resist a dam, or demand its flow be restored. But the decision was swiftly stayed by the Supreme Court, citing practical difficulties: Who would represent the river? Who would be liable if the river “committed” harm, like flooding? And so, the Ganga retreated once more to her pre-modern role — sacred but silent.

Eight years later, in 2025, the waters are rising again — this time not just in volume, but in voice.

Earlier this year, Rajya Sabha MP Satnam Singh Sandhu introduced a Bill proposing that Indian rivers be granted legal personhood through statute. In a nation where rivers are worshipped yet routinely strangled by concrete and sewage, the symbolism is powerful. But what matters more is the potential shift in power — from human dominion to ecological dignity.

We have reached the limits of technocratic solutions to ecological collapse.

India’s flagship Namami Gange mission, launched with fanfare by the PM in 2014, has spent tens of thousands of crores and built miles of sewage infrastructure.

Yet, the state of Yamuna in Delhi remains a chemical soup — where fish die-offs are common, and residents routinely gag at the stench along its banks. No amount of money can revive a river if its right to flow, breathe, and simply exist isn’t recognised in law.

In February, a Supreme Court-appointed committee reported that illegal embankments had been constructed through Kalesar National Park, obstructing the Yamuna’s natural flow. On paper, it was a clear violation of forest and water laws. But the implications ran deeper. These embankments were not just environmental infractions- they were symbolic of a larger rupture — the quiet, everyday mutilation of riverine systems under the guise of “development.” When a river’s path is bent without its consent, it is not merely diverted, it is disenfranchised.

Climate activist Ridhima Pandey — who first came into national consciousness for suing the government over climate inaction — also stood against the Kalasa-Banduri diversion project in Karnataka. Her protest was aimed at a legal framework that treats rivers as passive infrastructure rather than living systems with embedded rights.

These are not isolated acts of environmental negligence. They are democratic failures in slow motion. Rivers may not cast votes, but they irrigate the very geographies our electoral maps are drawn on. To exclude them from legal personhood is to ignore that their depletion undermines the people who depend on them and the constitutional promises made to those people.

Critics scoff. They warn of legal absurdities.

Who defends the river in court? Can a river own property? The answer lies not in abandoning the project but in refining it. Guardianship models — where citizens, tribal councils, or environmental boards act as legal stewards have worked elsewhere. In New Zealand, Maori iwi serve as co-guardians. India, too, can empower communities that have lived with and for rivers, rather than outsourcing custodianship to bureaucratic boards 500 kilometres away.

It is a reckoning with the doctrine of human supremacy. Our legal system, forged in colonial logic, sees rivers as resources, not relationships. They are either dams to be built or drains to be dredged. But this worldview has failed us. Climate change is not just an engineering challenge; it is a civilisational crisis. The law must evolve.

To grant rivers rights is not to anthropomorphize them, but to decolonise the way we see the world. This is critical for their being and sustenance through a realisation and recognition of rights that matter.

The Ganga, after all, has outlived empires. She will likely outlast this one too. But what shape will she take — choked and canalised, or flowing freely as a subject of law and reverence? Personhood is not a silver bullet, but it is a beginning — a way of saying that the river has been speaking all along. It's time we learned to listen.

(The writer is a professor of Economics and dean, IDEAS, Office of Inter Disciplinary Studies; director, Centre for New Economics Studies, Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities.)