Just below the Dapka Ghat in Kanpur, a “nhala” or drainage ditch, pours raw sewage into the Ganges River. The pollution is 80% domestic and 20% industrial. Waste treatment should have been addressed by the Ganga Action Plan of 1985 but, like many of India’s environmental programs, it didn’t bear fruit because of the size of the issue and complexity of the political action required to solve it. In the meantime, the number of leather factories has jumped from 175 to over 400, substantially increasing the amount of waste disposed in the river.