In land locked Laos, I noticed that the country’s everyday life revolved around the Mekong river, like a civilisation in motion, sculpting the land, sustaining lives, reflecting the soul of the people living on its banks. In India, we have our very own Ganga which seems to share an uncanny relationship with the Mekong. Both rivers are full of spiritual significance, both are bountiful yet vulnerable despite flowing thousands of miles apart. The Mekong flows gently through the heart of Laos before entering Vietnam’s delta, while the Ganga, surges through the Gangetic plains eventually meeting the Bay of Bengal. Today, both are at the crossroads of reverence and ruin, burdened by the sins of modernity despite remaining mothers to swathes of people.
In Vientiane or Luang Prabang, the Mekong is the spine of life, giving Laos its trade, its food and its rhythm. Fishermen cast their nets at dawn, monks in saffron robes walk in quiet meditation along its banks and ferries hum softly as they cross over into neighbouring Thailand. Similarly in Varanasi or Patna, we revere the Ganga as a goddess. Pilgrims bathe in her waters at sunrise, scatter marigolds and ashes while invoking her for purification and salvation. Both rivers have taught humility to those who depend on them, yet both are being tested as never before.
Both the Mekong and the Ganga bear scars of colonial ambition. When French colonialists set out in the 19th century to “conquer” the Mekong, they saw not a sacred river but a strategic waterway linking Indochina to China’s markets, only to find the Mekong too wild, its rapids too fierce requiring colonial cartography to reshape its utility. The Ganga too, suffered colonial re-engineering, with the British diverting its waters through canals to irrigate fields for indigo and cash crops, setting in motion an extractive legacy. The colonial gaze turned rivers into resources, reducing what was once seen as divine into a mere utility.
Along both rivers communities thrive. In Laos, entire villages migrate seasonally with the Mekong’s flood pulse; fishing cooperatives and river traders have developed intimate knowledge of its moods.
The Hmong community is one such which treats the river as a marketplace. In India, the Ganga basin is home to more than 400 million people, farmers, boatmen, washermen and weavers whose livelihoods depend on the rivers ebb and flow. The Mallah fishermen, the boatmen of Banaras and the potters of Kanpur form a living continuum of riverine culture, the communities today increasingly squeezed by pollution, over-extraction and erratic monsoons.
Both rivers are victims of our excess and neglect. The Mekong’s bounty, the fish that forms 80 percent of Laos’s protein intake, is dwindling like the Ganga’s fertility, once the envy of Asia, is depleted by toxic effluents and chemical runoff. Dams are the nemesis of both rivers. The Mekong today is one of the world’s most dammed rivers, a dozen large projects are in Laos alone, the government believing in the rivers to deliver a promise of hydroelectric wealth even as they block downstream fish migration, alter sediment flows, drying out wetlands. The Ganga, has its Tehri Dam in Uttarakhand and numerous barrages disrupting its natural course, the reduced downstream flows threatening the Sunderbans delta, with rising salinity and diminishing nature.
Climate change has its own role to play, intensifying historical wounds. The Mekong’s predictable annual flood pulse has become erratic due to changing rainfall and upstream diversions. Droughts in northern Laos are followed by sudden floods that wipe out crops. The Ganga, fed by Himalayan glaciers, faces an even greater existential threat, glacial melt and monsoon unpredictability. Rising temperatures mean more intense floods in the short term and eventual scarcity in the long term. For millions who draw water from these rivers daily, climate change has become a daily anxiety. Will the fish return? Will the floods come too soon or too late?
Yet, despite the gloom, both rivers continue to inspire. India and Laos can learn from each other. Linking Mekong research with Ganga basin management, can promote joint learning in sustainable hydropower, sediment management and community led restoration. In Laos, young environmentalists are replanting mangroves and advocating for community-managed fisheries. In India, Ganga rejuvenation projects, though uneven, have sparked civic participation from schoolchildren cleaning ghats, to scientists monitoring water quality.
Whether the sun sets over the Mekong in Luang Prabang or rises over the Ganga in Varanasi, the stillness reminds us that the Mekong and the Ganga are not simply bodies of water but archives of memory and faith. In their depths lie the stories of empires, of monks and merchants, of the eternal human struggle to live in harmony with nature.
(Priyan R Naik is a columnist and independent journalist based in Bengaluru)
