scene: Spring 2013
iStock/Frank Gerritsma
life of the mind 14
Syllabus
The Ganges: a changing tale
Although the Ganges River is considered sacred and purifying to Hindus, pollution and damming have contaminated those beliefs, according to initial findings by Srikar Gullapalli ’13 and Brian Lemanski ’14. Previous scholarship has indicated that Hindus believe the river’s sanctity could not be fouled by human actions, but Gullapalli and Lemanski have found that the opposite is true. The students spent 59 days this winter traveling along the Ganga (the Hindi name for the Ganges River), conducting field research into how pollution has influenced Hindus at seven major shrines. They also studied how uses of the river are changing, and found that some Hindus have stopped bathing in the river and drinking from it as frequently. “However, most surprising was how people were saying things like ‘Mother Ganga [the goddess who personifies the river] has left because we scared her away with our pollution,’” said Lemanski. Their project, titled “Voices of the Ganga — The Interplay of Religion and Pollution,” was chosen out of a pool of 150 applications for a prestigious $5,000 Young Explorers Grant from the National Geographic Society. They received supplemental funding from President Jeffrey Herbst’s office. Gullapalli — a mathematical economics major from Bangalore, India — and Lemanski — an environmental biology major from Albany, N.Y. — developed the project entirely through their own initiative. Upon meeting their first year at Colgate, they had discovered a shared interest in conducting research in India that looked at “how people interact with
their environment,” Lemanski noted. After refining their idea and grant proposal, in spring 2012 they approached religion professor Eliza Kent. She helped them develop a survey, which they used to interview approximately 140 people — from residents living and working along the river, to the Swami Avimukteshwaranand (who is soon to be one of Hinduism’s primary religious leaders). Wanting to study political action regarding the Ganga’s current state, the students met a grassroots group in Varanasi which had successfully lobbied to close a sewage pipe that had been flowing into the river. The students also consulted with Dr. Vinod Tare, convener of the National Ganga River Basin Authority, a governmental entity. Along the way, they collected 35 liters of water samples. Lemanski is analyzing the water samples for pollution, looking for pesticides and other chemicals. The students will use Geographic Information Systems to create maps to show what’s happening along the river, such as what chemicals people are exposed to at specific locations. They plan to use an online interactive tool and smartphone app to display their findings. Gullapalli will use their survey data to measure the causal effect of pollution on the religious experience of citizens living along the riverbanks. “Interviewing these people gave a face to the [pollution] data. Behind all these numbers and figures are people’s lives,” said Lemanski. The students are now working with National Geographic to disseminate their results in an effort to evoke change. — Alicia Klepeis
13 cool courses for the lucky Year of ’13 1. Artificial Intelligence (Computer science) 2. Dispossession, dislocation, and diseases: Geographies of population vulnerability (Geography) 3. Dynamical systems and chaos (Mathematics) 4. Political corruption (Political science) 5. From the Atkins diet to the Kyoto Treaty: Science, the news media, and you (Core) 6. Megageology (Geology) 7. Molecules that rock your world (Core) 8. How to build a baby: A developmental science approach to the nature-nurture debate (Core) 9. Pirates in the Atlantic World (History) 10. Poets, Lovers, and Monsters (Classics) 11. Sex, Drugs, and Chocolate (Core) 12. The problem of evil (Religion) 13. Volcanology (Geology)