Gandhi of the Ganges

Every day for almost 70 years, Veer Bhadra Mishra rose before daybreak and descended the 60-odd steep stone steps that lead from his airy but simple white house to the slow-flowing, agate-green water of the Ganges River.

As the sun came up over the opposite bank, he gazed at the river with reverence, stepped into it, cupped his hands and raised the contents to his lips: This is how he, how any devout Hindu, must give praise to Ganga Ma - the mother goddess brought to earth.

He owes her devotion. He also knows her water may kill him. "Typhoid, polio, jaundice. I drink it and I have suffered. But I am living - what to do?"

Indeed. For nearly 30 years, he has been a fierce, tireless and woefully unsuccessful champion of his goddess, the river.

Here in the holy city of Varanasi, people bend to touch his feet and call him Mahantji, in deference to his status as the spiritual leader of a huge sect of Hinduism. People also call him Dr. Mishra. He is a professor emeritus of civil engineering at the huge Banaras Hindu University, an authority on hydraulic systems. He has, he says with a grin that crinkles his cheeks, the rational mind of a scientist, balanced by the passionate heart of a devotee.

And although the river has grown steadily more polluted through his years of work, he is convinced that he and his band of loyal Ganges champions are now poised on the edge of a breakthrough, when a combination of spiritual and scientific wisdom will finally restore the purity of the river.

And if they do, their victory may reinvigorate a tired environmental movement in a nation where water-borne illnesses are the leading cause of child death - and a world in which unsafe water and sanitation are the source of 85 per cent of all disease.

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