Mapping the Ganges

ALUMNI ALUMNI olution: “I really had to just walk the land.” His fieldwork—more than 25,000 photographs, 15 sketchbooks’ worth of draw- ings, 1,000 journal entries, and 350 original Mapping the Ganges charts—became the first comprehensive survey of the region’s infrastructures, cities, and landscapes in 50 years, and is the A decade spent exploring India’s dynamic sacred river subject of his new book, Ganges Water Ma- chine: Designing New India’s Ancient River (2015). The project is “a huge, historical ex- by nell porter brown cavation,” notes Orchard professor in the history of landscape development John R. Stilgoe, Acciavatti’s thesis adviser. “That n the summer of 2005, Anthony is fed by many rivers besides the dominant book would not exist if he had not gone to Acciavatti, M.Arch. ’09, and his local Ganges, which runs from the Gangotri Gla- those places. Anthony has enormous cour- driver were in rural, north-central cier in the Himalayas through northeast- age—and physical courage does not come India, not far from the sacred city of ern India into Bangladesh before emptying up much in the academy anymore.” IVaranasi. They had stopped to watch the into the Bay of Bengal. The enterprising “soupy, brown water” of the Ganges River mapmaker chose to focus on the thousand The ganges rushes through mountainous gush out of the mammoth, 1970s-era Nara- miles between the river’s source and Patna, tracts and critical animal habitats, including inpur Pump Canal system, which irrigates a stretch with relatively few secondary that of the endangered freshwater dolphin, nearly 300 square miles of prime agricultural streams. His initial goal was to capture the and helps sustain 29 cities, like Varanasi, and land. They followed the canal road until the “fluid choreography” of the basin’s seasonal hundreds of towns and villages. All told, the driver suddenly refused to go any farther, topographical changes in relationship to basin is home to at least a quarter of India’s saying the area was too dangerous. three conditions: population density, the 1.28 billion people who rely on the ice melt Acciavatti, then a year out of the Rhode monsoon, and agricultural demands. “It was (which contributes about 10 or 15 percent of Island School of Design (RISD), left the car an empirical project,” explains Acciavatti, the river flow) and the more abundant mon- and walked ahead for a mile or so, to “see who grew up in Decatur, Illinois, and has al- soonal downpours for drinking water and where the canal went.” Pausing to snap ways been fascinated by rivers and agro-in- crop irrigation. This water is particularly cru- photographs, take notes, sketch, or keep dustrial systems. “I had never been to India cial to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, an eye out for snakes, he hardly noticed before that first trip, and had no idea what I where Acciavatti was based, and where nearly three women approaching until, at about would find.” There were no recent maps of 20 percent of India’s grains are grown. 12 feet away, “they whipped out machine the area, and satellite and Google Earth im- For Hindus, the Ganges is also a living guns and pointed them at me,” he recalls. agery were at the time too vague or low-res- goddess and the epicenter of spiritual life, “Aapka desh bahut sundar hai (Your country is Anthony Acciavatti very beautiful),” he blurted out in broken beside the lake in Hindi. The women asked if he was part Central Park, a body of of the government. No, he said, he was water closer to home just studying the Ganges, and gestured to the canal. They gestured back, with their guns, toward the pumping station. Accia- vatti turned around and fairly ran to the car, where he and the anxious driver both yammered “Chalo! Chalo! (Hurry!)” “I have no way of knowing if those women were Naxal,” Acciavatti says, refer- ring to members of the Communist guer- rilla groups in India. “But they scared the bejesus out of me.” The young architect nevertheless stayed in India for the year, based at Allahabad University, to com- plete his Fulbright fellowship, and went on to make more than 15 additional solo trips between 2006 and 2014—traveling by foot, car, and boat—to map the upper por- tions of the Ganges River Basin. The region is a fertile, alluvial plain that extends 1.1 million square kilometers and Photograph by Robert Adam Mayer Harvard Magazine 73 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE transform their fields into wet- the push to cultivate and process soybeans lands and bioswales instead. Not “for animal feed, and eventually, into mate- only would the farmers earn more rials for plastics and imitation meats,” Ac- caring for this infrastructure ciavatti says. Growing up about six miles than they make from their crops, from the then-headquarters of the Archer Acciavatti says, but the system Daniels Midland Company (now ADM, would cost far less than treat- based in Chicago), he didn’t pass it every IAVATTI ment plants and help decrease day, but he could smell it: “Acrid. Like Mc- Acc Donald’s French fries, but they also pro- ONY ONY pollution from sewage and fertil- H Trekking in the foothills NT izer runoff from farmlands. cessed high-fructose corn syrup, so there of the Himalayas in 2006, en A Y OF OF Y About 65 percent of India’s ru- were other smells mixed in.” When com- route to the Gangotri Glacier, S the source of the Ganges ral population defecates outside, pleted in 1939, Midland’s was world’s larg- OURTE C according to the World Health est solvent-extraction plant; the company even though it is also one of the most pol- Organization, and that material accounts went on to develop crude soybean oil into luted natural resources in the world. A for at least 80 percent of the river’s pollu- hundreds of new products. (Acciavatti ex- groundwater crisis exists, and pollution tion. That issue is not directly addressed in plores these endeavors elsewhere. A 2013 threatens food supplies and is linked to the book, he says, because the people he’s Cabinet magazine article, “Ingestion: The diseases like cholera and hepatitis. Previ- met, from villagers to academics to govern- Pyschorheology of Everyday Life,” covered ous efforts to clean up the waterway have ment officials, “cared more about access to the development of early scientific methods failed. Acciavatti’s book, a technical tome water than water quality”; for them, espe- for measuring “chew texture” in foods like geared to engineers, architects, environ- cially if they are devout, “the river is always soy protein. “It’s interesting to think about mentalists, and urban planners, is a poten- clean,” he adds. “I had people with Ph.D.s how you objectify subjective sensations in tial guide to renewed restoration efforts by tell me there is no way you can get sick from the mouth,” he says. He’s also contributed the government of India, funded through a drinking the water, because it is pure.” a chapter on the development of soy-based $1.5-billion loan from the World Bank. He is drawn to this “layering of the meats to a pending anthology, “New Mate- “Right now there is a lot of focus on what Ganges, both as a lifeline and a mosaic of rials: Their Social and Cultural Meanings,” I call nineteenth-century hard infrastruc- sacred geographies.” He first thought of edited by historian Amy E. Slaton of Drexel.) ture: channeling water into pipes treated mapping it while studying architecture at Midland and other emerging agricultur- as plumbing, building sewage-treatment RISD. He had already spent a year in Rome al companies, he explains, needed greater plants that run on electricity in a context (2002-2003) mapping the Tiber River and access to water (for processing) and rail- where electricity is not available 24 hours its influence on that city’s architecture ways (for distribution), so they and the a day,” Acciavatti reports. His maps, on the and infrastructure, and as a freshman at municipalities affected hired architects other hand, lay a foundation for “soft infra- Tulane (before transferring to RISD), his and engineers to “reconfigure existing structure” solutions that are more sustain- class projects had often focused on water cities in the 1920s and 1930s: rivers were able environmentally and better integrate management along the Mississippi. But he dammed, new lakes were constructed, and the cultural and practical ways people actu- never expected, when he received a Ful- city grids were re-aligned to increase pro- ally use the river basin. The maps, for exam- bright, that his Ganges research would duction,” Acciavatti explains. “In Decatur, ple, include transects, visual cross-sections last more than a year—much less take him the largest manmade lake was constructed of the landscape that capture six “layers of through Harvard and then on to Princ- for soy processing, but it was pitched to the super-structure”—rivers, holding tanks eton, where he is finishing his dissertation the community as a great lake and park. and lakes, canals and drains, settlements, on nation-building in Indian villages dur- There was a coupling of municipal recre- railways and roads, and tube-wells—and ing the Cold War and expects to receive ation with industrial infrastructure.” how they coexist and overlap, especially his doctorate in the history of science in Those large-scale agricultural ventures throughout the seasonal changes.

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