Context: Recently, the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) under the Ministry of Jal Shakti and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) organized an IDEAthon on “The future of River Management’ to explore how the COVID-19 crisis can shape River Management strategies for the future. 
Key Points

• It has been organized by National Mission on Clean Ganga under the Ministry of Jal Shakti and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).
• The IDEAthon examined how the social angle of rivers can be leveraged on to address other crises.

It also dealt with the following key questions:

• What lessons for river management has the pandemic taught us?
• And what response mechanisms are needed in the event of a river crisis?

The IDEAthon sought to brainstorm the learnings from COVID-19 pandemic, the following lockdown and its impact on river management.

• National Mission for Clean Ganga had initiated this IDEAthon to garner more attention towards river management and also highlight the interconnectivity of Cities with the River.
• With an intent to mainstream River Management in a city’s Urban Planning framework, NMCG has been developing a template for an Urban River Management Plan with the National Institute of Urban Affairs.
• It introduced ‘Ganga Quest’ (an online quiz at gangaquest.com) as one of the initiatives to engage people with knowledge on River Ganga which has evoked a huge response, in the wake of the lockdown, with more than 600,000 students and others joining now.
• NMCG is also working in developing the River Basin Organization and also River Basin Planning and Management Cycle to develop an adaptive framework under Namami Gange for Ganga river basin management.

Suggestion given by experts

• The challenge would be to keep the river in similar condition after lockdown which can be possible with behavioral change to supplement infrastructure creation by Citizen engagement programmes designed to lead to streamline the people’s efforts in claiming its water resources are the need of the hour.
• A baseline integration of data systems acquired and accumulated by various Ministries will be helpful in better management and implementation of action plans.
• Government expenditures on irrigation, flood control and dams, interventions like promotion of organic farming, fisheries, medical plantation, tourism and transportation and biodiversity parks are some of the proven models of Arth Ganga.
• The idea of adaptive governance which should be how river management is to be approached to incorporate future challenges with collaborative partnership.
• Hydropower projects that are being developed on the rivers, should be studied along with their impacts such as floods, low e-flow, sedimentation etc.
• There should be provision for trans-boundary Environmental Impact Assessment for all the new big projects coming up on the river.
• Hence, For any river management plan, needs of nature have to be addressed first and then connect river with its surrounding habitat and people.