• Indian Postal Service itself will now on deliver bottled Ganges water, which is considered to be holy by the Hindus, from door to door
• The initiative taken by the Narendra Modi government proved to be a huge hit in West Bengal
• The first batch ran out within a couple of days and people seem ecstatic about the system

It was the Narendra Modi government in India, that dreamt of delivering bottled Ganges water to Indian doorsteps via postal service. In the month of May of this year, in 2016, the arrangements to make this dream successful has begun. Now, it is a reality. The Indian postal service will deliver bottled Ganges water to the ones who want to buy it. It will save the devotees, effort of going to specific places to get hold of pure/holy water 'GangaJal'.

In case of the Ganges water collected at Rishikesh, there are two kinds of bottles that are available in the market, one is 200ml at Rs. 15 and the other is 500ml for Rs. 22. The Gangajal acquired and bottled at Gangotri is costlier because the nearer to the original source the water is collected by a person, the purer it is believed to be. Therefore, the Gangotri water is available at Rs. 25 and Rs. 35 for 200ml and 500ml bottles, when one reaches closer to the source.

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The initiative to deliver GangaJal by post was launched in West Bengal and it proved to be a huge hit. The water bottled from Rishikesh and Gangotri vanished from the shelves almost as fast as they reached the different postal headquarters across West Bengal. Kolkata, itself, witnessed the huge sale of the holy water. People are tired of dirty Gangajal and are buying the bottled GangaJal as fast as they can. "We have a surprising demand for bottled Gangajal from Rishikesh..we started selling it from Sunday and by Tuesday the stock was totally sold out", Chief Post Master General, West Bengal Circle, Arundhaty Ghosh told PTI.

It happened so because people are tired of polluted Gangajal and therefore they are buying the bottled GangaJal as much as they can. "We have a surprising demand for bottled Gangajal from Rishikesh..we started selling it from Sunday and by Tuesday the stock was totally sold out", Chief Post Master General, West Bengal Circle, added Arundhaty Ghosh.

Not only Kolkata but Siliguri too faced the same booming market for Gangajal. "We were sent five 200ml bottles of Gangajal collected at Rishikesh. They sold out instantly. People left the counter cursing us," said Abhijit Sarkar, a Jalpaiguri head post office employee.

"We had been to Allahabad two years ago and brought back three pots of Gangajal from Triveni Sangam. It was difficult, but we had to do it for us and our relatives. We are happy that the government has made it easier for us to get Gangajal," Sharmila Mukherjee, a school teacher, told TOI.

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People were disappointed when the stock ran out and they were not informed when the next batch would arrive. "The supply was meager in Bengal. We got only 280 bottles of 500ml and 245 bottles of 200ml for the entire state," said Swapan Garai, assistant director (business development), Department of Posts to TOI, who manages the distribution of Gangajal across Bengal. "We could give only 50 bottles to the Midnapore head post office against the demand of 500," Garai further added.

– Prepared by NewsGram team.

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