Introduction

The river Ganga, its tributaries, and the flat and fertile plains through which they flow are one of the world’s richest natural resources. For thousands of years, the fertile land and abundant water have provided the foundation for an increasingly civilized society based on agriculture, and have led to the development of one of the world’s largest human populations. Large empires were established. The Ganga basin was one of the most developed regions of the world until the end of the eighteenth century, attracting the attention of the growing Western world powers (Spear, 1978).