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Comment by pigpaws | Hacker News Reader

It is not ALL attributable to poverty - There is no SINGLE factor (aside from Education). The poor are not the only ones using the river as a burial ground. do you understand what a single rotting body does to the water supply, let alone tens of thousands?

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Hindus don't bury their dead. They cremate them. Now there are polluting aspects to cremation but it can be done better than burial using proper incineration equipment. I have observed that such environmentally friendly cremation services are becoming more common in India even in smaller cities.

Not all Hindus cremate their dead. In fact a small minority do. In South India, burials are what you will see in nearly all the cases.

Only a certain castes cremate. Everybody else buries and yes river burial too is not common.

Lets talk of reckless dumping of human waste, industrial waste into rivers and lakes.

Do yo have any citations that only a small minority of Hindus cremate their dead?

As a non-religious athiest hindu this is the first time I am hearing this, could you give some pointers. I would have expected it to go the other way (if at all), that is, only a small minority of hindu's do not cremate their dead.

In South India, we very rarely cremate.

Every village has a big "Rudrabhoomi". Cremation is a very upper caste thing.

I also presume that the volume of bodies has increased in line with population, whilst the river volume has stayed constant (if not, in fact, decreased)

I'm going to make a modest proposal, but I wonder if there's enough caloric content in a body to make it worthwhile as feedstock in industrial aquaculture.

Nutrients preserved, value created, payments potentially made to the bereaved families. Everyone's a winner!

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