Operation Ganga
A national branding programme for a Territorial Army pilot mission to rejuvenate the Ganga — identity, digital platform and documentary, under my creative direction.
The Campaign
A national branding programme for Operation Ganga, a Territorial Army pilot mission to rejuvenate the Ganga River. The work was led by Moonlight Pictures under my creative direction, alongside co-founders Praveen Chaturvedi and Abhishek Singh, and spanned identity design, digital platforms and documentary filmmaking.
The Subject
The Ganga's condition by the early 2010s was a matter of public record rather
than dispute: sections of the river routinely failed India's own bathing-water
standards, and its water quality had become a recurring subject of Supreme
Court intervention going back to the M. C. Mehta litigation of the 1980s.
Government cleanup programmes had been running since 1986, under successive
names, without resolving the underlying problem — untreated sewage and
industrial discharge from the cities along its length.
Namami Gange, the mission from which this initiative draws its name, was
launched in 2014 with a budget in the tens of thousands of crores, targeting
sewage infrastructure, industrial effluent, riverfront development and
afforestation across the river's course.
What Operation Ganga added to that landscape was the involvement of the
Territorial Army as an operational actor rather than a funding body — placing a
uniformed, disciplined force behind an environmental mission usually run by
civil administration, which is the premise the branding had to make legible.
How We Made It
We anchored the campaign in the idea of military structure applied to an environmental mission. Deliverables included a purpose-built logo system, a website that tracked the mission's progress, and a promotional documentary.
Where It Landed
The initiative launched publicly in Varanasi at an event featuring the musician Kailash Kher alongside government and military officials.
