Some interesting observations here. cm
Interlinking rivers : discontent within -Tulika Sarmah Sometime in 1996, the Secretary General of the UN Conference on Human Habitat held in Istanbul made an interesting comment. He told that large-scale wars in future would be fought over disputes of sharing water resources. No one was surprised at this comment. It is generally believed that soon water will emulate the role taken by crude oil in spriging up some major political turmoil. The Indian experience shows that differences between various states regarding share of water and construction of joint canal systems led to serious law and order problems several times. To add insult to injury, the Central Government has recently envisaged as plan to interlink all the major rivers of the country. The rivers of Southern and Western India do not involve international dispute, but Northern and Eastern rivers do. Hence the ambitions project necessarily invites controversies. Hostile reactions are already witnessed in many states including Assam. At least two states spoke against the project at the 12th national conference of water resources and irrigation ministers in New Delhi on February 5 last. In this backdrop, the proposed project of interlinking rivers calls for a cool approach and logic. Significantly, the Planning Commission has rejected the whole idea of the project. The Commission in its report on the proposed Rs 5,60,000 crores project termed it as unrealistic. By turning down a request from no less a person than Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Commission said that the bid to interlink all the rivers to transfer surplus waters to deficit areas would never materialise. The reasons: firstly, the geographical nature of the rivers and secondly, the cost involved - political and technological constraints notwithstanding. The report known as 'India: Vision 2020' contends that the country which has 16 percent of the world population has hardly 4 percent of drinkable water. Yet, the Commission finds out some other means to meet the challenges posed by scarcity of water on the land rather than interlinking the rivers. It was quite sensible on the part of the Planning Commission to suggest proper utilisation of modern methods and technological breakthroughs to solve the problem of water scarcity apart from traditional methods of rain water harvesting. The year 2003 is being observed as the International Freshwater Year. The alarm bell is ringing all over the world. According to latest estimates available, two-third population on earth will live in water stressed conditions by 2025, if the present consumption patterns continue. In India, per-capita annual freshwater availability in 1951 was 5,177 cubic metres; but in 2001 it has been reduced to 1,869 cubic metres. The sharp decrease will further continue and by 2025 it may scale down to 1,341 cubic metres, Indeed, a distressing scenario. But nobody is clear why the government at the centre is hell-bent upon going ahead with the project of interlinking rivers without making a scientific revision of earlier similar, but small-scale projects. The proposed project, however, did not come out of the blue. Already strengthened with a pledge in the election manifesto of the ruling BJP, Prime Minister Vajpayee directed the Ministry of Water Resources to prepare a draft of the project. According to it, surplus waters from the river Brahmaputra would be canalised to West Bengal by interlinking Manas and Sankosh of Assam with Teesta in Sikkim. Thereafter, a recharged Ganga's waters would be taken to Orissia Mahanandi via Damodar and Subarnarekha of West Bengal. Thus it will go on round the country. There will be thirty link projects in the entire country like Farakka Dam which will be main linkage between Brahmaputra and Ganga. During the monsoon the two mightiest rivers of Eastern India cause havoc while the southern rivers like Godavari, Krishna, Cauvery etc, suffer from scarcity of waters. So the project aims at killing two birds with a single throw i.e. to solve the twin problem of flood and drought across the country by diverting the surplus waters of a few haves to the have-nots. The Centre has already constituted a Task Force under chairmanship of Suresh Prabhu, former power minister of the union government. Currently he is doing a study a study of a similar project being undertaken in China, although India's water diversion project, designed to be completed in 2016, will be more massive in scale, costs and benefits to be accured. The task force mentioned above is likely to suggest modalities for arriving at consensus amongst the states regarding share of river water. But it is highly doubtful that the states will agree to what the Vajpayee government is proposing. Even the Akali Dal, a partner of the ruling National Democratic Alliance is voicing its opposition to the whole idea,. The state government of Punjab, recently formed by the Congress - the arch-rival of the Akalis - has been also talking in negative mood. Punjab is vehemently opposing diversion of Satadru's waters to Yamuna. On the other hand, the Cauvery water dispute has taken an ugly turn with three chief ministers of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala locking horns. Karnataka has gone to the extent of defying the Supreme Court's order to release a certain amount of water to Tamil Nadu. An upsurge of protesting farmers compelled the state government to halt the release. The country is also seeking argument over the Sutlej - Yamuna Link Canal between Punjab and Haryana. Involving many other states, the bitter disputes over sharing of waters of Godavari, Krishna and Sone rivers in western, southern and eastern India are far from settled. Some political and other organisations in Assam too are up in arms against the proposal of diverting waters from Brahmaputra. The union minister of state for water resources, Bijoya Chakraborty has been keeping mum for obvious reasons. The chief minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi is not very comfortable with the whole issue. Anyway, the records show that the inter-country treaties on water - even with Pakistan - have worked much better than inter-state agreements. The moot question is : why the Centre is more interested in imposing the project without arriving at a consensus ? Is it an indication of more centralisation of power.? Not a welcome sign indeed, for the 55-year-old republic. There is already a talk about nationalisation of water resources. Although water is a state subject under the constitution a few states suffering from disputes of water resources have begun to advocate for nationalisation of water. Gone are the days when the states stood in unison claiming more power to them. Logically, no state could claim a particular river as its own, only the ocean can - as told by Arun Kumar, alias 'Panibaba,' the celebrated founder of Jodhpur's famous school of desert sciences. But still one would wonder why there was no talk about 'nationalisation' of problems created by flood water in a few states. The centre hardly accepted flood in those states as national problem. Here lies a sense of deprivation. Moreover, the big question is on what basis a river or a river basin can be identified as water surplus. Even Cherrapunji, recognised as the wettest place on earth, has been facing water shortage. As soon as the monsoon period is over, places which are bestowed with natural abundance get comparatively dry. Experts say that the government should come out of its 'sit and watch' policy and promptly formulate a policy of harvesting rain water. Many areas in Rajasthan have established model examples of success in this aspect of solving the problem of scarcity of water. Sometime back a district Panchayat in Madhya Pradesh set another exceptional example of courage and will to solve the perennial problem of drought. The Panchayat head, Raje Gupta motivated the people and the higher authorities to construct a number of small dams in the adjacent river. The process did not involve financial constraints and yet made the whole Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh drought-free for the last four years continuously. It is claimed that interlinking rivers by dams and canals will provide requisite irrigation needs and help generate hydroelectric power. But experiences of Damodar valley project has shown serious drawbacks throughout last three decades. The water barrage and reservoirs of Damodar river were main cause of floods of 1971, 1978 and 2000 in the valley. The Durgapur barrage made rivers like Bhagirathi and Hoogly more problematic and original problems remained unresolved. The state of West Bangal now seems to be repenting for its mistakes. Further, disruption of the river basin's hydrological cycle or obstructing the natural course of rivers could spell doom. The past lessons have made experts think that the right way to resolve water sharing issues is to focus on watershed development, conservation of rain waters and water harvesting, not dams and canals/ There is no point in letting rain water flow hundreds of kilometres into a river and then spending crores of rupees to divert it back again to irrigate lands where it originally fell as rains. See a latest finding: 10 tiny dams with a catchment of one hectare each would collect more water than one larger dam with a catchment of 10 hectares. Thus each Indian village can harvest about 3.75 billion litres of water every year. Why the National Water Development agency did not consider this fact before jumping on to something that was not feasible? Over and above it, construction of canals will result in huge displacement of wildlife and human habitations, loss of forests and farmlands. They will aggravate the existing balance in ecological and economic terms too. Who is prepared for such type of chaos? While estimating the project cost at 5.6 lakh crores, did they consider the time factor in its completion and compensations involved? It is understood that the large costs would be accrued through foreign loans and that will further worsen our financial health. It is worth recalling that due to practical difficulties, a similar plan to link the Ganga and the Cauvery, first presented in 1972 by the former Union Minister of Irrigation and Power, K L Rao, was abandoned. The growing tendency among the states to defy the authority of even the Prime Minister or to flout the orders of the Supreme Court regarding water sharing, to say the least, makes the whole idea redundant. We tend to ignore geographical awareness while giving more importance to sociological or historical claims - to quote Prof R B Singh of Delhi School of Geography - thereby failing to live as a single political entity. Here lies the whole gamut of controversies.
