Ironical Tyranny? Tyrannical Irony? Whatever ...
India faces a cruel irony right now. Even as Assam and Bihar struggle with a flood of gigantic proportions, much of the rest of the country is saddled with the prospects of drought!
Assam is no stranger to floods around this time. India's mightiest river, the Brahmaputra, has an unfortunate tendency to overflow during the monsoons. This time around, the situation was exacerbated by a breach in a water resorvoir in Bhutan. As a result, both Bihar and Assam have been victims of a flood far more terrible than anyone expected.
In stark contrast, the rest of India has by now realized that the monsoon is going to be a cropper. Pre-drought preparations are on and the Meterological Department has already warned farmers not to grow long lifecycle crops. Though I do not understand the specifics, I guess the general idea is that farmers are advised to grow crops which have a decent chance of maturing before the meagre rainfall runs out.
It is in this context that the proposal for linking rivers in India assumes significance. I am no expert in the area and from what I have read, there are conflicting views on whether the idea is feasible or not. As an engineer, I see no reason for the plan to not work. Of course, as a few friends of mine say, computer scientists hardly qualify as engineers ;-) Coming back to the point, of course there are issues which need to be sorted out regarding the sharing of waters between states, the actual maintenance of the linkage network etc. But all these issues are, in my opinion, stymied by the one tremendous promise the scheme holds - the promise to decouple the fortunes of our farmers from the lottery that monsoons are! Agriculture accounts for around 27% of the Gross National Product and is by far the most fickle of our three major economic sectors (manufacturing & services being the other two). Last year, with exceptional monsoons our GDP growth clocked an impressive 8.2%. The year before, with average monsoons, our growth languished below 5%. If anything at all could be done to alleviate this uncertainity, I feel our government should eagerly pursue the option.
posted by Priyendra at 2:16 PM
1 Comments:
Problems with Linking of Indian River Project
1. As you said, there are issues to be sorted out, like sharing of water between the states. But it is not only the inter-states conflicts which needs to be sorted out, but inter-countries too. As the water of River Brahmaputra is shared with Bangladesh. Similarly with the water of River Indus, which is shared with Pakistan. When this policy was announced, a
world water conference was going in some European country(I do not
remember the name) and the Bangladesh representatives showed their displeasure when they heard the announcement of this policy.
2. Reality vs plan on paper: This plan looks very good on paper, and
from engineering point of view, it is a very good and logical idea. But there are many other issues to be taken care of. Like when the rivers will be linked, there will be a need to draw the water up through some mechanism in upslope areas. This would require dams, and with dams, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Problems arises. Many area will have to be submerged inorder to link the rivers. And so many people will have to be displaced.
I think you would like reading these two articles.
http://www.tve.org/cc/doc.cfm?aid=932
http://www.tve.org/earthreport/archive/20Nov2000.html
Also, the Government is planning this project on some false assumptions, one of them is: River Ganges and River Yamuna have plenty of water, but the reality is something else. Both River Ganges and River Yamuna have
dried in many areas.
While undertaking any mega-project, Environmental Impact Assessment has to be done. But the Government of India is not releasing any data in the
pretext that the data is confidential as it knows that the plan has many conflicts which needs to be sorted out. Also, such large projects, in a corrupt country like ours, is beneficial only to politicians and
contractors.
Yes, I fully agree that our agriculture product is very much dependent on monsoons. And inorder to harness rain water, small projects like check dams should be undertaken. I will quote something
"To my knowledge, big dams are not possible everywhere. For example, my village has a very small catchment area pocket. If you construct a big dam, a lot of water gathers in a single place. There is a possibility of
submersing agricultural land and possibility of migration of tribal
people. Many problems arise at the construction of the big dams. Instead of big dams we have put in small-scale dams, like ours in my village, which have more advantages than those big dams.
From 1978 onwards, awareness about the alternative water projects grew and various kinds of water management techniques were introduced into the village. There were about 13 check dams that were initially built and gradually the prosperity of the villagers increased so much so that the
water tables have been recharged enough for a small farmer, who could have been earning only about 1.5 lahk Rupees, is in a position to earn 10 lahk a year. The farmers are able to have water for 12 months of the year and the overall economic growth of the village has benefited people from the lowest rungs of the economy. Rates have gone up, so that now they will take 3 lahk in a year, instead of just one. These are the major real benefits."-- Haladevsinh B Jadeya, on how alternative small scale water
collection schemes that have been implemented in the town of Raj
Samadhiyala, in Kutch are more beneficial
A doubt that can arise is that is linking of rivers has been successful in Europe, why will it fail in India. Well, the reasons are two. Firstly, Europe is sparsely populated, whereas India is thickly populated. Such type
of projects requires displacement of large number of people, thus
causing social conflicts. Also, what I believe is, that in European
countries, development programmes are undertaken for the benefit of the country and people, whereas in India, most of the deveoplment projects are taken for the benefits of the politicians. Unlike European countries, there is no political will in India.
PS: I was reading about these things, and so I thought I should share these with you. Why don't you write anymore??
11:52 PM
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