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Linking up Rivers : A Recipe for Disaster
By Sailendra Nath Ghosh
The
Government of India’s resolve to link up all major rivers of India and the
Supreme Court’s judgement in favour of expediting it are both flawed.
These reflect lack of understanding of ecological principles and the
economic and social costs. These also reflect a vacuum in understanding the
alternatives that are available at much cheaper costs to meet all legitimate
requirements.
Sir
Arthur Cotton who had originally proposed this networking more than a
century ago and Dr K. L. Rao who in post-independence India revived this
proposal, were no doubt eminent engineers. Sir Cotton’s prime concern was
for inland navigational network and Dr Rao’s concern was for irrigation
and power. Neither could perceive that far wider issues were involved.
Today’s
populist politicos have developed a peculiar mindset. They think their job
is to get more and more water from wherever they can to enable its use by
the locals for immediate gain, whatever the long-term consequences. No
thought is spared as to how flow-irrigation affects soil health and the
river health, which crops are conducive to meeting the community’s
requirements for healthful living—as distinct from some large
landholders’ commercial interest—and what are the levels of the desired
crops’ water requirements; and what kinds of inter-community and
inter-State conflicts can arise from unfrugal water consumption. That
networking of rivers can mean flow of pollutants from higher gradients to
cause distress to newer areas also does not enter into their calculations.
That over-irrigation condemned Mesopotamia in West Asia, once the cradle of
civilisation, to barrenness for the last three thousand years, does not
deter them. Few care to remember that the districts of Layalpur, Montgomery
and Sargoda (now in Pakistan), which were once the showpieces of
irrigation-induced prosperity, are now having to fight the scourge of
salinity.
Deeper
questions of ecology always get bypassed in our country. The fact that needs
to be grasped is that each river’s water properties are different from
those of every other river, depending on the characteristics of its source,
the characteristics of its catchment areas and basin as a whole. The
difference of water properties lies not only in their softness or hardness.
Their mineral contents, extent of aeration, electro-chemical properties,
healing power are different. On these distinctive properties depend the kind
of aquatic species they nurture, the varieties of insects and birds that
hover over their water surface and nestle on their banks. What value which
under-water or above-water species has for the web of life or even for
mankind’s own welfare, nobody knows. Very little study has been done on
these aspects, river-segment-wise. In the USA, when the large Tellico Dam
was nearing completion after colossal expenditure, the Courts ordered the
abandonment of the project because the river was the home of the small dart
fish which was not available anywhere else. If all our rivers are
interconnected, many species of life will disappear, many species—and
varieties within species—of fish, molluscus, insects, birds and other
animals will be extinct. The loss will be irrerversible.
Let
us now take a look at the other aspects of this grandiose scheme. R.K.
Murthy, a retired engineer of the Neyvelli Lignite Corporation, has gone on
record that it was only during Indira Gandhi’s time that the project was
seriously discussed and given up because of formidable
geographic-technological hurdles and mind-boggling costs.
At Patna, which is the only point along the course with a divertible
surplus, the Ganga flows 200 ft above the mean sea level (MSL). If it is has
to be linked with any river in the peninsula, the water has to be raised
over the Vindhya Chain—i.e. to 2860 ft above MSL. Pumping 20,000 cusecs of
water to that height would have required the entire day’s power generated
in the country at that time.
Apart
from the colossal demand on power that it would generate, the project was
likely to entail a construction cost of at least Rs 2,00,000 crores (two
million million). This is a sum which no funding agency in the world would
even look at.
Even
if it were feasible, it would raised terrible protests in East Bihar and
West Bengal. Bangladesh, with which India has an agreement for sharing Ganga
water, would have raised a hue and cry and made it an international dispute.
Ganga would not in any case benefit from the surplus water from Brahmaputra
because Bangladesh would not let India dig a link canal through their land.
Let
us suppose for a moment that despite the colossal costs, the country decides
to take up the interlinking project. The cost in terms of human
displacements will, in that case, be terrible. In the words of C. Rammohan
Reddy, the construction of barrages and excavations of thousands of
kilometres of canals will make villages disappear, flood towns, and cut
through millions of hectares of agricultural lands. It will uproot millions,
the number exceeding the population shifts of Partition.
Then
there is the other cost. Already many rivers have become open sewers. In the
new set-up, pollution control will be more difficult. Hence larger segments
of many more rivers will turn to be sewers.
It
needs to be stressed even at this stage that while irrigation is important
to provide security to agriculture, over-irrigation is ruinous; and that
almost all crops barring paddy and sugarcane need just moisture, not
flow-irrigation. Earlier, we have mentioned the fate of Mesopotamia and of
certain districts in Pakistan. In the post-independence period in India
itself, the waterlogging and soil salinity that we experienced in Bhakra
Canal commands area in Punjab and in the Sardar Sahayak Canal command area
in UP tell the same story. (These are the sad facts which Justice B.N.
Kirpal missed in the judgment delivered by him in the Sardar Sarovar Dam
height case.) Some years back, FA estimated that nearly 50 per cent of the
world’s irrigated areas had become saline. But the internationally
recognised authority and highly respected soil scientist, Prof Kovda, who
passed away a decade back, had placed the estimate at 80 per cent. The
estimates have varied because of the nature of the irrigation under
observation (flow-irrigation, or tubewell irrigation, or bore-well
irrigation) and the duration of the observation.
The
inter-State conflict over Cauvery water has been caused by the twin evils of
unsound cropping practices and putting into disuse the traditional and
highly efficacious rain water harvesting systems. Inviting their own
long-term ruination, the farmers of the Thanjavur delta in Tamil Nadu keep
insisting on three crops of water-intensive paddy for short-term commercial
gain. In Karnataka, the farmers of Mandya have been cultivating sugarcane, a
water-intensive cash crop, in the name of protecting their agricultural
right. These are comparable to the cultivation of paddy, the high water
demanding crop, in the scanty-rainfall area of Punjab and the cultivation of
sugarcane on a large scale in Maharashtra. Before our very eyes, India’s
fertile soils are marching towards salinisation. The State governments and
the Union Government are presiding over the march towards ruination. Now,
these governments are going further ahead into succumbing to the myopic
large farmers’ demand for connecting the rivers so that the latter can
grow more cash crops unsuited to their soils. Somebody will have to write a
new Mahabharat of our blind kings acquiescing in the conversion of this
once-fertile country into a vast wasteland.
Dr
I.C. Mahapatra, a noted agronomist, has suggested an alternative crop
pattern for Karnataka and Tamil Nadu which can be grown with minimum water.
It will save their soil and possibly yield them higher income.
In non-irrigated (‘rainfed’) areas, Karnataka can go in for ragi, jowar,
bajra, horsegram, redgram, groundnut, castor and castor. In irrigated
conditions, it can choose from sugarcane, maize, brinjal, chillies,
mulberry, tomato, potato, turmeric, ginger, grapes, banana and betel. In
Tamil Nadu, 62 per cent of the river basin grows rice thrice—Kuruvai,
Thaladi, and Samba. Our study shows that if it limits itself to a single
crop of Samba variety, it can get far higher yield than today’s three
crops taken together. It should opt for ragi, groundnut, sesames, castor,
blackgram, greengram, sugarcane and cotton. (Vide Down to Earth, journal of
the Centre for Science and
Environment, November 15, 2002)
There
is no point in engaging in grandiose projects inviting bankruptcy while
continuing to kill the pre-existing rainwater harvesting structures whose
efficacy was acknowledgedly the highest in the world. Today, in Karnataka,
“at least 11,000 traditional water harvesting structures such as tanks and
ponds have silted up and dried, as the local farming communities, which
maintained and used them, have stopped doing so”.
In
Tamil Nadu, there had been wonderful “Eries” in large numbers whose
efficiencies were the marvels of the world’s experts. These are now
suffering neglect. Besides, Tamil Nadu has been destroying the potential of
some of its rivers by sand quarrying. The sorry spectacle of the Qoom River
running as an open sewer in the city of Chennai itself shows how it has been
taking care of its own water resources.
Whether
in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka or Kutch, there is no need for a big project for
water. According to India’s eminent meteorologist, Dr P.R. Pisharoty, who
passed away two months back, “if the rainfall over the area is merely 50
cm per year, then all the water requirements can be met by local rain water
harvesting techniques”.
In
view of the ecological, economic and human costs and the bleak prospect
explained above, the government would be well advised to retreat from this
Tuglaqian project of linking all major rivers. And the Hon’ble Supreme
Court maybe pleased to review its own order, suo moto, in the country’s
interest.
Epilogue
After
this article was written, the Prime Minister, on November 20 last, declared
the government’s commitment to linking up all major rivers as an insurance
against droughts. What is more, this declaration was greeted with applause
by parliamentarians of all hues. The questions that the Prime Minister and
his Council of Ministers need to answer are: The most drought-affected areas
in this country are Rajasthan; Kutch and Saurashtra in Gujarat; Rayalseema
in Andhra Pradesh; and Bolangir, Kalahandi and Nuapara in Orissa. Will this
link-up help them? Why is the demand for link-up of rivers not from them but
from the rich farmers of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu who
persist in cultivating a series of high-water demanding cash crops? Do not
recent experiences show that local water harvesting techniques can meet all
the needs? The applause greeting the declaration was without the awareness
that this will lead the country to environmental disaster, regional
discords, water quality degeneration, soil degradation and perennial
bankruptcy.
The “Link-the-Rivers” project is virtual rejection of the decentralised
water harvesting technologies, which can certainly meet all legitimate water
needs at much cheaper costs. This is also the denial of the potential of
percolation tanks which, if resurrected, can cope with successive years of
drought, by preserving water in the underground, in evaporation-free
condition. This is repudiation of the government’s advocacy, up to now,
for conjunctive storage of water reserves. Plainly, this is surrender to the
clamour of large landholders, who seek to cultivate a series of
high-water-demanding crops to the detriment of their soils, in their
short-term interest of money profits.
The
fundamental problem of India’s water resource is the Himalayan-fed
rivers’ rate of siltation, which is highest in the world. Because of this,
these rivers’ raised beds are unable to hold enough water. This maximises
the wasteful run-offs to the sea, causes floods during the rains and water
shortage during the dry season. The primary task, therefore, is to desilt
and deepen the rivers, re-excavate the canals, reforest the Himalayas and
all mountain ranges and hills, and re-forest both sides of the banks from
their sources to their deltas. This basic task gets sidetracked by the
grandiose project of linking up the rivers.
Apparently,
the government has abdicated its duty of indicating i) which crops are
suitable or otherwise for which climatic conditions; ii) which combination
of crops, including coarse cereals, pulses and oilseeds, is most suitable
for the masses’ nutritional needs; and iii) which kind of irrigation
and/or drainage is suitable therefore.
While much noise is being made about the wide navigation opportunities to be
provided by the Inland Water Grid, not even the first step has been taken
for encouraging large-scale boat movements in the existing inland waterways
to carry cargo. The water-driven crafts are known to be the cheapest mode of
transportation. Sane thinking will also suggest that oil-slick-spreading
vessels ought not to be permitted in the inland waterways in the interest of
maintaining purity of water and preserving aquatic life.
So far as the lure of electricity is concerned, the first thing that needs
to be laid down is that electricity supply for the burgeoning of industries
or landed estates is counter-productive unless fool-proof measures are first
taken to see that no untreated or half-treated effluents/sludge is unloaded
in the rivers. For these are the agencies which have been converting the
rivers into open sewers.
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