NAVDANYA

 

River Interlinking

The History

Reviving the idea

The big picture

Where is the water

Killing rivers

From being a river which supported inland trade and passenger traffic 150 years ago, the Ganga has become a silt-choked shadow of its former self. The British used it to ship their troops from Bengal to Kanpur and Delhi during the 1857 war of independence. Today, the Calcutta Port is so silted that crores of rupees have been invested to build another port at Haldia. It was to overcome the silting of the Calcutta Port that the Farakka barrage was constructed to divert more water to the Indian stream. While Farakka has led to drastically reduced water flows to Bangladesh and resulted in constant diplomatic tension with that country, it has not been able to save the Calcutta Port. One may be tempted to ask: Does the Ganga really have surplus water?

i) One, the source of the river is drying up, like almost all the other Himalayan rivers. It is well known that Gangotri Glacier which feeds the river has receded by over 14 km in the last century alone.

ii) Second, increasing amounts of the river's water are already being used for irrigation as well as urban needs.

ill) Third, almost half of the Ganga's water at Patna originates in Nepal which has its own plans to develop hydrological resources. Once these come up, flows would be further reduced in the Ganga.

Similar facts do not justify the claims that Brahmaputra , the Mahanadi and the Godavari are water surplus. In any case, the riparian states through which these rivers pass have their own plans to use this "surplus water". This puts another question mark on the schemes political feasibility. Try visualizing Punjab parting with its water for Tamil Nadu to use, when neighboring Karnataka almost refuses to obey the Supreme Court on this issue.

On the ecological front, consider the fall-out of building 200 large water storage reservoirs and an extensive network. of canals. Linking these rivers and storage reservoirs would eat into the natural habitats of wild life and re-shape the ecology of the country with unknown consequences. There are no estimates regarding the number of people who would be dislocated, estimates vary from lakhs to a few crores. This would surely add to the political as well as economic costs of the project.