<!--QuoteBegin-Krishna+May 8 2004, 01:37 AM-->QUOTE(Krishna @ May 8 2004, 01:37 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> I do have some concerns about the eco-logical natural aspect of this project. But if the outcome is profitable than the costs, I'm all for it. Now keeping this aside what is the political problem for these last few states? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
From a newsgroup
http://groups.google.ca/groups?hl=en&lr=&i...rlinking+rivers
Interlinking of Rivers: At what cost?
By M V Kamath
In recent times there has been a great deal of talk on interlinking of
rivers right from the north to the south and from the west to the
east. The concept is very romantic. Fancy some one in Tamil Nadu being
able to drink the water of holy Ganga! The thought is mind-boggling.
But several questions of late are being asked. Is it really worthwhile
to interlink Indian rivers? Is the concept cost-effective? Is it
economically viable? Is it ecologically acceptable? The more such
questions are asked, the more doubts are being raised and current
thinking in responsible quarters is that howsoever noble the aims of
our policy-makers, it is wisdom to go slow in pursuing a vain dream.
Even Bangladesh with which India had a "goodwill" treaty in the matter
of sharing the waters of the Ganga is now having second thoughts.
There is currently a lot of media focus in our neighbouring state on
India's plan to interlink rivers so much so that some Bangladesh
professionals have written to the Supreme Court to scrap the entire
interlinking programme completely.
Even within India itself there are second thoughts over the entire
project. Maharashtra's evolving view, for example, is that the
proposed inter-linking of national rivers has no benefits at all for
the sate and it would rather prefer its river basins to be
interconnected at a cost of Rs 56,067 crore. According to one
authority what Maharashtra needs is interlinking of its own rivers,
rather than interlinking of national rivers. According to estimates
prepared, linking the Marmada and Tapi basins would cost Rs 900 crore,
linking the Krishna-Bhima basins Rs 6,000 crore, lift irrigation
scheme from the Pochampad backwaters Rs 12,000 crore and connecting
the Vainganaga and Wardha basins another Rs 4000 crores.
Maharashtra is reported to feel that a proposed transfer of water by
the Mahanadi- Vaigai link would see a share of 33.31 per cent to
Andhra Pradesh, 19.82 per cent to Karnataka and 25.90 per cent to
Tamil Nadu while Maharashtra's share would be "a meagre quantity of
6.71 per cent and that, too, from its own contributions". No state
wants to be generous to others where river water is concerned.
What needs to be stressed is that costing of the project is highly
subjective. To be honest, very little factual information is
available. According to a paper presented at a meeting of the Indian
Institute of Engineers in Pune in June this year by Nilakantha Rath,
the total cost of the river-interlinking project is around Rs 5,60,000
crore, of which the Peninsular component will cost Rs 1,06,000 crore,
the hydro-electric component will cost Rs. 2,69,000 crore and the
Himalayan component will cost Rs 1,85,000 crore. The total power
generated will be 3,400 crore Watts 400 crore Watts in the Peninsular
component and 3,000 crore Watts in the Himalayan component.
According to Rath, the capital cost per Watt of electricity,
calculated without any interest over the construction period will be
around Rs 89.6. The figures are mind-boggling. But that is only one
part of the price the consumer has to pay.
What is not being realised is that at the very least some 3 million
people will be displaced if the interlinking project is seriously
taken on hand causing untold hardship to them. Where and how are these
people to be re-housed and rehabilitated? Will the government of one
state accept people from another state should an exigency arise? Then
the point is being made that river-linking will really not ensure
water for all but merely huge tracts of food-growing soil.
According to one expert, Aditi Roy Ghatak, writing in The Tribune (20
August): "It will not stop the flooding because the rivers are often
simultaneously in spate. The Gangetic plain can hardly deal with the
excess Brahmaputra waters when the Ganga is overflowing. It will not
solve water disputes but places every state against the other over
riparian rights. It will not bring peace, but, by displacing some
three million people, will tear asunder societies all over the
country. It will provide no permanent solutions but temporary ones..."
But what really is implied in the i n t e r l i n i n g s c h e m e ?
Essentially, the task is to bring the glacial waters of the m e l t i
n g H i m a l a y a n snows to the parched peninsula by literally
tapping the flood waters from 14 Himalayan tributaries of the Ganga
and the Brahmaputra in North India and Nepal and transferring them to
the South via a series of canals and pumping stations across the
Vindhya mountains to replenish, so to speak, 17 southern rivers
including the Godavari, the Krishna and the Kaveri.
According to experts this will entail construction of some 300
reservoirs and digging more than 1,000 km of canals. A plan of a
similar kind was envisaged long ago by a British engineer but his idea
was not so much to bring water to thirsty millions as to make travel
and transport easier for colonial administrators. The idea was given
up as quickly as it was presented. Today's dreamers have something
else in mind. They point out that in normal circumstances about
two-thirds of the 1.9 trillion cubic meters of rainwater in the Indian
rivers goes to the sea and is thus wasted. Nobody seems to have given
the slightest thought to what would happen to the fish and marine life
if the seas, if this water with its rich organic content is recklessly
denied it, for ever and ever.
Surely, environmentalists argue, when God made rivers He had the good
of fish life in the oceans also at heart? Does mere man have the right
to disturb what God has created? Then there is the question of how
engineers will handle Vindhyas which divide North India from the
South. True, the Vidhyas cannot be compared to the Himalayas but for
all that there they stand in all majesty and cannot be ignored.
Dr S. Kalyanaraman, former Asian Development Bank executive is
reported as saying that water from the north would be linked with
rivers of the south not by lifting water but by circumnavigating the
mountains. He is quoted as saying: "North of the mountains the flow of
the link between the Ganga and the Mahanandi will be from the
west/north east to the south east (by gravity) and the south of the
Vindhya mountains, the flow of link between the Mahanadi ad the
Godavari will be from the east to the south west/south (by gravity)."
Not all engineers and technicians think this is possible. Debashish
Chatterjee, a former Geomorphologist in charge of the Geological
Survey of India, Eastern region, is quoted as saying that
"transferring water from one valley to another across the water divide
is a geographical and physical impossibility". He should know.
Our engineers obviously think they can work miracles. Miracles may be
worked but as many want to know: are they worth the price? What is
disconcerting is the report that the Task Force on interlinking of
rivers has already finalised its Action Plan I. The Peninsular links
are to be taken up first, if reports are to be believed. But can any
action be taken without formal assent by Parliament and, just as
importantly, by the states? And what about the people who will be
affected? Are they going to be ignored? Not even all scientists are
agreed with the wisdom of the interlinking project.
Many hold that interlinking will impair the hydrological balance and
the geohydrological setting of he entire Himalayan water system in a
region that is seismically sensitive to boot. What, for example, will
happen if water seeps in geologically unsteady areas? Will there be
more earthquakes? By interlinking rivers are we deliberately buying
earthquakes? Besides, let it not be forgotten that every river has its
own biological logic. Each river is home to a particular species of
fish life which could be damaged by the inflow from the waters of
another river. Has anyone thought of that?
Again, when there is so much talk of cleaning up the Ganga, would it
serve any purpose by diverting its polluted waters to rivers down
south, east of west? Then again rivers carry rich soil which is
finally deposited towards the end, to form deltas that are productive.
Would interlinking bring delta formation to a predictable end?
There are scores of such questions, minor though they may sound but
meaningful if we look at them more deeply. So far there has been no
public debate. There hasn't even been a full-length parliamentary
debate. Every thing is taken for granted. The interlinking concept is
so romantic that it has stopped all debate. What is not realised is
that we may end up in a massive disaster, of unheard of proportions.
There are some thoughtful people who argue that if it is just a matter
of making water available to people there are more constructive and
cost effective ways of doing so.
Check dams can be built as Gujarat state has done in recent years to
great effect. We will have to devise ways and means of preserving rain
water so that it is made available at all times. The Government could
do no better than to set up a Ministry of Water Management both at the
state and Central level. Efforts must be made to raise underground
water levels by storing rain water. Such schemes hardly cost anything
except physical labour.
It makes no sense to spend millions of crores of rupees on schemes
that at some point in time may have to be given up. In the
circumstances the government would be wise to be transparent in every
possible way. No step should be taken until its repercussions are
publicly discussed and debated. The public must be given full access
to all the facts and nothing should be hidden. The matter is too
serious for any government agency to take arbitrary action. One final
thought. Why is there need for more and more water?
This is because we are having more and more mouths to feed. One way to
make equidistribution of water possible is to control and ultimately
reduce population. If, in the next hundred years Indian population can
be deliberately brought down to half of what it is now, the water
problem would indeed have been solved at no cost! And isn't that a
thought worth pondering over?
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