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Chasing a mirage of water

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

History will not forgive us if we do not take a decision after a careful examination of the costs and benefits of linking rivers.

A DISTRESSING feature of Indian politics is that a consensus is available in precisely those areas where we do not need one. In 1998, there was hardly a murmur of dissent from the mainstream in the chorus of support that greeted the Pokhran-II nuclear tests. Now, in 2002, a much larger institutional consensus has developed in support of an agenda that could turn out to be only a little less dangerous than the acquisition of nuclear weapons: the grandiose proposal to link the rivers of India with each other.

The President has said that the only long-term solution for protection against drought is to link India's rivers. The Supreme Court in an extraordinary expression of judicial activism has directed the Government to formulate and execute the project within a decade. The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress are now falling over each other in support of the proposal. And with remarkable speed, the Government has constituted a task force to formulate the project and draw a road map for completion by 2016.

While the idea of transferring massive amounts of water across India's main rivers is an old one, it is instructive that whether it is K. L. Rao's proposal for the Ganga-Cauvery link or Captain Dastur's "garland canal" network, they have been examined by Government committees and abandoned for being impracticable for one reason or the other. As recently as 1999, as irrigation expert Ramaswamy Iyer pointed out, the National Commission on an Integrated Water Resources Development Plan looked at the ongoing feasibility studies of the east-west (Brahmaputra to the Ganga and then westwards) and the peninsular (Mahanadi-Cauvery) network proposals and found them to be largely unnecessary. Yet, the idea persists that joining up the rivers through a gigantic countrywide network of reservoirs and canals will generate huge increases in agricultural production and employment.

Gigantic projects are a favourite of the powerful. For the elected representatives, they are grander symbols of achievement than progress in bread and butter issues. For the engineers they are an opportunity to translate dreams wistfully pencilled on the drawing board into reality. For the civil contractors they are a gold mine of business opportunity. And for the political parties they offer scope for centralised and mammoth corruption which will fill their coffers. A once-in-a-century project like a linking of India's rivers satisfies all these aspirations. It will therefore be too much to expect the task force to put this proposal under the microscope. We can only hope that it will air enough issues to persuade all of India's institutions to look afresh at the idea. Only a few issues need to be highlighted to make the point that this is a mirage the country can ill-afford to chase.

One, the very inter-State disputes over water that have breathed fresh air into the linking proposal stand in the way of its execution. If water is to be moved from the Mahanadi to the Godavari and then to the Cauvery basin, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh must agree to the transfers. But neither State agrees that there is a surplus in the two rivers, so how then can there be any sharing of waters? More generally, the States and even regions within a State are loath to share water with one another. The need to appropriate water is a natural consequence of an attitude, nurtured for decades, that the use of more and more water for cultivation of water-intensive crops is the only way to cope with rainfall uncertainty and the only recipe for agricultural development.

Two, incomplete projects which have already swallowed huge resources bedevil the irrigation sector. According to the NCIWRDP, as cited by Mr. Iyer, it will take Rs. 180,000 crores over the next 10 years to complete these projects. Should the nation's priority be to complete these schemes or abandon them and start on a new and gigantic one?

Three, the river basin is the natural unit of planning which we are supposed to be following. While in the past there have been inter-basin projects that have been implemented, a countrywide inter-basin transfer of water will be a fundamental violation of this very basic principle. Will it be worth it in economic terms? Four, can we have even a reasonable estimate of capital and operating costs? Depending on whichever proposal is now going to be drawn up, it will be a mind-boggling project. It will require the construction of a network of large reservoirs, excavation of canals that are thousands of kilometres in length, consumption of enormous amounts of energy to lift water across mountain ranges (requiring 10,000 MW of capacity, according to one estimate) and construction of even longer canals if lifting of water is to be avoided by taking a circuitous route around ranges. A figure that the Government mentioned in the Supreme Court is the stupendous one of Rs. 5,60,000 crores. The mind boggles at this figure. If the project is to be completed in a decade, then it will mean an expenditure of Rs. 56,000 crores a year. What does expenditure of this magnitude imply? This annual outlay would consume 30 per cent of the Centre's total tax revenue. It would be more than the Centre's current level of Plan capital outlay on all social and economic projects. And it would be equivalent to about 80 per cent of the Centre's annual capital expenditure in its entirety on defence, power, irrigation, roads, health, education and everything the Government is involved in. In short, this one project will devour Government revenues and push every single social and economic priority off the agenda for years to come.

Five, if this is what execution of the project implies, can we have a cold-headed and reasonable assessment of the costs and benefits before committing ourselves to the grand idea? Six, can we also look at the larger human, social and environmental costs at this attempt to redraw India's geography? How many million people will be uprooted by the reservoirs that will be created and the canals that will cut through the country? Can we even think of rehabilitating them and how? What permanent changes will the project bring to the environment?

Seven, this gigantic project will kill any dream we may have of an integrated approach to water use in the form of pursuing major and minor irrigation projects, watershed development and efficiency in water use. Two years ago, Parliament was informed that "linking of rivers is only a part of the solution to flood, drought and drinking water problems. The solution lies in a conjunctive, holistic and integrated water management". Exactly. Yet, now the political establishment is prepared to invest the country's energies and finances in one single project.

Eight, is the Supreme Court time-frame of execution in a decade even remotely feasible? The Government itself says it will take at least four decades to complete. Or rather can a project of this kind be ever completed or will it be abandoned mid-way when the human and financial costs become too much to bear? It should be just as worrying if the mirage is given up mid-stream, abandoned after an expenditure of perhaps hundreds of thousands of crores.

There are innumerable other economic, hydrological, social and environmental issues that need to be addressed. History will not forgive us if we do not take a decision after a careful examination of the costs and benefits of linking rivers. A decision to take up what will be the largest project ever executed in India cannot be based on the whims and fancies of groups looking for a quick-fix solution to India's water challenges.

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