The river linking plan is an avoidable misadventure
Maharashtra shows that the role of dams and canals in reducing floods and droughts is greatly exaggerated
The deadlock between the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh over the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project has been resolved, MINT reported last week.
But what are we up to when we talk of the inter-linking of rivers (ILR)? More dams and canals to transfer water from one river of the country to another, based on unscientific and unnatural principles, not to mention bad economics and the adverse social and environmental impacts on people and environment.
We presume that water flowing in a river to the seas is a ‘waste’ and that there are ‘water-surplus’ rivers, which could be transferred to ‘deficit’ rivers. It has also been claimed that the so called inter-linking of rivers would also rid the nation of the annual scourge of floods and droughts.
Every person with a science background knows about the critical and essential water cycle and the key role that rivers play in it. Why are we then deliberately closing our eyes to this fundamental natural cycle?
Rivers are diverse on account of differences in their respective catchments. For example in India there are 14 major river basins ranging from vast Ganga basin spread over 862,769 sq km to river Subarnarekha with a basin spread over only 19,300 sq km.
Each of these river basins — big or small — is an ecosystem in its own right with characteristic hydrology, geology, biology and ecological functions whose integrity must remain inviolate. Anthropogenic concepts such as surplus and deficit river basin and water transfer amongst them is akin to person being called upon to give blood to another one regularly.
As regards the presumed role of dams and canals in the mitigation of the ill effects of floods and droughts in the country, it is a matter of record and experience that Maharashtra with more than 1,800 of the total of 3,200 large dams in the country remains one of the most drought-affected states.
The Hirakud dam over river Mahanadi in Odisha raised specifically to control floods, has actually been the cause of some of the massive flooding downstream of it? Experience indicates that while dams do stop low level floods, which are a boon to the farmers. They actually turn high-level floods into devastating ones through sudden and massive water releases.
In short, the so called inter-linking of rivers, which shall entail construction of large number of dams and canals criss-crossing the nation, is an avoidable misadventure, which if still insisted upon might result in unimaginable national regrets in future.