Interlinking of Rivers: Don’t Ignore Expert Opinion

The intense debate on the proposed inter-linking of rivers (ILR) project has revealed that some of the most eminent experts on the subject, including those who have occupied senior government positions in the past, have very serious reservation about this project.

It is extremely useful to examine carefully the points raised in a statement signed by 65 senior academics, former government officials, scientists, engineers, lawyers, journalists, environmentalists, activists and others. This statement—titled (in the context of the Supreme Court’s February 27 judgment on the ILR) ‘Please put the order on hold and reconsider’—has attracted a lot of attention, not the least because among those various eminent persons who have signed it there are also quite a few who have occupied senior government positions in the past. We can identify, for example, three former Secretaries to the Government of India and one former Member of the Planning Commission. In addition among the signatories we have a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. Some of the seniormost persons of some of the most reputed academic institutions are also included in this list.

This statement says that none of the thirty projects of the ILR have gone through the various processes of examination, evaluation and approval and received final sanction. “In fact, even the earlier stage of project formulation has not been completed in most cases; only three of the thirty projects have reached the Detailed Project Stage, and even these are not final.” This statement draws attention to a ‘substantial body of expert opinion that is highly critical of the project’ and the ‘strong dissent on the part of several State governments’.

This statement criticises the ILR as a ‘reckless and major redesigning of the geography of the country’. “The grand design (of the ILR) consisting of 30 projects involving upwards of 80 dams is bound to have major environmental/ecological consequences, which might even be disastrous in some cases.”

Pointing out that the very notions of ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ are highly problematic, this statement says that there will be hardly any flood-mode-ration as a result of ILR. “This project holds the potential of generating new conflicts between basins.” Finally, this statement recommends that “careful, economical, conflict-free and sustainable intra-basin management should come first, and bringing water from elsewhere should be the last recourse”.

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Himanshu Thakkar, a member of the Ministry of Water Resources’ first expert committee on the ILR (constituted in 2005), has argued that the many-sided data which can enable us to declare some basins as surplus and others as deficit is simply not available. He says: “I, as a member of the water resources’ expert committee on the ILR, have been asking for such a study but I have been told that it does not exist for any basin. This means that we have no basis for arriving at the conclusion that there is a surplus or a deficit in any basin.”

Thakkar, who has followed this proposal closely, says: “In case of 14 of the 30 schemes there is no existing feasibility report. The pre-feasibility and feasibility studies that exist are outdated....For none of the schemes is there a detailed project report or environment clearance or any of the statutory clearances.”
According to a paper written by Himanshu Thakkar (year 2007), “Based on available information, the ILR will require at least 7.61 lakh hectares land and will displace at least 14.8 lakh people. In addition ILR will need at least 20 lakh hectares of land for the canal network. The ILR will also need at least 1.04 lakh hectares of forest land as per available official information.”

Recent estimates of the ILR budget put the price-tag at about Rs 440,000 crores at 2003-04 prices. If we remember that most such colossal construction projects see a massive escalation of budget with the passage of time, the actual financial costs of the ILR can be well-imagined.

As against such heavy costs, the promised benefits are highly dubious.
Bharat Singh, Professor Emeritus, Water Resources Training Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, has stated clearly that “any water resources engineer will immediately discard the idea of the ILR as a flood control measure”.

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Ramaswamy R. Iyer, a former Secretary, Union Ministry of Water Resources, has observed: “Linking a river to another will merely provide additional water to areas already served by rivers. Most of the uplands and dry lands of this country are distant from rivers, and at elevations of 300 m to 1000 m above mean sea level. The ILR will serve very few such areas.”

The National Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development (NCIWRD) (1999) had commented on the Himalayan component of the ILR: “The storages and links involved are of very large sizes and lengths, and the costs of construction and environmental problems would be enormous.”

In the context of the peninsular component of the ILR, the NCIWRD report stated: “These links will involve stupendous engineering activity. They’ll have large-scale, socio-economic, human and environmental impacts and will involve very high financial outlays.”

More specifically, the Commission said: “Studies of important east-flowing peninsular river-basins, mainly Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, Pennar, Cauvery and Vaigai indicate that there is no imperative need for large-scale transfer of water.”
The Ken-Betwa project in the Bundelkhand region is generally stated to be the number one ILR project in the sense that project preparation is reported to have gone further than any other project. The Supreme Court has also asked the special committee on river-links to first take up this project. However, this project has to cope with some adverse aspects—

• The Union Environment Ministry has already said no to this project.

• Former Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that this project is a disastrous proposition.

• The Ken-Betwa project, if implemented, will submerge 4600 ha of the Panna Tiger Reserve and about double that amount of forest land.

• The entire project is based on the availability of surplus water in the Ken river, but this assumption of a surplus has been questioned. In the past Collectors of Panna and Damoh wrote to the Planning Commission and others that the only reason the Ken basin is seen to have surplus is because very little of the potential of local water systems and irrigation has been developed in the backward upstream areas. If this potential is realised, there’ll be no surplus in the Ken basin.

• Some of the most respected and experienced social and environmental activists, who have been involved in finding small-scale sustainable answers to the water problems of Bundelkhand, have opposed this project. Dr Bhartendu Prakash, a scientist and social activist who has co-authored the most comprehensive report of the water problems of Bundelkhand, has emerged as a staunch critic of the ILR in general and the Ken-Betwa link project in particular.

• The government says that displacement will be limited but people point out that already the estimates of the to-be displaced people are rising much above earlier estimates and all direct and indirect displacement due to dam and link-canal etc. should be added together to reach a realistic estimate.

• At a ‘Water Parliament’ of the Bundelkhand region many speakers, including social/envi-ronment activists and independent experts, expressed concerns that this project can worsen the water scarcity in some areas and floods/waterlogging in other areas. A resolution passed at the end of this water assembly (held in Orchha, district Tikamgarh) said that lakhs of people in both the Ken and Betwa river areas will be exposed to unprecedented tragic consequences as a result of this project.

This resolution then called upon the Government of India to abandon this project.

The author in currently a Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.