India, with its vast length and breadth, manifests multifarious diversity in terms of people, land, animals, customs, traditions, history, water. It is this diversity that made various famous people made comment on it, to name a few Pt. Nehru said India has unity in diversity and very famous "Kos kos par badle paani char kos par bani" meaning that at every kos (ca. 200 meters) taste of water changes and at every four kos language also changes. Geographically, this cannot be more true, India is notorious for its floods and droughts at the same time. Some regions have plenty of water (ground as well as surface) e.g. W.Bengal, Haryana, Punjab, Western UP etc. while others face chronic water shortage e.g. Bundelkhand, Rayalseema regions etc. Further, monsoon in India is also spatially as well as temporally varies i.e. approx. 75% of the total precipitation occurs in four monsoon months (June - September) and the remaining 25% occurs in rest of the 8 months. Further, the country faces high spatial variability of precipitation with a distinct pattern of distribution from east to the west (as in fig. 1). As apparent from the fig.1 eastern and north eastern India experiences high rainfall while the western India has low rainfall. The water situation due to above explained reasons, water distribution in India is highly varied. This leads to flood situations in some parts of the country while other face drought creating a situation of water-surplus river basins and water-deficient river basins.
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| Distribution of Rainfall in India. |
Challenges to India's Development:
1. India's population is increased and slated to be world's most populous country. It is expected to be stabilized at around 1640 million. Consequently, water availability per capita is bound to decline from 1820 m2/yr in 2001 to 1140 m2/yr in 2050. Further, additional water usage such as industry, agriculture, institutions etc will also increase. To some estimates, India's water availability is to be increased by 3 times.
2. India's energy demand has been spiraling along with the economic development. India's energy demand is slated to increase by 2.5 times which require eco-friendly energy resources such as solar, hydro-electric power, nuclear power etc.
3. Monsoon dependent India needs water storage per person to deal with non-monsoon water shortages.
4. Water is a contentious issue in India, the infamous Cauveri river water distribution tussle between Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala needs no explanation. The issue is that every region (inter-state or intra-state) wants water but reluctant to share the water resources with other states. Since, India has over 60% of population in agriculture, irrigation water will remain a potent political issue.
It is in this background Inter-linking of rivers (ILR) has been proposed and re-proposed.
History of ILR:
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Proposed By
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Photo
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Year
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Features
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Present Status
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Sir Arthur Cotton
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1839
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He conceived a plan to
link rivers in Southern India for inland navigation. While the project was
partially implemented,
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The
river linking canals could not survive in the face of rapid development
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Dr. K.L. Rao
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1972
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Linking the northern Ganga River with the
southern Couvery River
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Required lifting of water over 450 m
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Envisaged to supply water to drought prone
areas of south UP and South Bihar
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Discarded because of high financial cost and
very large energy requirement
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Captain D.J.
Dashtur
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1977
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Proposed
the Himalayan and Garland canals to be inter-connected at two points (Delhi
and Patna) by five pipelines of 3.7m in diameter
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Surplus
waters in the country to be utilized to irrigate 219 Mha of agriculture land
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Found
to be technically infeasible
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National Water Development Authority (NDWA)
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1980-2000
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Two components were identified 1) Himalayan
River component (14 river linking) and 2) Peninsular River component (16
river linking).
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Work is going on Ken-Betwa project.
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The table is modified from Mirza, M., Ahmed A U (2006)
Issues related to ILR:
1. Other Inter Basin Transfer projects.
It has been claimed that adverse environmental impacts of IBT projects outweigh their beneficial impacts.
2. Food and Irrigation
Despite the expansion of irrigation over the years, availability of chemical fertilizers, introduction of high yield varieties, India's crop yield per hectare remains lower than other countries in the region e.g. wheat yield in China is 40 % more than what India produces. Further, China grows one kilo rice in 300-400 lts of water whereas India uses 4000 lts of water to grow same quantity of rice. So without adding more water to the agriculture it is still possible to increase crop yield. This argument opposes the need of more water for the crops. Further, flood irrigation has been widely criticized for tropical and subtropical areas and has adverse impacts on soil as well as ground water conditions.
3. Hydrological situation:
The whole ILR project is based upon the concept of transferring water from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. However, this concept was contested by the fact that every drop of water in a river perform some function and thus there is no surplus water even in chronic flooding rivers. Flood water is seen as the source of free minerals for the land, free recharge for the groundwater resources, free medium for the growth and transportation of fish and conversation of biological diversity, free bumper harvest for humans etc. Further, at the micro level, the flood flows flush the silt from the riverbeds in the plains to the delta areas free of cost. Flushing of water to sea support the rich fisheries in the estuaries and keep away the saline incursion from the sea. Transferring water from a "surplus" area takes away the multi-ecological services, the flood water does. The idea of surplus water is considered as reductionist approach. Therefore, to keep the ecological services water should not be transferred.
4. Risk and ILR as a system:
This argument is one of the most powerful. The ILR is a system, whereby one component receives water from another component e.g. Peninsular component is planned to receive water from Himalayan component. If a link is become non-functional or not constructed; the other parts might not work as efficiently as has been thought or planned. Thus, this can risk the whole system of ILR.
5. Flood and Drought mitigation
Ganga River has been identified as a "surplus basin". Now, lets see how Ganga varies in its flow. Ganga's peak discharge is 55,415 cubic meters per second (cumecs) at Farakka during the four monsoon months, a 100 m wide 10 m deep canal can divert at most 2,000 cumecs to provide 4 % relief. For the rest of 8 months (non-monsoon), Ganga flows at 5,280 cumecs and diversion of 2,000 cumecs will deny Bihar 38 % of Ganga water when it is needed the most. Alternatively, using a canal only for 4 months would be economically a non-sense. Thus notion of flood mitigation seems flawed.
6. Health Concerns
Dams and reservoirs are evidenced to cause favourable conditions for the growth of various disease causing vectors. When long canals transport water from one location to multiple locations they also carry disease causing vectors. Since the water is a medium of growth for these vectors, an likely disease outbreak, an epidemic can occur. Diseases such as malaria, guinea worm, river blindness and multiple diarrhoel diseases are common diseases related to water projects. Further, fertilizers in the canal water, water effluents, pesticides, hazardous chemicals can jeopardize environment as well as public health.
7. Social and Ecological impacts
Big water are know to displace people and wildlife attributed to submerged area behind dams. Since 1950, big dam projects have displaced 40 million people. This causes heightened social tensions in both rural and urban India. Narmada bachao is one of the most popular movement against the dams on Narmada river. More such movements might rise up if the people perceives the issue threatening their security of livelihood and shelter.
8. Economic costs
The ILR project is the largest inter-basin water transfer ever taken in the world. The estimated cost of the entire project is in the range of $ 200 billion; by any estimate the cost is huge! One argument is that if one component of the ILR fails, the probability of failure of other parts or the whole is huge, threatening the survival of whole ILR project. In such a scenario, debt of $200 billion is too huge to forget and can have serious political, social and economical consequences.
The above issue might show the ILR project in bad light but these issues must be considered and discussed at lengths to make ILR a success.
Conclusion:
The ideas and arguments discussed above were taken from the book "Interlinking of Rivers in India: Issues and concerns". However, the issue is not a simple one and India has to grow and to achieve sustainable development goals #1 End poverty, #2 Zero hunger #6 clean water and sanitation #7 affordable and clean energy, India needs to distribute its water resources spatially and remove the temporal barrier to its access. There are a number of anti-ILR views, majority of them recommend for a more ecological friendly approach i.e. water-shed development, switching to less water intensive crops etc. The benefit of these alternative approaches is that they are well distributed, can be built using bottom-up approach. More on this will be addressed in another blog.
Bibliography:
“Interlinking of Rivers in India: Issues and Concerns.” Routledge & CRC Press, https://www.routledge.com/Interlinking-of-Rivers-in-India-Issues-and-Concerns/Mirza-Ahmed-Ahmad/p/book/9780415404693. Accessed 4 Aug. 2021.
