In this second article in the series, Sarika Jain, presents the projected benefits of the Interlinking of Rivers project in India and its potential pitfalls. She also analyses the feasibility of this project as a solution to the problems being faced by India.

Agriculture:
   The projected benefit in terms of agriculture include 25 million hectares of irrigation from surface water, 10 million hectares by increased use of ground water, totaling to 35million hectares which will be over and above the ultimate irrigation potential of 140 million hectares. India has one of the lowest yield of cereals at 2134kg/hectare of land. Hence expanding the irrigated land area is only one way of increasing food production. Another way may be changes in farming technology, the kind of crops grown (generally hybrid varieties use more water than the indigenous varieties), better management of available land and water. Indiscriminate irrigation over a period of time can also lead to problems like water logging and rise in salinity in soil. Hence, besides increasing the area under irrigation, implementation of mixed agriculture and other such techniques of sustainable agriculture need to be emphasized on.

Power:
   It is estimated that net 34,000 MW of hydro-power will be generated as a result of this project. But this figure is a little hard to believe because in most cases of inter basin transfer, it is understood that the requirement for pumping water across basins exceeds that produced by tapping the potential energy of the water. The pumping energy requirement is exceptionally high in this case as water will be pumped across the entire length and breadth of the country.

Flood Control and Drought Mitigation:
   While flood control is one of the major motivations behind this idea, it is now generally acknowledged that big dams play only a modest role in flood moderation. Flood cushion tends to get eaten into by the more powerful demands of irrigation and power generation. The safety of structures sometimes necessitates the release of waters causing ‘man-made’ floods downstream. Reliance needs to shift from structural to non structural measures for the purpose of flood control. Floods in moderation have certain benefits too. They are a free source of minerals for the land, help in recharging groundwater resources, help in conservation of biological diversity, give bumper harvests, flush out silt from riverbeds to deltas, prevent intrusion of saline water from the Sea and most importantly wash out saline deposits on the top soil. So what has been termed as ‘surplus’ is not really surplus. It is performing salient functions which are extremely important for the preservation of ecological balance and is helpful for the farmers.
   The project aims at mitigating drought by transferring water from ‘surplus’ to ‘deficit’ areas. The problem of drought is something that we have a solution to already in the form of rainwater harvesting structures. Rajendra Singh has shown in Alwar district, Anna Hazare in Ralegan Siddhi that this problem can be solved on a local level without bringing in water from external sources. The success stories are numerous and so are the solutions implemented. Also, even if the Linking of rivers project is implemented, it will take water to only a fraction of the drought prone areas, large parts of rain fed areas will remain unaffected.

Inland Navigation:
   It has been proposed that some of the canals will be opened for inland navigation. It will not only connect the North with the South but will also lead to multiple economic benefits and substantial saving in terms of imported fossil fuel. The cost of this set up will amount to about 24 billion usd.

Cost:
   The national water development agency has estimated a budget of 112 billion usd at 2002 prices for the entire project. However, it is estimated and accepted widely that the cost may go up to 200 billion usd. Other sources cite that large projects have had cost overruns in the region of 400-500%. Apart from estimated cost, recurring expenditure would be incurred in maintenance of dams, de silting reservoirs, relining canals and creating artificial drainage where needed. External costs like those arising from harm done to the environment, ecology, wildlife and social costs have not been taken into account.
   The estimated cost itself represents 20% of India’s Gross Domestic Product, 2.5 times the annual tax collection, 2 times the foreign exchange reserves and equals the amount spent on irrigation in the last 44 years. According to the Government’s Economic Survey for 2001-02, this amount is higher than the Gross domestic savings, and also the total outstanding external debt of the country. The total pending cost for incomplete major, medium and minor irrigation projects sum up to 30 billion usd.
   The above numbers imply that the cost of the project is huge and the burden arising from it will have to be borne by the government and the people for a very long time. Starting a project of this magnitude, when there are so many incomplete projects trying to solve the same purpose are pending, seems impractical.

Political Consensus:
   This project will involve coordination between not just States but also countries. Dams will need to be built in Nepal and Bhutan, in order to store the surplus water and later divert it to deficit regions. Water that flows into Bangladesh will now be diverted from upstream by India. Both Nepal and Bangladesh have not been taken into confidence regarding the project as of now. This has the potential of future conflict with these countries. This could also lead to a conflict between India and China in the future as China controls the flow of water in the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. China is considering a proposal to build a dam on Yarlung Tsangpo (which becomes Brahma putra in India) which will generate 40000 megawatts of energy (more than twice generated by the Three Gorges dam). If this project goes through, the entire equation of ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ in India will change. This project and other similar grand projects being planned by China have the capacity to completely throw India’s plans off the mark.
   Within India, a number of inter state conflicts over water, remain unresolved for decades now (for example the Cauvery Tribunal). The Interlinking project, which runs canal from almost every state of India, could become a major source of contention between the Sates rather than uniting them.

Concept of Surplus and Deficit and unknowns in the study of environmental impact:
   Looking at this project from a reductionist view, the concept of transferring water from surplus to deficit regions and creating a win-win situation sounds perfect. But if we look at it from a holistic point of view, every drop of water performs some ecological service at all times. The ecosystems have evolved over a period of thousands of years to make optimum use of the water available. Hence, any amount of water diverted from or to a region will cause damage proportional to the amount diverted. There is no thing as ‘surplus’ water from the holistic point of view. We have the example of Aral Sea. Water from rivers flowing into the Aral Sea, which was seemingly going waste, was diverted on a large scale from these rivers for irrigation purposes. This led to a boom in the agricultural sector and prosperity in the region in the short term, but in the long run, the salinity of the sea increased manifold, making the water unfit for any kind of human use, also effecting the aquatic flora and fauna. This has led to the collapse of the economies in the area. It is essential to learn from past experiences so as not to commit the same mistakes all over again and face similar environmental disasters which take another few centuries to recover from. The entire country’s natural water cycle will be disturbed as a result of this project. Something like this has never been done on such a large scale before and the consequences of that cannot be foreseen due the complexity of nature and the scales involved and the short time span (10 years) in which it will be done.
   It is estimated that this project will upgrade the ecology due to minimum flow guarantee in rivers. The forest cover is expected to increase from 13% to 33%. At the same time, the dams that will need to be built will cause submergence of thousands of hectares of virgin forests.

Rehabilitation:
   From a humanitarian perspective, millions of people will be forcibly displaced by this project. A sound rehabilitation and resettlement program for these people needs to be put in place. It has been estimated that 21-56 million people have been displaced by large dams over the past 50 years in India, 40% of them tribal people. Less than 50% of those displaced were rehabilitated. The submergence of land has been 2 to 3 times of that originally estimated in these projects. The displaced are people who had lived in rural areas or forests all their lives and that is the way of living they have known. Even if they are rehabilitated, will they be ever able to resettle? They are the ones, who are paying the price, are they the ones who are benefiting from the project?

The approach of this project is a centralized one where the government takes everything into its own hands and tries to come up with one solution for all problems. While this project has its projected benefits, there is no single benefit that cannot be achieved in an alternative way. The economic feasibility, the social impact and the sustainability of the current solution and the alternatives need to be studied in detail. Also fundamental questions like does the government or the Supreme Court have the right to change the entire geography of the country? Is this solution sustainable? Do we even know what the consequences of our actions are going to be? Are the beneficiaries from the project the same as those who will pay the price? Need to be answered.

The next and concluding article in the series will talk about the possible technological and institutional alternatives to this project and discuss their feasibility as opposed to Interlinking of Rivers.

Sarika Jain

References:
   1. Task Force on the Interlinking of Rivers.
   2. Sujalam: Living Waters, The Impact of the River Linking Project, Shiva V, Jalees K, Navdanya, India.
   3. Jain, S.(2003) ‘River Sutra’ Indian Express (New Delhi) 02,March.
   4. ‘And Quiet Flows the River Project’, Jayanta Bandhopadhyay, South Asian Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water resources Studies, from http://www.saciwaters.org/Jayanta.html

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