India's gigantic river linking project: Think about the oceans too!

Sudhirendar Sharma

By directing the government to consider linking all major rivers in the country for controlling
floods and droughts by the year 2012, the Supreme Court seems to have overlooked the success
of countrywide community initiatives in fighting drought in the recent past. And by accepting the
court’s advice, the Government in a way has admitted that all is not well with its heavily funded
drought-proofing measures across the country.

Despite evidence that large dams have failed to effectively control floods and that canals have
not helped the cause of better crop harvests either, the apex court has fallen for the engineering
solution to get the country out of a widespread water scarce situation by ensuring equitable
access to water. The dam over Cauvery was indeed built by the most competent engineer and
yet it allowed a political crisis to brew and spill over as worst ever water conflict.

But the project’s biggest fallacy is rooted in the assumption that for all times to come the
Himalayan rivers will have enough flow to enrich the water-strapped peninsular rivers. If previous
attempt at linking of Beas and Sutlej rivers is any indication, the experiment had literally failed to
maintain levels in the historic Bhakra reservoir. The Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) is
now wondering if an earth-fill dam upstream of the reservoir can overcome the shortfall.

Changing global climate and weather patterns are not only impacting snow cover in the
Himalayas but the spatial distribution of rainfall has gone through significant irreversible change
too. Consequently, any attempt at river diversion may indeed bring short-term political gains but
sustaining water supplies in the long run will remain an unanswered question. Recent recharging
of the Sabarmati with Narmada waters needs to be viewed in this light.

Isn’t it a paradox that when community action could revive five long-forgotten rivers in the dry
region of Alwar, similar principles were not applied for recharging the parched Sabarmati? During
the independence movement, many a historic decisions were taken on the banks of Sabarmati
when the river used to be in its pristine glory with an annual flow of 3,200 million cubic metres.
Post independence, no one even questioned the demise of the historic river leave alone
emulating the Alwar experience of regenerating dead rivers!

Communities in Alwar tapped their portion (less than 200 mm) of the 420 mham of rainfall that
the country receives each year. They impounded the same into thousands of village ponds, using
it for agriculture and allied operations and getting the groundwater recharged as an unintended
outcome. Accumulated groundwater over a period of time helped revive the dead rivers.

Despite spatial variations in rainfall, every village in the country can emulate people of Alwar in
meeting its own water needs. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment has long
been arguing that all it needs to store a million litres of water in each village is a 1-hectare plot.

Studies have further shown that smaller the catchment the better its rainfall collection efficiency.
While a small catchment of 0.1 hectare has 15 per cent rainfall collection efficiency, a 300
hectare catchment nets only 3 per cent rainfall. It clearly means that bigger the catchment (like a
river valley project) larger the loss of water from it.

No wonder, the mood of the country in the recent past has been in favour of smaller water-
harvesting initiatives. Not without reason has the country invested a whopping Rs.8 billion in
conserving moisture on some 6.2 million hectares of rainfed land during the current year. Termed
watershed approach, some 89 million hectares of rainfed land is in need of similar investment. By
all standards, extending community managed measures to the entire rainfed land would be
several multitudes cheaper than linking mighty rivers.

Worldover the swing is in favour of making soil profile, the upper 6 inches of topsoil, a water
reservoir. As demand for human consumption and agriculture increases, the best course is to
store water where it falls. With dams and canals being ruled out as being prohibitively expensive
and inefficient in terms of tapping and delivering rainwater, the focus on turning soil profile as a
reservoir is meeting widespread approval from scientists and development practitioners alike.

But for the Indian government and the apex court to think about linking rivers at a time when
the world is searching for sustainable solutions to improve water productivity is indeed
bewildering. More importantly, the flow in rivers has been taken as subservient to human needs.
The obligation of rivers to sustain fragile ecosystems along their meandering paths seems to
have been discounted in the process.

The proposed linking of the Himalayan and the peninsular rivers at an estimated cost of Rs
5,56,000 crore will disrupt the entire hydrological cycle. Upon completion of the project, a
majority of the rivers may never drain into the ocean. The ecological impact of reversing a
natural process has yet to be fully understood. Drying up of the mighty Aral sea in the erstwhile
Soviet Union is just one example of what river tempering may have in store.
Already the Yalu and Colorado rivers no longer reach the ocean. Only ten per cent of the Nile
reaches the Mediterranean. And Ganges and the Yangtse do not completely drain out into the
ocean. Given the likely impact of tempering rivers’ natural flow, there is a need for a global treaty
that forces each country to honour its ecological obligation towards the great oceans.