Southern States - Kerala   

`Antique' data harming State's interests

By K.P.M. Basheer

KOCHI DEC. 28. As Tamil Nadu and Kerala gear up for talks to restructure the Parambikkulam-Aliyar Project (PAP) agreement, the Kerala Government is said to be handicapped by shortage of reliable scientific data on river water resources and the State's water needs.

The talks on the 1958 PAP agreement, which is overdue for revision, are now expected to be held in Thiruvananthapuram on January 3 and 4. The much-postponed talks will have Ministerial-level sessions as well as official ones. Two Tamil Nadu Ministers are expected to attend the Thiruvananthapuram talks that had earlier been set for December 19.

The PAP accord is generally viewed as compromising Kerala's interests. There have always been arguments that, like in the case of the Mullapperiyar agreement (valid for 999 years), Kerala was short-changed in the PAP accord. Kerala was put at a disadvantage in the accord because of inflated data on water availability and underestimation of irrigation and drinking-water needs. The then leaders of the State believed the myth that Kerala was a water-excess State. And, even as the Government has notified seven out of 14 districts in the State as drought-hit, the myth that Kerala is a water-excess State still persists in the country.

K.M. Namboodiri, an expert on water resources and former consultant to the Dutch Government, points out that despite tremendous advances in information technology and satellite mapping and invention of several hydrological equipment, the data on Kerala's river water resources are woefully antique. Dr. Namboodiri is puzzled that even now the Government quotes the 1974 study on `Water Resources of Kerala' that was carried out by the Public Works Department (PWD).

A study by the Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (CWRDM), Kozhikode, points out that "There are some obvious inconsistencies (in the PWD report) in the estimates of the annual surface water runoff, annual utilisable surface water yield and cultivable area for some of the river basins''. For instance, "in the case of the Muvattupuzha basin, the annual surface water runoff is an unrealistically high value of 78.9 per cent of the annual rainfall''. Again the runoff values for the Periyar and the Bhavani too, which the CWRDM studied, were `unrealistically high.'

It is with such misleading data that the Kerala Government argues its case during talks to resolve inter-State water disputes. One of the conditions of the PAP agreement was that if the water available in the Parambikkulam crosses 16.5 tmc, Kerala can draw up to 2.5 tmc. However, in all the past three decades, the water availability has never crossed 13.5 tmc.

E.J. James, executive director of the CWRDM, points out that though Kerala is said to be home to 44 rivers, not a single one is a major river. The water discharge of the 44 rivers put together would be less than 75 per cent of the discharge of the Godavari. Only four, including the dying Bharathapuzha, are medium-type rivers while the rest have the status of rivulets. The longest river, the Periyar, is only 244 km, and most of the others are less than 50 km long.

The `excess-water State' myth is also fed by the fact that Kerala receives an average annual rainfall of 3,000 mm. The fact is: the per capita rainwater availability of Kerala is one-fourth less than Rajasthan's. Most of the rainwater is not available for use. Moreover, the rainfall is uneven and highly deficient in some areas (Vattavada gets only 400 mm and Attappadi 800; Chittoor taluk in Palakkad district gets less than one-third of the State's average annual rainfall). It is seasonal too, 60 per cent is provided by the south-west monsoon in three months, making management of rainwater utilisation hard. Compare this with the U.K. which receives 600 mm rainfall, and it is evenly spread out over 12 months.

References to Kerala's high rainfall often miss an important point--that it has a huge population. Kerala has the highest density of population in India, 819 people per square kilometre. This is two-and-a-half times more than the country's average of 324. In Kerala, over three per cent (32 millions) of the country's population is squeezed into a little over one per cent of its territory.

Experts call for a comprehensive and scientific stock-taking of Kerala's water resources and water demands for irrigation and drinking. They also call for demystifying the water scenario and blast the myth that Kerala is a `water-excess State.'

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