The Hindu : Panel to come out with a critique on river-linking

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 22, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Panel to come out with a critique on river-linking

NEW DELHI, MARCH 21. With skepticism over the scientific validity of the River-Interlinking project fast gaining ground, experts including Ms. Medha Patkar have come together under a committee to generate a `fact-sheet' on policy options to the mega project.

Under chairmanship of former Union Minister, Y.K. Alagh, the committee, christened as `National Civil Society Committee', will develop a conceptual framework relating to water management in general and river-linking project in particular.

It will facilitate independent, transparent and accountable consultative process for generating a national debate on the issue.

Other members of the 12-member Committee included former Water Resources Secretary Ramaswamy Iyer, Ashok Khosla, S.R. Hashim, Kanchan Chpra, E.A.S. Sarma, A.D. Mohile, Tushaar Shah, Ganesh Pangare, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, B.P. Singh and Bisham Gujja.

Dr. Alagh and other experts were critical of the government appointed Task Force headed by former Union Minister Suresh Prabhu for the project, for not making the public the scientific study that has been made the basis of it.

Medha Patkar, leader of Narmada Bachao Andolan, said the Government should allow civil society groups to know methodology adopted in collection and analysis of data of the project and extent of involvement of stake-holders for the sake of transparency and accountability.

A majority of experts on the committee felt that the project does not give any guarantee for providing security of domestic water supplies to the drier areas of India, particularly the dry uplands.

Only dependable solution to this problem lies in local level harvesting and conservation of rainfall, they added.

The project aims at providing a large-scale human-induced connectivity for water flows in almost all parts of India through a total of 31 links on both Himalayan and Peninsular rivers.

The project which gained currency in political, legislative and civil domains after the Supreme Court on a PIL directed in October, 2002 to the government to complete the project within 12 years.

However, some committee members like Jatanta Bandyopadhyay, said the projection of water requirements for irrigation in the country till 2050 by the Task Force are not based on field surveys and published works.

For the food security of the country has been `unrealistically' linked to the gigantic project by the government, could be achieved only by improving the end-use efficiency of existing irrigation net-work and its potential.

For providing water security to very dry areas and to large metropolis, inter-basin transfers be resorted to rather than going in for physical expansion of irrigation envisaged in the project.

Moreover, they felt that hydraulic equality at the national level did not mean transfer of water from water-endowed basins to dry areas for inefficient and commercial uses through socially and economically wasteful projects, not approved through open professional assessments. -- UNI

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