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‘Euphoria over Narmada water short-lived’

JAIPUR: “Save Narmada” movement activist Medha Patkar has warned the people of Rajasthan against any euphoria over the entry of Narmada river water into Barmer and Jalore areas of the State. The complacency over receiving water from Gujarat would be short-lived as both Vasundhara Raje and Narendra Modi, the Chief Ministers respectively of Rajasthan and Gujarat, had neither the desire nor the perspective for proper use of the water, she said.

“It is a Tughlaq-ian project,” she added.

Ms. Patkar, who acknowledged the significance of the arrival of water in the parched lands of western Rajasthan, told media persons here that there seemed some kind of a disconnect at the outset itself as the Chief Ministers of Rajasthan and Gujarat were not together on the occasion of the release of the Narmada water into Rajasthan.

“Moreover they need not have waited this long for this kind of release as the network is not ready even now in Rajasthan. This much water could have been released as far back as in 2002,” she noted.

“The big question is: how much water and at what cost?” said Ms. Patkar. There had been no realistic assessment of the water available for Rajasthan and also the districts in Gujarat adjoining it. Initially it was stated that 75,000 hectares of land would be irrigated in Rajasthan with the Narmada waters but later on projects for supply of drinking water to 1,600 villages were added. In the case of Gujarat it was initially 4,000 villages and now 8,215 villages.

“The latest claims talk about irrigating 18 lakh hectares in Gujarat and 2.46 lakh hectares in Rajasthan,” she pointed out.

“The Gujarat Irrigation Minister Nitin Patel had told his State Assembly last month that Banaskantha, the district adjoining Rajasthan, would get drinking water from the project only by 2010. Now what is the guarantee that Rajasthan would get its full share of .5 mcft (million acre feet) of water?” Ms. Patkar wondered. Even in Gujarat only 10 per cent of the villages under the project received regular drinking water, she pointed out.

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