“Transferring Water From One Basin To Another With A Deficit”
What do you think of the river-linking projects?
River linking projects are an essential requirement for the country. If you look at the available water resources in our country, we have somewhere around 1,123 billion cubic metres (bcm) of utilisable water. The survey says the availability (of water in rivers) is around 690 bcm and ground water is around 433 bcm. But the problem is that distribution of these water resources is not uniform throughout the country because you know how the rainfall varies. Rainfall varies from 1,100 millimetre (mm) in some places to more than 11,000 mm in some. This uneven distribution of rainfall actually causes the problem. So we need to transfer water from those basins where water is in surplus to those with a deficit.
What are the major goals of this project? Who will benefit from this project?
As I said, the aim of the project is basically to transfer water from one basin to another. The deficit basin will receive water from the surplus basin. That is the main objective. The beneficiaries will be some states. Though I cannot call the entire states as beneficiaries; parts of some states will benefit in the sense that most of the surplus water is available in the tributaries of Brahmaputra and Ganga.
Why did it take so long for such a crucial project to take off?
The primary study for the project started somewhere in 1982 when government sensed the problem. The National Water Development Agency was set up in the same year. Its main aim initially was to identify those basins where water was in surplus and identify basins where water was in deficit. But you know, the basins are very large in our country. We divided the basins into sub- basins and then we studied each sub-basin and made a study of how much was the rainfall and how much water was available in those basins. As the evaluation was designed keeping year 2050 in mind, it took long to start this mega project.
Is this project commercially feasible?
All these projects are normally analysed for their economic viability, not commercial. We basically examine the project based on our benefit cost ratio. So if the benefit cost ratio of a project is more than 1.5, it is considered economically viable.
The critics of the river linking project, however, say that rain water harvesting is more important?
No doubt that rain water harvesting is one of the key measures in efficient water management. And by taking up interlinking of rivers, we are not neglecting rain water harvesting. We have done rain water harvesting in small basins and this technique can be applied in small pockets of identified areas only. The government of India is raising rain water harvesting structures so the ground water recharge can be done. That is a very important area actually. But river linking and rain water harvesting are not individually exclusive. If I do rain water harvesting, I cannot exclude water linking.
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