Vandana Shiva - The Future of Food and Seed

Scientist, feminist, ecologist and author, Vandana Shiva, presenting the keynote address at the 2009 Organicology Conference in Portland, Oregon, on February 28, 2009.

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Producer: William Seaman

23 per cent decline in Maharashtra’s foodgrain production for 2011-12. :: INDIAN EXPRESS

Drought of new ideas in old crisis

Kavitha Iyer : Mumbai, Wed May 16 2012, 03:30 hrs

Maharashtra possibly has among the worst track records when it comes to learning a thing or two from a crisis. In the midst of its fourth drought since 2000, the government has set in motion a slew of time-tested measures with what bureaucrats say is an unprecedented liberal hand. But there is little or no thought yet on why one of India’s most developed states repeatedly seeks drought relief dole.

Fifteen districts were declared drought-hit this April-May, including 6,201 villages producing kharif crops and 1,552 whose rabi yield will be hit, right after the Economic Survey forecast a 23 per cent decline in Maharashtra’s foodgrain production for 2011-12. Among reports of growing unrest in the worst hit regions, one group of villages in Sangli threatened to merge with Karnataka, a villagers’ march to the local government office in Sangli’s Jat Taluka turned violent, and sale of livestock and mortgaging of agricultural land have risen steeply.

“That there is water scarcity and concomitant deprivation are both true, but all steps the government should take have been put in place immediately,” said a bureaucrat, among several officials and politicians who agree that the scarcity this year is not as acute as in 2003, although repeated drought and crop failure have left rural families more vulnerable than ever.

The really severe crisis this year is in four districts — Satara, Sangli, Solapur and Ahmednagar, parts of which fall in the rainshadow region and have experienced a depletion in groundwater levels by about three metres. Three of these districts belong to Western Maharashtra, commonly tossed in the basket of “prosperous” regions with considerable political clout and also home to the sugar belt, the spine of Maharashtra’s agricultural economy. There are also sharp localised imbalances —Mahabaleshwar in Satara receives rainfall often in excess of 5,000mm a year, among the country’s highest, while the district’s drought-hit talukas are barely 125km away, receiving less than 300mm annually.

Then & now

Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Patangrao Kadam calls this year’s measures unprecedented. Collectors have been granted special powers to sanction repairs to water supply schemes up to Rs 25 lakh, divisional commissioners can sanction works up to Rs 1 crore for emergency repairs and other measures; tehsildars can approve despatch of water tankers on receiving calls from village elders. Operators of fodder depots for livestock are being reimbursed Rs 80 for every large animal, up from Rs 40, and Rs 40 for every small animal, against the Centre’s suggested reimbursements of Rs 72 and Rs 12 respectively.

The government has already spent nearly Rs 18 crore on paying outstanding dues of villagers for local water supply schemes that were disconnected by utility companies owing to non-payment. Satara and Sangli have eight to 10 fewer tankers operating since the charges were paid up and since village taps gone dry began to run once again.

Notwithstanding the additional gravitas lent to relief work, the measures themselves are no different from standard. In 2003, the last serious drought, identical measures were in place — deployment of a large number of water tankers, additional EGS works, payment through cash and foodgrain, fodder depots and cattle camps, mulching or use of plastic sheets to prevent water evaporation. A report of the state’s Relief and Rehabilitation Department to the Centre that year, following a plea for calamity relief assistance, even admitted that long-term measures need to be put in place. “The enormity of the drought conditions in these parts of the state calls for intervention on a more prolonged basis than what is being done at present,” the report said.

Mismatches

Those prolonged measures now lie forgotten amid mind-boggling data on irrigation projects and water resources management. Irrigated cropped area in the state is a mere 17.9 per cent of the total cropped area, a distant cry from the national average of 45.3. Western Maharashtra, home to Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, has 35.24 per cent of its total cropped area irrigated, far removed from Konkan with 7.49 per cent.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who recently set the cat among the pigeons by announcing a white paper on the NCP-controlled irrigation department following allegations of cost escalations and irregularities in dam projects, admits the crisis of rainfed cropped areas is serious. “It has been pointed out for example that Maharashtra has the largest area under cotton cultivation but the yield is low. But compare Gujarat’s 50 per cent irrigation with Amravati’s 10 per cent, there is naturally going to be a crisis,” he says.

On big dams too, he has ruffled feathers by calling for a paradigm shift. Not only are existing projects delayed beyond hope of completion but land acquisition too will be an increasingly complex problem. “We have done a pilot project with a check dam in Maan taluka (Satara) and we need to replicate that,” he said, adding he is also studying irrigation models of states including Gujarat.

The stasis in building big, medium and small dam projects is fast turning into a scandal. Rs 78,000 crore is needed to complete the projects already under way. Some of these have been delayed for nearly two decades and have seen costs escalate up to 2,500 per cent. Worse, some major projects have reservoirs completed but canal building and local water resource management are lagging, leading to an increase in the irrigation potential created but no parallel rise in cropped area under irrigation.

Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council Vinod Tawde calls it a tragedy. “Over the last decade, Maharashtra has spent Rs 66,000 crore on irrigation projects but a mere 0.1 per cent additional land has been brought under irrigation,” says the BJP legislator. Taking up multiple projects simultaneously has led to a thin spreading of funds, he says.

Sugarcane

Tawde alleges that regional imbalances in development and the additional budgetary allocations to meet the backlog has led to mismanagement. “Rs 5,117 crore has been allocated to meet this irrigation backlog for Western Maharashtra. However, since districts are considered a unit for measurement of the backlog, funds for a district are used by ministers in their home talukas. This is because they want to ensure the sugarcane crop gets the water supply it requires,” he alleges.

Maharashtra produces sugarcane in excess each year. Officials admit that loosely 70 per cent of the state’s water resources used for agriculture end up irrigating this one crop. But imputing a motive to the government for this is not fair, they protest. Every time a region comes under the command area of a dam or other water project, a local shift to sugarcane (in Western Maharashtra) or other high-yield crop is observed, they say. Maharashtra has done its bit to promote crops such as pomegranate and grape, but until crop planning and land use management are implemented, the tendency to shift to water guzzling crops that offer high returns will remain.

Chavan agrees better crop planning and focus on improved seed varieties has been lacking and promises these are part of long-term measures now being considered.

Inputs by Swatee Kher

Battle against dams building up :: HINDU

MUMBAI, May 6, 2012

Environment Ministry rejected forest clearance to Kalu dam in Thane district

While irregularities were surfacing in irrigation projects around Mumbai in early April, the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) rejected forest clearance to the Kalu dam in Murbad taluka of Thane district, which would have submerged around 1,000 hectares of forest land.

Work started last October without permission from the MOEF, and Indavi Tulpule of the Shramik Mukti Sanghatana said hundreds of trees were chopped, in blatant violation of the Forest Conservation Act. The dam didn't have approvals from the MoEF, there was no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), or rehabilitation and resettlement plan, or a public consultation, according to a statement from the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) and the Sanghatana, both of which have been raising this issue.

Public interest litigation

It isn't Kalu alone that is fraught with irregularities. In the case of the Kondhane dam in Karjat, similar violations have been raised in a public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court, filed by Anjali Damania of India Against Corruption (IAC) and some other groups, which is coming up for hearing on May 11. Kalu is just one of the 15 or so dams coming up in the adjoining Thane and Raigad districts of Mumbai, aimed at increasing the drinking water provision in areas under the Mumbai Metropolitan Development Region Authority (MMRDA) and Navi Mumbai.

According to activists of the Shramik Mukti Sanghatana, 18 villages, with around 18,000 inhabitants, mostly tribals, would be displaced by the Kalu dam, financed by MMRDA. The FAC's rejection is based on the premise that there is ‘no respect for the laws of the land,' according to a site inspection report in January by the Regional Chief Conservator of Forests.

After the Sanghatana filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Bombay High Court, the construction on the dam was stayed in March. According to SANDRP and the Sanghatana, when the Regional Chief Conservator of Forests, Central Zone, visited the dam site, he was shocked by the extent of destruction. In his report submitted to the MoEF, he said the project proponents had no respect for the laws of the land and ‘took permissions from the MoEF for granted.' The statement said the Konkan Irrigation Development Corporation (KIDC) gave the work order to a contractor in May 2011, but submitted the proposal to the MoEF only in August 2011. In addition, KIDC grossly underestimated the number of trees to be felled, and the villages that would be affected. It didn't even consider those villages which were to be cut off by the dam.

Displacement of tribals

The FAC said “it has taken note of the complaints received regarding this dam, and also that the State government hasn't submitted any of the reports requested by the MoEF.” SANDRP said there were multiple dams coming up in the ecologically-sensitive Western Ghats around Mumbai, and a punitive measure would set an example for the remaining dams coming up too. Most of these dams have no EIA, environmental clearance, public consultations, Social Impact Assessment, or independent monitoring and scrutiny. They all displace tribals without their consent, or without any rehabilitation plans.

In March, tribals led by the Kashtakari Sanghatana took a morcha to the MMRDA offices in Bandra to oppose these dams, which were to supply water to the cities. Brian Lobo of the Sanghatana said the government must first create an efficient water distribution network, plug all leakages and misappropriation of water, and conduct a Water Audit for the entire MMRDA area. A recent report by the Paani Hakk Samiti and YUVA States that while 3,350 million litres of water is supplied to Mumbai daily, approximately 1,000 million litres is lost due to leakages, rusted pipes, or from pipes that have been sabotaged.

The Sanghatana opposed dams to provide water to the entire area falling under the MMRDA, including the Municipal areas of Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli, Ulhasnagar, New Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Mira-Bhayandar, and called for immediate cancellation of the Kalu, Susari, Shai and Balganga dams.

For the past hundred years, dams, which have been constructed in the rural areas of Thane and Raigad districts to supply water to Mumbai, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of Adivasis and farmers, the Sanghatana said. It criticised the “skewed policies of the government, which displaced Adivasis while providing the mega-cities of Mumbai-Thane and its suburbs with an uninterrupted supply of water from these dams.”

farmer’s seed supply is eroded and he becomes dependent on patented GM seed, the result is debt

The seed emergency ::

• Vandana Shiva

  Dr Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. She serves as the executive director of the Navdanya Trust.
  
  

• January 31, 2012 :: 
Deccan chronicle

Seed is the first link in the food chain, and seed sovereignty is the foundation of food sovereignty. If farmers do not have their own seed or access to open pollinated varieties that they can save, improve, exchange, they have no seed sovereignty and consequently no food sovereignty.

The deepening agrarian and food crisis has its roots in changes in the seed supply system, brought on by the erosion of seed diversity and the farmer’s loss of rights to seed. These rights include the right to save, breed and exchange seed, to have access to diverse open-source seeds which are not patented, genetically modified, owned and controlled by giant corporations. There is an urgent need to reclaim the seed and biodiversity in the food chain as commons.

The last 20 years have seen the concentration of the control over seed by a very small number of giant corporations. In 1995, when the UN organised the Plant Genetic Resources Confe-rence in Leipzig, it was reported that 75 per cent of all agricultural biodiversity had disappeared because of the introduction of “modern” varieties. Since then, the erosion of seed diversity and the farmer’s right have been rapid. The introduction of the Trade Related Intellectual Pro-perty Rights Agreement (TRIPs) of WTO has accelerated the spread of genetically engineered seed which can be patented, and for which royalties can be collected.

Navdanya was brought into being in response to the introduction of patents on seed in the TRIPs under GATT about which a representative of Monsanto, a leading GM seed corporation, later said, “In drafting these agreements we were the patient diagnostician, physician all in one.” Corporations defined a problem and for them the problem was farmers saving the seed. They offered a solution, and the solution was to make it illegal for farmers to save seeds by introducing patents and intellectual property rights on seed. As a result, acreage under GM corn, soya, canola and cotton has dramatically increased across the world.

Besides destroying diversity, patented GM seeds are also undermining seed sovereignty. Across the world, new seed laws are being made which enforce compulsory registration of seed, thus making it impossible for small farmers to grow their own diversity, and forcing them into dependency on giant seed corporations. Corporations are patenting climate-resilient seeds evolved by farmers, thus robbing farmers of their right to use their own seeds and knowledge for climate adaptation.

Another threat is genetic contamination of the seed. India has lost its cottonseeds because of contamination from Bt Cotton. Canada has lost its canola seed because of contamination from Roundup Ready canola. Mexico has lost its corn because of contamination from GM corn.

After contamination, Biotech Seed Corporation sues farmers with patent infringement cases, as happened in the case of Percy Schmeiser, a farmer from Bruno in Canada. That is why more than 80 groups came together and filed a case to prevent Monsanto from suing farmers whose seeds had been contaminated.

As the farmer’s seed supply is eroded and he becomes dependent on patented GM seed, the result is debt. India, the home of cotton, has lost its cottonseed diversity and cottonseed sovereignty. Ninety-five per cent of cottonseed is now Monsanto’s Bt. Cotton, and the debt trap created by being forced to buy seed every year, with royalty payments, has pushed hundreds of thousands of farmers to suicide, of the 250,000 cases of farmers suicide, the majority are in the cotton belt.

Even as the disappearance of biodiversity and seed sovereignty creates a major crisis for agriculture and food security, corporations are pushing governments to use public money to destroy the public seed supply and replace it with unreliable non-renewable, patented seed which must be bought every year.

In Europe, the 1994 regulation for protection of plant varieties, forced farmers to make a “compulsory voluntary contribution” to seed companies. The terms themselves are contradictory. What is compulsory cannot be voluntary.

In France, a law was passed in November 2011, which makes royalty payments compulsory. As agriculture minister Bruna Le Marie said, “Seeds can no longer be royalty free, as is currently the case.” Of the 5,000 or so cultivated plant varieties, 600 are protected by certificate in France, and these account for 99 per cent of the varieties grown by farmers.

The “compulsory voluntary contribution”, in other words a royalty, is justified on grounds that “a fee is paid to certificate holders (seed companies) to sustain funding of research and efforts to improve genetic resources”.

As Monsanto states “it draws from a collection of germ-plasma that is unparalleled in history” and “mines the diversity in this genetic library to develop elite seeds faster than ever before”. In effect what Monsanto is doing is enclosure of the genetic commons of our biodiversity and the intellectual commons of public breeding by farming communities and public institutions. And what the seed corporation is offering is not “improvement” of genetic resources, but their degradation. Similarly, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa being pushed by the Gates Foundation is a major assault on Africa’s seed sovereignty.

Agribusiness is the only sector in which the US has a positive trade balance, with GM seeds bringing hefty royalties to the US. These royalties are translating into debt traps and suicide for farmers and disappearance of biodiversity worldwide.

Under the US Global Food Security Act, Nepal signed an agreement with USAID and Monsanto. This led to massive protests across the country. India was forced to allow patents on seed through the first dispute brought by the US against India in the WTO. Since 2004, India has also been trying to introduce a Seed Act, which would require farmers to register their own seed and take licences. This, in effect, would prevent farmers from using their indigenous seed varieties. By launching a Seed Satyagraha, handing over hundreds of thousands of signatures to the Prime Minister and working with Parliament, we have so far prevented the Seed Law from being introduced.

India has signed a US-India Agricultural Knowledge Initiative, with Monsanto on the board. States are being pressured to sign agreements with Monsanto. In its MoU signed with the Rajasthan government, Monsanto would get intellectual property rights on all genetic resources and research on seeds coming under the MoU. It took a campaign by Navdanya and a Bija Yatra with the slogan “Monsanto Quit India” to get the government of Rajasthan to cancel the MoU.

The pressure of Monsanto on the US government and the joint pressure of both on the governments across the world is a major threat to the future of seed, the future of food and the future of democracy in these vital spheres of life.

The writer is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

Rice bowl turns bare for farmers in West Bengal :: The HINDU - ANANYA DUTTA / The RICE TRADE to fall 5pc in 2012

They are being forced to sell their produce at prices much below those of last year

the Hindu

The wife of Bhootnath Pal, a marginal farmer who committed suicide, waits at home in Kauri village in Bardhaman district for the arrival of her daughter and her first grandchild, born a day after her husband hung himself. The district has been witness to 21 of the 31 reported farmer suicides Photo:: Sushanta Patronobish


February 1, 2012 :: The HINDU

Baishakhi Ghosh sits at the threshold of her home at Kauri village in Bardhaman district with her new-born son, but breaks into tears as her mother feeds her a sweetmeat — part of the rituals of bringing her first grandchild to the home for the first time. Alternating between wailing and consoling each other, the women of the household of Bhootnath Pal, a farmer who was found hanging from the branch of a tree on Saturday, do their best to come to terms with the tragedy.

THE LAST STRAW

 “He was overcome with worry these last few months. The thought of another addition to the family must have pushed him over the edge,” said Attanti Pal, Bhootnath's wife.

The worry over his grandchild, born in by a cruel twist of fate just a day after Bhootnath committed suicide, may have been the last straw, but there is no denying the fact that he owed nearly Rs. 30,000 (Rs. 7,500 borrowed as an agricultural loan from the Bank of India more than two years ago, which remains unpaid, Rs. 10,000 taken from a local moneylender and sundry sums elsewhere) or that he had not received the money for the little surplus grain he had harvested this season.

Bhootnath joined a few other farmers from Kauri village to sell their grain to the rice mill on January 20 but they were not given any money. A day after his suicide, the cheque in the name of Swapan Pradhan was issued.

 “We sold our paddy to the rice mill on January 6 and are yet to receive our cheques,” said another farmer from the village.

 Bhootnath Pal is one of the 31 farmers, who according to media reports committed suicide in the State in the last four months. Twenty-one of these have been reported in Bardhaman district alone, considered the rice bowl of West Bengal.

 According to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee none of them, with the exception of one, is a farmer.  After a major disagreement with his father over the purchase of a pair of buffaloes, 20-year-old Prosenjit Mondal hanged himself from a tree. Prosenjit worked on the five bighas (less than two acres) of land – two owned by his father and another three that they tilled for a landlord. Over the years, his father has run up a debt of Rs. 40,000.

LOWER PRICES

Already burdened with debt, farmers are being forced to sell their produce at prices much below those of last year. While small farmers like Bhootnath Pal and Prosenjit Mondal have always relied on middlemen to transport their grains to the rice mills, the prices offered by the traders this year are less than those of last year, even as the cost of fertilizers and pesticides has doubled in the same period.

 “Last year the traders would give us up to Rs. 600 per sack (of 60 kg) of paddy. This year it was as low as Rs. 450,” said Khokon Mondal.

BUMPER CROP 

According to Food and Supplies Minister Jyoti Priya Mallick, there has been a bumper crop of 150 lakh tonnes of paddy in West Bengal this season. As a result, the price of paddy in the open market has dropped substantially.

 The Left parties and the Congress have been stating that if the State government procured more grain, the farmers would be assured of the minimum support price of Rs. 1080 per quintal of paddy (Rs. 648 per sack of 60 kg) announced by the Centre.

 However, Mr. Mallick claims that the State already procured over four lakh tonnes of rice, which is more than the three lakh tonnes that the previous Left Front government had procured.

Rice trade to fall 5 pc in 2012: FAO

February 1, 2012 :: The Hindu

The global rice trade is expected to decline 5 per cent year-on-year in 2012 due to falling demand, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Wednesday.

Last year’s rice exports reached a record 34.5 million tons but are expected to drop to 32.8 million tons in 2012, according to FAO estimates.

“Among the countries expected to import less rice in 2012 are Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria and the Philippines,” the FAO said. Production is up in those countries, reducing the demand for imports.

Thailand, the world’s leading rice exporter for five decades, shipped 10.5 million tons last year, but the kingdom will ship less in 2012 due to a government price-guarantee scheme that makes its export prices uncompetitive, the FAO predicted.

The policy has already reduced rice shipments by 50 per cent year-on-year since November, according to the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

The association predicted Thailand’s rice shipments will fall as much as 40 per cent this year, to about 6.5 million tons.

Shipments from Cambodia, China, India and Pakistan appear set to increase this year, the FAO said.

The U.N. agency noted that rice prices had dropped 7 per cent since October, and the trend was likely to persist in 2012.

“The downward trend in rice prices is expected to persist in coming months as demand continues to weaken, and harvests in Northern Hemisphere countries and those along and south of the equator add supplies to the market,” the FAO said.

Poverty, mass deprivation rising in Asia: Utsa Patnaik

Poverty, mass deprivation rising in Asia: Utsa Patnaik :: The Hindu, January 14, 2012

Neo-liberal policies fine-tuned to global capitalist accumulation are increasing poverty, mass deprivation and unemployment besides undermining food security in India, economist Utsa Patnaik said on Friday.

Delivering the inaugural ‘T.G. Narayanan Memorial Lecture on Social Deprivation' under the auspices of the Media Development Foundation and the Asian College of Journalism here, Prof. Patnaik said contrary to the claims by the Centre about poverty reduction or by the World Bank about declining proportions of the poor that were false, based on wrong classification and failed to reflect the reality, poverty and mass deprivation was rising in India and Asia.

Alluding to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement describing the magnitude of child nutrition in India as a national shame, Prof. Patnaik said there was no point in shedding “crocodile tears” as the shameful situation was a self-inflicted one that resulted from flawed policies.

During the course of her lecture on “Capitalism and the Production of Poverty,” Prof. Patnaik drew parallels and the contrasts between the past era of globalisation and the very different dynamics of present-day capitalism.

The all-important difference was that unlike during industrialisation, the present phase of what Karl Marx termed the “primitive accumulation of capital” in developing countries was transitional not to capitalist industrialisation, but to the accumulation of riches at one pole of the social structure — the other pole being characterised by rising unemployment, pauperisation and absolute poverty. Besides, the modern capitalist system itself at its very core, had lost the flexibility and the many degrees of freedom it previously enjoyed, she said.

Pointing to the unfettered out-migration of Europeans on a large scale to the lands they seized from indigenous peoples and the creation of a bloated army of reserve labour as the two crucial features of the past era of globalisation, Prof. Patnaik said the modern context provided for a form of ‘global imbalance' where the world's poorest economies were made to finance the richest ones.

According to Prof. Patnaik, this dependence continues to be parasitic in nature as it involves grabbing primary resources— oil, minerals and forests — altering cropping patterns in the global south to fill the consumption basket of Europe and exposing peasant producers to high global price shocks, which was the primary reason for farmer suicides.

The effects of the much higher level of labour-displacing technology and of automation today in developing countries is to produce job-less growth; indeed many sectors in India are seeing job-loss growth, Prof. Patnaik said.

N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, said T.G. Narayanan was a remarkable journalist, who had joined The Hindu in 1939 as its Rangoon correspondent and gone on to make significant contributions in reporting on the Great Bengal Famine, as a war correspondent in Southeast Asia and as author of a well-conceived and well-written book Famine Over Bengal.

How little can a person live on?

:: The Hindu, September 30, 2011

The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since.

The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in the urban areas, has exposed how unrealistic ‘poverty lines' are. Some television channels assumed that the figures covered food costs alone and showed how they could not meet minimal nutrition needs at today's prices. These paltry sums, however, are supposed to cover not only food but all non-food essentials, including clothing and footwear, cooking fuel, lighting, transport, education, medical costs and house rent. The total is divided into Rs.18 and Rs.14 for food and non-food items in towns, and into Rs.16 and Rs.10 in the rural areas, and includes the value of food that farmers produce and consume themselves.

Even a child knows that working health cannot be maintained, nor necessities obtained, by spending so little. Amazingly, however, 450 million Indians subsist below these levels. One cannot say that they ‘live' in any true sense: their energy and protein intake is far below normal, they are underweight, stunted, subject to a high sickness load but without the means to obtain adequate food or medical treatment. The majority belong to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. The official poverty lines do not measure poverty any more; they measure destitution.

The outcry against calling these destitution lines ‘poverty lines,' is justified; for true poverty lines are much higher than these, and show 75 per cent of all persons in India to be poor. Per head energy and protein intake has been falling for the last two decades as the majority of the population is unable to afford enough food. With 60 million tonnes of public food stocks, far in excess of the buffer norms, remaining piled up by mid-2011, the sensible policy is to do away with targeting and revert to a universal distribution system, combining it with an urban employment guarantee scheme. Unfortunately, the neo-liberal policymakers today ask the wrong question: “How can we reduce the food subsidy?” and not the right question: “How can we lift the masses of India from the current level of the lowest food consumption in the world, even lower than the least developed countries?”

Members of the Planning Commission and the Tendulkar Committee are experts, so how have such laughable figures of minimum cost of living emerged from their statistical labours? The fact is that over 30 years ago the Planning Commission made a mistake of method, and the present Commission stubbornly clings to that mistake despite the fact having been repeatedly pointed out by many people including this author (The Republic of Hunger, 2004). The mistake was to change the definition of the poverty line and delink it from nutrition standards.

The original definition of ‘poverty line' was a sensible one, based on an expert committee recommendation in 1979: using National Sample Survey (NSS) data on consumption spending, that in particular observed that the level of total monthly spending per person is to be called the ‘poverty line.' The food spending part of the figure allowed a person to obtain 2,400 kilocalories of energy a day in the rural areas and 2,100 kilocalories a day in the urban areas. Later the rural figure was scaled down to 2,200 calories. The Commission accepted the expert committee's nutrition-based definition but applied it only once, to the 1973-74 data, to obtain the correct monthly rural and urban poverty lines of Rs.49 or Rs.56 at which 2,200 or 2,100 calories were accessible, and found that 56 per cent of the rural population and 49 per cent of the urban population spent less than this, and so were poor.

Then the Commission, for reasons unknown, changed the definition in practice, and never again directly looked at the total monthly spending which permitted nutrition ‘norms' to be maintained. This despite the fact that every five years the required information on this for every spending level was available — the physical quantities of food intake, and the corresponding daily average energy, protein and fat. The definition that the Commission actually adopted was that the 1973-74 poverty lines were to be adjusted for inflation using a price-index, regardless of whether the lines so obtained still allowed nutritional standards to be met. Price index adjustment is being followed for the last 30 years, producing the present absurdity of Rs.26 or Rs.32 as the rural or urban daily poverty lines.

Why these economists should have such faith in the ability of price indices to capture the rise in the cost of living is not clear. Price indices are needed for short period adjustment and are used for dearness allowance calculation, but they do not capture the actual rise in the cost of living over longer periods of time. In 1973, the starting gross monthly salary of an Associate Professor in a Central University was about Rs.1,000. It was adequate, since ration cards could be used; on this income one could even use a car. Applying the Consumer Price Index for Urban Non-Manual Employees, which has risen 17-fold by 2011, the equivalent monthly salary for an Associate Professor joining now should be Rs.17,000, by the Planning Commission's logic. But this would not support the most modest middle-class lifestyle of four decades earlier. A newly appointed Associate Professor's actual salary today is three times that figure, thanks to successive Pay Commission recommendations.

Yet, denying all experience and evidence, these economists assert that mere price-index adjustment is enough to obtain current poverty lines from those of 40 years ago. No wonder they have created a mess with their unrealistic estimates. An expressive, bucolic Bengali phrase is lyaje-gobare, or a ‘cow's tail smeared with dung' — this is a good description for official estimates. As time passed, the actual spending at which minimal nutrition could be accessed, the original definition accepted by the Commission, cumulatively diverged from the Commission's calculations based on its changed definition. By 2005, a rural person needed Rs.19 a day to access 2,200 calories, while at the official figure of Rs.12, she could obtain only 1,800 calories. (The Tendulkar Committee merely tinkered with the problem, raising the figure of Rs.12 to Rs.13.) An urban consumer needed Rs.33 a day in 2005 to meet 2,100 calories, whereas the official figure of Rs.18 permitted less than 1,800 calories. Today at the current official poverty lines of Rs.26 and Rs.32 for the rural and urban areas respectively, the minimal cost of living is even more seriously understated: the consumer can access even less food. State poverty lines vary, and in a number of States the energy intake the official poverty line can command is below 1,500 calories a day.

The claim that poverty has declined is not true because the method of indexation that is actually used has not kept constant the nutritional standard against which poverty is measured, but has lowered it continuously. China's official poverty lines are equally absurd, for the same reason. A nutrition norm was applied in 1984 to obtain a 200-yuan annual rural poverty line, which thereafter was merely indexed, giving 1,067 yuan by 2007, or below three yuan a day. This is supposed to cover all living costs but would not have bought even a kilogram of the cheapest variety of rice, selling then at four yuan, according to information provided by China's residents. The actual extent of poverty in China is far higher than is claimed.

One wonders if we will ever see honest estimates from official sources anywhere, since, by now, hundreds of economists are closely imprecated within a vast global poverty-estimating structure with the World Bank at its apex, producing increasingly misleading estimates every year in glossy reports. The World Bank's global poverty line is an equally large underestimate, for it is derived using “purchasing power parity conversion” from local currencies to the U.S. dollar, of these very same absurdly low local-currency official rural poverty lines of developing countries.

What are the realistic poverty lines today based on officially accepted nutritional norms? The current poverty lines allowing nutrition norms of 2,200 or 2,100 calories in the rural or urban areas to be met, are at least Rs.1,085 a month (Rs.36 a day) and Rs.1,800 a month (Rs.60 a day) respectively. Since each full-time worker needs to support nearly two dependants, these correspond to a minimum daily wage of Rs.108 and Rs.180 respectively. But this is inadequate: no margin exists for medical emergencies, life cycle ceremonies, or old age. From the 2009-10 NSS data at least 75 per cent of the total population is in poverty on this basis. This high level of deprivation is the rationale for going back to a non-targeted, universal food distribution system, but that will not be enough. The purchasing power of the poor has to be raised at the same time through employment generation schemes. Ironically, there has been a rise in unemployment rates according to the latest surveys.

(Utsa Patnaik has been a Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

Interlinking Of rivers In India :: Pankaj Singh; 2005

Interlinking Of rivers In India

From the SelectedWorks of Pankaj Singh

June 2005

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Interlinking of major rivers in India, aimed at modifying the acute spatial inequity in the availability of water resources in India, has its origin in the ideas of K.L.Rao and Captain Dastur, in the form of Ganga-Cauvery Link Canal and the Garland Canal respectively. Both these ideas were considered to be mere dreams and not feasible projects by the Ministry of Water Resources. In recent years, the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) has come up with a proposal for a set of inter-basin transfer canals. The Supreme Court has asked that these projects of inter-basin transfers be completed in the next 10 years or so.

While the urgency for assured supply of domestic water needs for all citizens of India is unquestionably accepted, the present paper examines whether the proposed inter-basin water transfer project provides the best mechanism to address this question in terms of environmental sustainability, regional equity and economical feasibility. In the total absence of technical data and feasibility studies from the public domain, the paper, after examining the available ideas and information on the interlinking project, takes the position that supply of domestic water needs could be better assured with the help of much less costly water harvesting and consumption projects at local levels.

The paper then questions the wisdom of extending irrigation facilities to the drier areas, instead of promoting watershed management for increasing food production. Instead the increased food production, if at all needed, can come from more efficient water management and productivity increase in the presently irrigated areas. The paper thenfinds the only justification for the proposed project on interlinking in making more water available to the western and southern parts of India, for diversified and highly lucrative use of land and for industrial uses.

The paper identifies the various social and environmental costs to be generated by the proposed project and questions the logic behind the investment of public funds to meet the very heavy costs of the project. It takes the position that the official confidentiality around the project could help in packaging and selling a highly cost-ineffective project as a desirable one. On this basis, the paper stresses the need for a totally transparent techno- economic and environmental feasibility study of the project and comparison with other possible solutions, before the interlinking project is approved.

INTRODUCTION

“Little drops of water make a mighty ocean”

“Water, water, everywhere, not a drop to drink”

These well known sayings, refusing to both the constitution of water and its uses for humankind, illustrate clearly an inherent flow in the availability of water all over the world. Although 75% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, only a miniscule proportion of it is available for human needs as fresh water. With so little water available and most of it polluted & depleted, disputes over the use of fresh water are becoming very common.1

Today in India water is one of the two most important sources of conflict. The other is religion. The ranking of these issues is location-specific. The political system in India is based on multi party democracy. Every political party gives a top slot to water resource development in its election manifesto. Every candidate contesting the election promises a water project to his constituents. The availability of water is seldom taken into consideration when making these electoral promises.

Non-availability can always be attributed to someone upstream who can be shown as having appropriated all the water, a ripe case for conflict. Water is an easily exploitable issue in electoral politics. The potential for conflict had always existed historically but the political leadership facilitated the negotiations. Over the years, this spirit has changed to

1 See M.V.V Ramana, Inter-State River Water Disputes in India, 1992, Orient Longman, New Delhi

rigid postures, with every state rushing to over exploit water and accusing neighbors of “stealing” their share2

Given this political environment, it is not surprising that the national river interlinking plan has been offered as a miracle solution to water scarcity, primarily for these claims, which it makes: -

i)            First, interlinking would lead to a permanent drought proofing of the country by raising the irrigation potential to equal the current net sown area of about 150 million hectares.

ii)            Second, it would mitigate the annual floods in Ganga and Brahmputra.

 iii)            Third, it would add 34,000 MW of hydropower to the national pool.

The passing observation of the President Mr. A.P.J.Abdulkalam on the eve of Independence Day 2002, set the momentum for interlinking of lines, hitherto a dormant idea. This prompted an advocate to attach the copy of Kalam’s speech with a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which he had filed for the cleaning of Yamuna and also as regards the water-sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Thus in August, 2002 for the first time, the issue came up in the Supreme Court. Justice B.N.Kirpal, the then Chief Justice of India, who was heading the Bench responded so enthusiastically that he connected the PIL into an independent writ petition and issued notices to the center and the states for interlinking of rivers.

When the matter came up again on 31st October 2002, only the Centre and Tamil Nadu endorsed the court’s initiative. The absence of response from all but one state did not deter Justice Kirpal and other judges from pursuing the task which they took with missionary zeal. On the contrary, the learned judges ruled that in the absence of affidavits

2 See Ramaswamy Iyer, Scarce Natural Resources and the Language of Security, EPW,16 May 1998

from other states, the assumption was clearly that they do not oppose the plan made in the writ petition and there is consensus amongst all of them that there should be interlinking of rivers in India.

The order passed on 31st October, 2002 formed the basis on which the Centre set up a high-powered Task Force under Mr. Suresh Prabhu, former Union Minister of power. The irony is that the very order that presumed an all India consensus on the subject went on record to suggest how the Task Force would go into binding consensus among the states.

Another irony about this far-reaching order is that there is no mention of the ten years deadline, though the deadline is presented as part of the project. Justice Kirpal was cautions enough not the put the deadline in writing lest it raise delicate constitutional questions of the court’s jurisdiction in the realm of executive policy.

Interlinking of rivers as a solution for drought and flood is not a new proposal. It was Sir Arthur Cotton who had originally proposed the networking of rivers more than a century ago, and Dr. K.L.Rao, the Minister of Power and Irrigation in the Cabinet of Smt. Indira Gandhi, reviewed this proposal in 1972. Both were no doubt eminent engineers. Sir Cotton’s prime concern was for inland navigational network and Dr. Rao’s concern was for irrigation and power. Neither could perceive that far wider issues were involved3.

Mr. Rao persecuted his plan, to link to Ganga and Cauvery4. In 1974, Captain Dinshaw J Bastur, an air pilot, submitted a similar proposal named ‘Garland Canal’. The Government prepared its own plan in 1980 and in 1982 the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) was set up to carry out detailed studies. It envisioned a 30 years plan but following the Supreme Court directive, the Task Force has published a time table which lists 2016 as the date for completion of the project. No explanation has been provided how this is to be managed. Such a project should have been preceded by a study of:

i)  Financial Viability 

ii) TechnologicalViability 

iii) Ecological Viability

 iv) Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment

3 See, Sailendra Nath Ghosh, Linking up rivers: A Recipe for Disaster, Mainstream, December 14, 2002 4 See Sudhirender Singh, Linking Rivers: a Dream or a Nightmare? The Hindu, Survey of the Environment 2003, at 41

The NWDA plan has divided the project into two broad components. The Himalayan part, with 14 river links is estimated at Rs. 3,75,000 crores and the peninsular component with 17 river links is estimated at Rs. 1,85,000 crores.

Not only does the economics of the plan appear to be extremely improbable, serious reservations are also raised about its claims. It is an open fact that these rivers do have massive flood flows-estimated at 30,000 to 60,000 cubic metres of water per second (cusec) during a few days in the monsoon. The plan envisions tapping these flood flows, storing these in the reservoirs and draining this water over thousands of kilometers of canals to “parched” agricultural lands in Southern, Western and Central India. While this may sound good, the finer analysis reveals that only 4500-cusec water is to be lifted from a total flood flow of 60,000 cusecs5. How lifting only 7.5% of water flow can solve, or even mitigate floods is a mystery. The other issue not being raised is why water rich riparians like the Cauvery basin and delta are today parched and water scarce.

Capturing all the water of a river and stopping its natural flow to divert it outside the basin is tantamount to killing it. Countries with a history of playing around with rivers and trying to control them, are now investing billions of dollars to restore them by removing dams and embankments. In the U.S. alone, more than 100 dams were removed between 1999 and 2002. In 2001, over 115 miles of the river Baraboo were restored in Wisconsin. Attempts are now on to revive the Colorado in the Southwestern U.S. as its water dry up before reaching the Ocean. An $8 billion plan has been passed in California

5.                  See, Sanjay Pabuja, Linking River-A Sustainability Perspective, The Hindu, Survey of the Environment, at 20

to revive some of its rivers. In Spain, protests have stalled the second phase of water transfer from the Ebro river to the country’s south.6

In such a situation when we see that countries like the U.S.A, who were the torchbearers and our role models at the time of independence turning towards rapid decommissioning of dams, can we stand alone or look for new role models like China for another half century before we rethink about such grandiose ideas, being sold as the permanent solution to India’s water problems. One can only hope and wish that the government carefully thinks through this project before jumping on to “redraw India’s geography” which can have potentially grievous results for this country in future.

6.                  See, Sailendra Nath Ghosh, Linking up Rivers-A Recipe for Disaster, Mainstream December 14, 2002

CHAPTER – I PROPOSED PLAN FOR INTERLINKING OF RIVERS

The Prime Minister in his address to the National Water Resources Council (NWRC) commending the National water Policy (NWP) 2002, for adoption did not refer to the subject of interlinking of rivers. Instead he favored community control over water resources7. However, subsequently the government chose to ignore the view expressed by the Prime Minister at the NWRC by setting up a task force to execute the gigantic proposal of interlinking of rivers. Economically, similar enthusiasm was lacking in the case of decentralized initiatives like the rainwater harvesting and watershed development programmes.

The National Water Development Agency which was established in 1982 to work out basin wise surpluses and deficits and study the possibilities of storage, links and transfers, has identified 30 river links, which would connect every major rivers in the Indian mainland, and has prepared a feasibility report on six of these. The interlinking of rivers has two components: the Himalayan component and a Peninsular one. The Himalayan Component envisages construction of reservoirs on the principal tributaries of the Ganga and the Brahmputra in India and Nepal, along with transfer of water from the eastern tributaries of the Ganga to the west, apart from linking the Brahmputra to the Ganga and the Ganga to the Mahanadi. The general idea is to transfer the water from the southern

7 See Raamaswamy Iyer, "Linking of Rivers: Vision or Mirage?", Water : Perspectives, Issues Concerns, at 311

Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and perhaps southwards to the peninsular component.8 The Peninsular component consists of interlinking of the Mahanadi- Godavari-Krishna-Pennar-Cauvery, diversion of the west flowing rivers of Kerala and Karnataka to the east, interlinking the west flowing rivers north of Mumbai and south of Tapi and interlinking river Ken with Chambal. All interlinking schemes obviously are for the purpose of transferring water from one river system to another, aided by either gravity flows (tunneling through mountains) or by lifting across natural basins. The above links are meant to carry water from surplus areas to deficit ones. There are two areas where we have a surplus of water-the Brahmaptura-Meghna system and the Western Ghats where the rivers carry much of the annual precipitation into the Arabian Sea. The Brahmputra valley is certainly surplus in water, causing floods annually creating a perennial problem.

The mandate of the NWDA is to complete the feasibility report of link schemes. The steps involved in the implementation of the link schemes after the completion of the feasibility reports are: -

•            Negotiations and interstate agreements among the concerned states to arrive at a consensus regarding the shaving of surplus water and other project related agreement.

•            Preparation of detailed project reports. 

•            Techno-economic and environmental approvals and investment clearance by

the Planning Commission 

•            Financing arrangement and mode of funding 

•            Execution of link projects

The project is claimed to be an answer to the country’s problem of recurring floods and the droughts in different areas, the generation of cheap hydroelectric power is also put forward as a justification. It is being hailed as a phenomenal project to unite all the people of the country and give a developmental impetus of unprecedented magnitude. It would-

8 See Map 26.2: Source – Ramaswamy Iyer, “Water, Perspectives, Issues, Concerns”, 2003

•            Create the potential to increase agricultural production by an additional 100 per cent over the next five years.

•            Avoid the losses of the type that occurred in 2002 to the extent of Rs. 25,000 crores by the loss of crops due to drought conditions and flooding in many parts of the country

•            Save 3000 crores a year in foreign exchange by avoiding importing oil because of the cost effective navigation provided along the long coastline and the National Water Way which will become a reality by implementing the project.

•            Unify the country by involving every Panchayats as a share holder and implementing agency

•            Provide for enhancing the security of the country by an additional waterline of defense

•            Provide employment to the 10 lakh people for the next 10 years 

•            Mitigate the flooding problems which recur in the north-east and the north

every year 

•            Solve the water crisis situation in many parts of the country particularly in the

northwest, western and southern India by providing alternative, perennial water resources.

The real benefits of the National Water Grid, therefore, would accrue from the additional water supply that it would create. The Himalayan and the Peninsular components of the project are expected to provide additional irrigation of about 25mha and 10mha respectively. Before the feasibility and desirability of this objective can be examined, we need to look at the larger picture of India’s food and economic situation.

The Larger Picture

From the food perspective, we will need an additional 300 million tones of grain in order to meet the demand of our approximately 1,640 million people in 2050. This would

require more than doubling the current food production. From an overall economic perspective, the objective of increasing irrigation potential is being sought due to agriculture’s contribution to the economy. (According to the Chairman of the task force for interlinking of rivers, the project will increase India’s GDP by 4 per cent)9

In as much as water is a critical input for agriculture, the desired increases in food production and economic growth can be achieved through two paths:

a)            by developing more water resources, and

b)            by increasing the productivity of water utilized. 

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, but it is primarily the first approach that characterizes India’s progress since Independence.

Today, India ranks first in the world in terms of irrigated area, ahead of China and the U.S. Overall, we have developed over 75 per cent of our surface irrigation potential, and furthermore, an increasing number of areas are reaching the point of full or over exploitation of groundwater. 10

Naturally there is a limit beyond which we cannot develop our water resources. This brings us to the issue of enhancing the productivity of water. It is the consensus of experts, and as such is now enshrined in our National Water Policy, that the potential of yield enhancement measures in India far exceeds that of new water resources development11. The irrigation efficiency on India’s major irrigation projects has been found to be in the range of 25-35 per cent, implying that for every three units of water that are beneficially provided to the crop, seven are wasted. Combined with the fact that the agriculture sector accounts for 83 per cent of India’s total freshwater use, the amount of water potentially available through efficiency improvements dwarfs the water resources that would be developed by the National Water Grid.

9 See, The Hindu, Jan, 9,2003 at 9 10 See, Sanjay Pahuja, Linking Rivers- A Sustainability perspective, The Hindu Survey of the Environment, at 21 11 See, Ramaswamy Iyer, "The National Water Policy 2002", Water-Perspectives, Issues, Concerns, at 56

Advanced drip-and micro-irrigation techniques in India have demonstrated on-farm water efficiencies in the range of 80-90 per cent, and concomitant crop yield increases of 20- 100 per cent depending on the crop. Although high costs are often cited as a deterrent in implementing water efficiency and yield-enhancement programs, it is still a cheaper solution than enhancing supply at the price tag of the National Water Grid. Pursuing a giant water-supply augmentation project while enormous quantities of water are being wasted at the farm and basin levels is akin to getting a bigger bucket of water with a bigger hole in its bottom. Clearly, if food security and economic growth is the concern of the policy makers, then it would perhaps be a better alternative to use the additional water for agriculture in those areas where there is a greater potential to increase the produce and thereby earn more income. The priority, therefore, should be to develop additional irrigation potential on good soils within the basins, instead of transferring water for agriculture across basins. For example, only two-thirds of the net sown area of the fertile plains of Uttar Pradesh is irrigated. Combined with the improvements in water efficiency, the additional potential can be translated into an increased agricultural output.

So we can see that our concerns regarding food security and a sustained economic growth can be taken care of, without spending huge sums of money for transferring water from Bengal to Rajasthan or Kerala to Tamil Nadu, by improving the efficiency of water already available to agriculture through irrigation. In such a situation, an argument in favor of interlinking on grounds of food security and economic growth seems indefensible. In addition, in the introduction to this paper, it has already been shows that the claims about flood mitigation as a result of interlinking of rivers, are highly inflated and fallacious with very little possibility of any change in the flood situation affecting the north and north eastern parts of India, by a diversions of mere 7 to 8 per cent of flood water.

Therefore the only other ground on which the Supreme Court could have intervened and passed an order for interlinking of rivers is the drinking water problem being faced in various parts of southern and western India12. An intervention on this ground would indeed be commendable, as because denial of drinking water to people would amount to a denial of ‘right to life’, a guaranteed fundamental right under Article 21 of the constitution. However one would have to look at the water situation in different parts of the country and analyze all the possible avenues from which the shortfall can be met before declaring interlinking as the only solution to the drinking water problem being faced by the country today. It is extremely doubtful whether Supreme Court considered all the options in this regard and examined the water situations in the various parts of the country. A closer scrutiny would have surely dissuaded it from coming to the conclusion, which it has reached. More than the mere shortage, the examination of the entire situation should also consider the causes of scarcity of drinking water. In doing so, one would surely notice that much of this scarcity is man made and can surely be tackled with better planning.

A detailed picture in this regard would be presented in the next chapter. But assuming for a while, that all these simple measures of tackling our drinking water scarcity problems is ignored, of which there is a very good possibility, one needs to simultaneously explore the pros and cons of a venture of interlinking of rivers, the potential benefits arising out of it and the possibilities of damages in the form of environmental, ecological, social and economic that it presents. Therefore an isolated study of interlinking assuming it to be the best option available to us today is proposed to be done in the coming chapters and then a statement on its viability and feasibility as a sustainable solution to India’s water problems will be made.

12 See Narmada Bachao Andolan V. Union of India (2000) 10 SCC 664, where the court held, “... right to water is a basic need for the survival of human beings and can be served only by providing sources of water where there are none “See also A.P. Pollution Board v Proof. M.V.Nayudu (2001) 2 SCC 62, where it was held, “the right of access to clean drinking water is a fundamental right to life.” See further, Attakoya Thangal .v UOI. 1991(1) KLT 580, where the court pronounced the fundamental right to sweet water.

CHAPTER – II WATER SITUATION IN INDIA AND THE CHALLENGE OF INTERLINKING

The concept of interlinking is evidentially appealing to considerable sections of the general public and to policy makers. In a country which quenches its thirst fed with erratic rainfall patterns and its skewed distribution, uneven climatic pattern ranges from the overfed Cheerapunji, receiving the maximum rainfall in the world to the generally arid and semi arid regions of the western and southern India thriving on as little as 100 millimeter cubic rain.13 It is in this backdrop that interlinking of rivers is proposed as a major policy option to rejuvenate the parched lands, the signed earth and the frayed tempers.14

However, even as all these claims may be true about the impending water crisis, on a careful examination of the entire proposal to interlink major river basins, the National Commission for Integrated Water Resources Development Plan (NCIWRDP) made following observations: “There seems to be no imperative necessity for massive water transfer. The assessed needs of the basins could be met from full development and efficient utilization of intra-basin resources except in the case of Cauvery and Vaigai-

13 For instance, the Brahmaputra-Meghna-Barak Basin receives 677-bcm rain of which only 24 bcm is used because of the topography. See India Today, January 20, 2003. 14 See, J.Venkatesan, Interlinking of Rivers by 2016, The Hindu December 18,2002. See also, The Hindu, February 2, 2003 “Work on interlinking of rivers likely to take off by year and,” at 10

basins. Therefore it is felt that limited water transfer from Godavari would take care of the deficit in Cauvery and Vaigai basins15”.

The point which needs to be understood over here is that it is not primarily drinking water needs but the large demands of irrigation that lead to proposals for long-distance water transfer, though the waters so transferred may also be used to meet drinking water requirements. However the belief that interlinking is necessary to ensure adequate and safe water supply to everyone and everywhere is usually misplaced. Domestic use currently accounts for a mere five percent of the total use of water harnessed through canals, wells and tube-wells. The requirements are no doubt growing rapidly but will still be relatively small compared to those of other uses. Interlinking is hardly justified as the solution for this problem. Even if interlinking were justified for other reasons, it will not be possible to take the water to all the habitations without huge investments in a centralized distribution network. Decentralized local rainwater harvesting, by reviving and improving traditional techniques can meet essential requirements for domestic purposes more effectively and at a far lower cost.

2.1            IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROJECT

The popular appeal of interlinking of rivers is based on the understanding that an enormous amount of water of our river flows into the sea and that if only this is prevented, and water transferred from water abundant rivers to water-deficit areas, there will be adequate supply for everyone in every part of the country. At another level, the project is seen as promoting national integration and a fair sharing of the country’s natural water wealth. Both these presumptions are far too simplistic.

Whether the linking of rivers will promote integration or generate more disputes and tensions is a moot question. While the principles on the basis of which riparian states can share water have been established over time internationally and in the various agreements between States, the transfer of river water from a surplus basin to a deficit one has no

15 See, NCIWRDP’s Report, September 1999

such agreed principles. The states that are not riparian are assumed not to have any claims to the water of the rivers. Therefore a transfer of water from one basin to another, which is going to be used predominantly for commercial purposes like agriculture in the areas in which the water will be transferred should be done only by mutual consent and a commercial agreement by which the state (or country) that receives water pays the donor state a certain amount. It water from Beyond or Bihar is sought to be transferred to Gujarat or Rajasthan, it is only legitimate that these states pay for the water that they get from other states or part with some other resources which they have in plenty and which are lacking in the water rich states of north and north-east, say resources like solar energy, which these states manufacture in bulk. Any other basis for transfer of water is bound to be unacceptable as no state is likely to transfer water to another foregoing possible future use of such water.

There are also important institutional and legal issues to be sorted out. There is no mechanism as of now to deal with matters concerning inter-basin transfers. In this regard a proposal that is being floated is that the rivers should be nationalized and the control of the water grid should rest with the centre16. It is highly unlikely that the states will agree to rest the controlling authority with the centre. In the absence of consensus among the states over the project, if the centre goes ahead with existing laws and procedures for dealing with water allocation between the states within the same basin one can safely assume that this project is going to breed further animosity and give rise to a plethora of litigations. We know from experience how contentions, prolonged and difficult this process is. This caution is both wise and understandable, given the complexity of the issues induced and the fact that courts have no means to enforce the judgment on river water disputes and the record of compliance by Governments is at best mixed. These questions are pertinent and basic to a considered assessment of the river-linking programme. In the absence of satisfactory answers, criticisms of the decision to go ahead with the implementation of the project are reasonable and legitimate.

16 Water i.e. water supplies, irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power have been included in list II under entry 17, giving the states the sole authority to legislate on the subject. However this power is subject to the power of the Union mentioned n entry 56 of list I, which includes, regulation and development of inter-state rivers and river valleys to the extent to which such regulation and control under the union is declared by

2.11 POSSIBLE LINKAGES AND THE DETERMINATION OF SURPLUS WATER

A closer examination of the interlinking idea raises several questions. First, it is based on the presumption that there are large surplus flows in some basins and that the physical transfer is feasible in terms of physical engineering and can be accomplished economically without creating any adverse impact.

The Himalayan component of interlinking project envisages linking the Brahmputra to the Ganga upstream of Farakka to meet the needs of Bangladesh and West Bengal. Unless the Ganga flow can be augmented, India is bound by its agreement with Bangladesh not to disturb the flow into Bangladesh of the Ganga17. The Brahmputra- Ganga link has two possible alignments, one of which is through Bangladesh and the other passing            entirely            through Indian territory (the Siliguri chicken neck). Bangladesh has already rejected the proposal for linking Brahmputra through Bangladesh18. The other alignment through Siliguri involves large scale lifting of water and does not appear to be economically viable. Thus both the proposed links have serious problems without addressing which the interlinking of the Ganga and the Brahmputra is not possible. Without this linkage the whole idea of transferring water from north to south and western India becomes impossible because it is the Brahmputra valley, which has surplus water, and not Ganga and therefore this link is absolutely crucial.

Another important factor, which is going to be very crucial for the successful implementation of the project, will be the timely release of water from the surplus basin to the deficit basin. It would be imperative for this to have a basis for the determination of surplus basins and the magnitude of the surplus. The bad experience in the Cauvery basin

Parliament by law to be expedient in public interest. Therefore, the Parliament has the power to legislate on the use, development and control of the inter-state rivers 17 The Indo-Bangladesh Ganga waters Treaty of 1996 bind both India and Bangladesh.

18 Bangladesh has expressed its concern over the project on the ground that it might affect the flow of Ganges to the Bangladesh and affect its environment and ecology adversely. See, the Hindu, Oct 1, 2003, at 14.

should serve as a lesson for any endeavor at sharing of river water between various states and should certainly be kept in mind before determining any basis for future. The volume of flows during the flood season is misleading as a basis for judging surpluses. Nor can the regions where floods occur be considered water surplus. Most of them may have floods during the monsoon but have inadequate water for use in the dry season. Substantial tracts in these regions do not have the benefit of irrigation. Estimates of surplus made by Central agencies such as National Water Development Agency are hotly contested by the states19.

A more serious difficulty arises from the fact that most of the flow in practically all rivers occurs during southwest monsoon. Published data from official sources show that 90 per cent of the flow in south Indian rivers occurs between May and November. Data on the Indo-Gangetic and Brahmputra river basins are classified. Being perennial, the proportion of the total flow occurring during these months may be somewhat smaller but not all that much smaller. For instance, over 80 per cent of the annual flow in the Kosi is between May and November, and almost three fourths between June and October.

The monsoon happens to be the season when rainfall in the aggregate is adequate for crop growth. Of course in some regions, such as Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat and the Deccan, even the Kharif rain is far too low and variable for productive agriculture. In some others, more water could help switch to more productive crop patterns. These “deficit” regions are far from those considered “surplus” requiring transport over very difficult terrain and long distances.

Moreover, since the surplus occurs in the rainy reason and the demand in the dry season, it is not enough to merely carry the water from one point to another. Large storages will be necessary. One needs to know the quantum of water to be stored, and whether and where potential sites on the required scale are available. The maps and the sketchy

19 Orissa and Andhra Pradesh are united in their opinion that Mahanadi and Godavri have no surplus water for transfer to Cauvery and Vaigai Basins. Also states like Bengal, Bihar and Punjab do not agree to the argument that there is surplus water in the Ganga system that can be released westwards for non-ripalian states like Rajasthan.

accounts in the media and official pronouncements tell us little on these aspects. If these maps accurately reflects the concept of the interlinking project sought to be implemented, it will only mean that instead of the surplus flows flowing to the Bay of Bengal via the Ganges and the Brahmputra and the Mahanadi, they will flow to the sea through the Krishna, the Godavari, the Pennar or wherever20.

2.2 AN ECONOLOGICALLY DESTRUCTIVE EXERCISE

Enthusiasts of interlinking project tend to be dismissive of the concerns over the environmental and human consequences of the project. They claim that these fears are vastly exaggerated or argue that they are unavoidable costs of “development” and that they should not be allowed to hold back the project. One has to be extraordinarily insensitive not to recognize the consequences of ignoring these aspects in our water resource planning in the past. They are reflected in the callous manner in which displaced persons have been treated, land degradation due to misusage of water, depletion of groundwater and the growing pollution of water resources. The experience of the Indira Gandhi Canal is a stark example of the problems arising in the wake of bringing in vast amounts of water without adequate understanding of and concern for its impact on the fragile desert ecology. Among the long list of adverse ecological impacts is the destruction of innumerable sensitive aquatic ecosystems because of changes in temperature and flow regimes. This alteration of the chemical and biophysical properties of the river has not only caused the loss of estuarine fisheries downstream of the dam, in many instances, but has also impacted water quality very severely. The losses due to poor water quality in India are staggering. The World Bank estimates the health costs of water pollution alone to be equivalent of three percent of the GDP21. With the majority of the Indian rivers being severely polluted, interlinking them may actually increase these costs. Furthermore, with the widely recognized failure of the Ganga Action Plan, contaminants from the Ganga basin are expected to enter other basins and destroy the natural cleansing

20 See, A Vaidyanathan. Interlinking of rivers, The Hindu, 26 March, 2003 at 8 21 See, Sanjay Pahuja, linking rivers- A Sustainability Perspective The Hindu Survey of the Environment, at 23

processes of other river basins. If the clean-up of the main rivers involved in this interlinking project has been such a dismal failure, does it not portend doom for the sanitation levels of other rivers? The new areas that will be riverfed after the introduction of the scheme may experience crop failures or rotting due to alien contaminants and compounds carried into other streams from the dirty Ganges.

It has been argued that similar projects have been undertaken elsewhere without catastrophic consequences. This claim may be true, but only partially. If we project the success of interlinking in France or Israel to support a similar project in India, we can’t probably overlook the dismal failure at Aral Sea caused by a similar venture, resulting in the virtual death of that sea. That is now recognized as a great environmental disaster, perhaps the greatest ever, and desperate attempts are being made to reverse the phenomena. Even the widely perceived leader of the 20th century in the field of water resource planning, the USA has realized its folly in building big dams and has taken up the task of large scale decommissioning of dams every year and restoring the natural flow of rivers like Colorado. In such a situation, because China has embarked upon its massive three Gorges Project, whose impact will be seen only in the due course, that cant serve as a good model for us to follow, as argued by some sections. With the “linking of rivers” project, we may actually be headed for other unforeseen disasters and may discover them too late. The situation therefore demands exercise of a degree of caution before we embark on this enterprise.

With the recognition of “precautionary principle” under the environmental jurisprudence of our country22, the “onus of proof” is clearly on the government to show as to how a project like interlinking of rivers, fraught with serious consequences and its potential for irreversible damage, is environmentally benign. This would require a thorough Environmental Impact Assessment and feasibility studies of the proposed links. Let the information be put into the public domain for experts and all the concerned groups to

22 See, Vellore Citizen’s Welfare Found V. Union of India, AIR1996 SC2715, where Justice Kuldip Singh has explained the meaning of this principle. See also, A.P. Pollution Control Board v Prof. M.V.Naidu, (1999) 2SCC 718

offer their informed comments. This massive undertaking is too important a matter to be left entirely to the internal processes of the Government.

Till this is done, it is difficult to believe that the interlinking programme has been worked out in sufficient detail to qualify for serious examination, leave alone immediate implementation.

2.3            THE PROBLEM OF DISPLACEMENT

The interlinking project if implemented would lead to construction of canals running into thousands of kilometers and some 200 storage dams. The obvious fallout of this massive construction would be the displacement of around four and a half lakh people and the submergence of nearly 79,000 hectares of forest land23. It is a recognized principle of international law that no human being can be sacrificed at the altar of economic growth and while encouraging any development project, its effect on the community must first and foremost be taken into consideration. The ILO Convention 107, which has been ratified by India, under Article 11, recognizes both collective and individual rights over the lands, which the indigenous and other tribal and semi-tribal populations have traditionally occupied. The Convention protect them by forbidding their removal from their habitual territories without their free consent, and in cases where removal of these populations is absolutely necessary, Article 12 of the Convention speaks about providing a humane or effective settlement. There also stands a unanimous resolution of the UN Commission of Human Rights, adopted in March 1993, which held forced eviction as gross violation of human rights.

In the light of these international obligations and with the doctrine of incorporation as carved out by the Indian judiciary in the context of Article 51 of the Constitution, especially in the light of the Visakha dictum24, the state is under an obligation to protect

23 See Kalyan Kumar Bandyopadhyay, “Interlinking of Indian River Systems: Its harms may outweigh its benefits.” At 7 in Seminar on Interlinking of Rivers: Bane or Boon? Centre for Environment and Development, Kolkata.

24 See Vishakha v State of Rajasthan, AIR 1997 SC 3011

the interests of the tribals and the backward populations, which are sections which have been the worst hit as a result of these kinds of developmental project25.

This obligation of the state to secure the lives of ‘project affected persons’ has led to the enactment of the 73rd and 74th amendments of the Constitution, as also the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 whereby the village communities for the first time have been granted legal recognition as a community entity. It has also recognized their control over their commons including their water resources. It is important to note, that the significance of command over community resources has been recognized not in isolation, or as a mere economic issue, but in relation to the cultural identity of the people itself. Thus, through the new Act, the state recognizes the relationship between the communities and the commons, hence bestowing a very significant and pivotal role to the village communities to safeguard their interests and empowering them to meet the challenges both from within and outside.

With the recognition of tribals and local communities’ claims over their community resources under the Constitution, any attempt at usurping the rights of the local communities, by allowing a centralized state to act undemocratically on the principle of trust doctrine, for operationalizing river linking project in the garb of ‘public interest’ would be in clear violation of the constitutional norms and our international obligations.

Looking at the shoddy manner in which the rehabilitation policies have been implemented in the past, there is very little room for any kind of optimism for this latest misadventure of the Central Government. Under these circumstances, any attempt at denying the tribal communities their rights over their land and water resources invoking the archaic Land Acquisition Act of 1894 would be patently unjust26. The Rural

25 See Samatha v State of A.P. (1997) 8 SCC 191, See also, Irrigation, Economic Development and Displacement : A Macro view. The Administrator, Vol. XLIII, April-June 1998 at p. 68

26 See Gayatri Singh, “Bitter Price for Development” LEXET JURIS 20 March 1989 at 22 for a detailed discussion on the flawed Land Acquisition Act 1894, See also, Water Fernandes, Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 1998, EPW October 17-24, 1998.

Development Ministry of the Central Government which has been holding the “Rehabilitation Policy” on its desk for last so many years, just gives a clue about the keenness and the urgency which the government attaches to safeguarding the interests of the ‘project affected people’ who have got displaced from their habitats of centuries, for the implementation of these large scale projects. Under these circumstances, the ill planned and the hasty river linking project would lead to further marginalization and disarticulation of these socially and economically disadvantaged sections of our population, leading to the denial of their basic human right to leave a peaceful life with dignity.

CHAPTER-III THE FINANCING CHALLENGES

Financing a project of this magnitude is going to be extremely challenging. Conservative estimates of the National water development Agency puts the cost of the project at Rs 5,60,000 crores. However cost overruns on account of delays are quite expected. Conscious of this reality the Task Force Chairperson Suresh Prabhu has himself indicated that the cost may go upto Rs 10,00,000 crores ($ 200 billion). Even the minimum estimated cost of Rs5,60,000 crores at 2002 price equals 25 per cent of our Gross Domestic product (GDP), or two and a half times of our annual tax collection and double of our present foreign exchange reserves. Where is the investible capital of this magnitude available in the domestic market? According to the Government’s Economic Survey for 2001-2002, the country’s Gross Domestic Savings were lower than the cost of the project. The cost is also higher than India’s total outstanding external debt by $12 billion27.

Already the spillover projects of the Tenth and Eleventh plan are expected to cost Rs. 1,80,000 crores on the public exchequer. That leaves little scope of financing the interlinking project from the planned expenditure. The chairman of the task force has suggested that the government can raise the required money through loans, taxes and user charges. Having categorically negated raising external funding for the project, and realizing the difficulty in raising the money entirely through taxes, Prabhu has called on the industry to support the costliest endeavor the country has undertaken. “The Project is all about tangible benefits.” says he. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) are discussing their positions in the light of the potential benefits that might accrue from the project. Following the privatization of a stretch of the Sheonath river in Chattisgarh, the private sector sees a distinct role for itself in managing country’s water resources. The “interlinking of rivers” proposal may indeed provide that opportunity28.

27 See Sudhirendra Sharma, Linking of rivers – A dream or a nightmare? The Hindu Survey of the Environment, 2003, at 43

28 See, “Private participation to be sought for interlinking of rivers” The Hindu, Feb 12,2003 at 13.

But this may also mean giving up the traditional rights of people over water resources, because the government is seeking not only the capital investment but also recurring expenses towards operations and management. Privatization helps achieve both, as consumers have to pay for every drop, whether for household needs or irrigation29.

With operations and maintenance expected to cost no loss than $631 per hectare, the success of the project will depend on how best the recurring costs are realized from the users. Undoubtedly, the water-stressed communities that stand to benefit from the proposed interlinking will have to incur the costs of sustaining the ambitious project. With this being the likely scenario, one wonders whom the project intends to benefit in the long run30?

Already at the World Water Forum meeting in 2001, water MNCs successfully managed to get the UN to define water as a ‘human need’ as distinct from ‘human right’. By the WTO’s definitions, which are increasingly running the market, human needs can be supplied by the private entrepreneurs for a profit, unlike a human right that accrues equally to everyone.

Under these circumstances the proposal for interlinking of Indian rivers, may give false illusion to the larger public with dreams of water security, though in reality this grandiose scheme may well create conditions where large scale privatization of water becomes the only option. That we seem to be moving blindly towards such a future is the real danger31.

29 See, A.C. Kamaraj,                  “Neither a Dream nor a disaster,” The Hindu, November 20,2002 at 16. 30 See, The Hindustan Times, 24th October, 2002. 31 See, The Statesman, 5th April, 2003 at 7.

CHAPTER-IV

RAIN WATER HARVESTING: AN ALTERNATIVE TO INTERLINKING

The water crisis faced by India today stems largely from the skewed rainfall that it receives. Much of the 4,000 billion cubic metres of rain the country receives falls in just 100 hours out of the total of 8,760 hours in a year. Therefore, the trick to tackle the severe and widespread water problem of India lies in capturing enough water in these 100 hours in the very areas where it falls in ways, which would lost for the rest of the parched year.

Any attempt by the government to ensure round the year water availability in all parts of the country to meet the basic requirements of people, would succeed only with the participation of people in such programmes. A community’s sense of ownership and control of natural resources has been found to be a key determinant for ensuring this sustainability. There seems to be little hydrological wisdom in letting rainwater flow down into the river, which is then dammed and much energy is wasted to pump this water back to those very fields where this water originally fell as rain. It makes much greater sense to trap the water in small structure in the villages itself. We have rich traditions of community-based water harvesting and management in India, each of them well suited to the needs of a specific environment. The potential of rainwater harvesting in meeting household needs is enormous. It is a fact that there is no village in India that cannot meet its drinking water needs from rainwater harvesting32, Apart from household water needs rainwater harvesting has the potential to meet agricultural requirements as well.

32 See, Anders Wijkman & Live Gordon, synthesis from the workshop on Meeting Hydroclimatic Viability in the Tropics and Subtropics : Strategies for Drought Effect Mitigation, Workshop H B : Water Harvesting. Water-the Key to Socio-Economic Development and Quality of Life. SIWI Paper 2 (1998) Stockholm, Sweden, Pg. 3

Rainwater harvesting has the capacity to contribute towards eradication of poverty amongst a substantial section of rural India. In addition, it can increase groundwater availability through recharge mechanisms and prevent floods by reducing storm water runoff.

A shining example in this regard is the community effort to harvest rainwater and recharge the aquifers in Alwar district of Rajasthan: its success has revived the Arvari, which had not flown in the last 40 years. Similar district-and watershed-level experiences from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh provide continuing proof that community-based and participatory water management is a realistic and replicable strategy for the nation. It would have the benefit of making each village responsible for its own water storage and use. The cost of such initiatives would be a fraction of the proposed river- interlinking plan and it would be easy to maintain and repair. The social cost of displacement would also not exist or be minimal. Most importantly, by making each village responsible for its own water security, this would encourage more responsible farming practices and would thus serve as a tool for social change, supporting poverty alleviation and providing communities’ rights over resources.

The top priority of our water policy, therefore, should be to develop the potential of decentralized people-centred water management, couple it with modern water science and technology, and harness it to tackle the challenges posed by our current water situation. That would also be the best way to give expression to the views expressed by the Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee on April 1, 2002, when in his address to the National Water Resources Council he favored community control over water resources as the model on which the National Water Policy should be shaped for an effective water resource management strategy for the nation at all times in future.

CONCLUSION

India’s ever increasing and widespread water crisis is the result of the culmination of myopic planning, muddled policies and misguided perceptions. As cities grew and towns sprouted, no thought was paid to the emerging mismatch between demand and supply. In the quest for food security, groundwater was pushed as a solution- it was cheaper and quicker-while storage and distribution projects were neglected. The race for industrialization saw no checks on wasteful technology and pollution of water resources. With rapid development and urbanization, traditional systems of managing water resources were dismantled and thrown by the wayside. Today, the very development, growth and security it sought to build while neglecting the ecological side-effects are under threat.

Water security is indeed dear to all and there is no doubt that the citizens of India have suffered for too long from water security. At this crucial juncture in the history of water resource management in our country, the planners of our country need to proceed cautiously. As much as we may attempt to manage water supply through mega projects like interlinking of rivers, we can no longer underestimate the need to manage our demand and evolve strategies for conservation and augmentation of water bodies. The government surely needs to redefine the need-availability paradigm by redesigning and restructuring demand. Growing water intensive paddy or sugarcane can never be a right of any peasant.

Today when the government is proposing to undertake river linking project as an answer to India’s water concerns there is very little information available in the public domain which can substantiate the tall claims being made by the Government. The total absence from the public domain of any technical and economic assessment report on this project surely creates a lack of comfort and confidence in the public mind on the wisdom behind such an investment decision. The citizens of India certainly expect the government to be completely transparent and professional at all levels, before it gets a clearance for this mega project. This is particularly important at a juncture when the paradigm of water resource management is undergoing a fundamental change, with old ideas falling by the wayside, getting dislodged by more integrated and transparent scientific knowledge. It is an imperative that the people of India are assured that the country will not be investing in a 21st Century project that is developed on the basis of a 19th century knowledge base33.

The government has to work on these fronts and has to realize that firefighting cannot be a substitute for structural change. The enormity of the crisis dictates urgency- in thought and action and consideration of the few suggestions mentioned below may go a long way in tackling our water crisis and providing us a sense of security and sustainability at all times in future:

_            Reverse the usual approach of proceeding from projections of demand to supply side answers in the form of ‘water-development’ projects’; start with a recognition of finite supply and learn to live with it; shift the focus from ‘water resources development’ to ‘water resources management.’

_            On the supply side, reverse the ranking of big projects like river linking project as primary and local water-harvesting and watershed-development programmes as secondary and supplementary; treat the latter as primary and the former as projects of last resort.

33 See S.Kalyanaraman, “Interlinking of Rivers,” The Hindu, October 22, 2002 at 16.

_            Where a big project is put forward as necessary, make the planning interdisciplinary from the start, with all environmental, ecological and human concerns fully internalized; and put it through a stringent process of comprehensive and rigorous evaluation to make sure:

a)            that in itself it is a good proposition, and 

b)            that in comparative terms it represents the best choice out of the available

options and alternatives

_ Transform the cost-benefit analysis into a careful, comprehensive and sensitive multi-criteria analysis34

_            Give primacy to the affected people, make them part of the planning and decision- making process from the start, and give them the first rights over the benefits of the project.

This would serve as a more holistic and participatory effort of water resource management and has the potential to serve our needs better than the environmentally unsafe and archaic methods of damming the rivers imposed on us by the colonial rulers of the past, a legacy we cannot afford to pass onto our future generations. Rather than trying to play God it may be better to manage within the available water resources.

PRIMAY SOURCES

1. 2. 3.

Constitution of India Land Acquisition Act, 1894 Forest Conservation Act

BIBLIOGRAPHY

34 See Aniket Alam, “River Grid, The Preferred solution?”, The Hindu, December 2,2002 at 9.

SECONDARY SOURCES

1.            Sailendra Nath Ghosh, “Linking up Rivers: A Receipe for Disaster” Mainstream, December 14, 2002

2.            Aniket Alam, Pipe Dreams ; The Hindu, Feb. 2, 2003

3.            Manoj Mitra, “The River Sutra” The Indian Express, July 26, 2003

4.            Sujata Sachdeva, “River-linking: Network of Solution or Problem” Times of India December 19, 2002

5.            Ramaswamy R Iyer “Linking of Rivers: Judicial Activism or Error?” EPW, Nov 16, 2002

6.            Shankar Aiyar, “Changing the Course”, India Today, Jan. 20, 2003.

7.            Ramaswamy R Iyer, Linking Rivers: Vision or Mirage ? Frontline, December 20, 2002

8.            Water Fernandes, “Displacement and the Land Acquisition Act 1894”, Combat Law, April – May 2002

9.            A Vaidynathan, Interlinking of rivers, The Hindu, 26 March, 2003

10.            Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, “And quiet flows the river project”, Business line, The Hindu, March 14, 2003.

11.            Ramaswamy R Iyer, “Water: Perspectives, Issues, Concerns” Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003

12.            Biksham Gujja and Hajara Shaik, Linking Rivers: learn from others’ mistakes,” The Hindu Survey of the Environment 2003.

13.            Neil Pelkey, “Linking Rivers: Cost of the behemoth”, The Hindu Survey of the Environment, 2003

14.            Aniket Alam, “Linking Rivers: Would it drought-proof India,” The Hindu Survey of the Environment, 2003,

Annexure I: 

Orders of the Supreme Court in brief with respect to the interlinking of rivers.

Petition (Civil)                  No.512/ 2002

SUPREME COURT OF INDIA RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS

“IN RE: NETWORKING OF RIVERS”

Date: 31/ 10/ 2002 This Petition was called on for hearing today CORAM:

HON’BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE

HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE Y.K SABHARWAL HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE ARIJIT PASYAT

UPON hearing counsel the Court made the following ORDER

Pursuant to the notice issued by this Court to all the States and the Union Territories in relation to the inter- linking of the rivers, an affidavit has been filed by the Union of India and also by the State of Tamil Nadu. No other State or Union Territory has filed any affidavit and the presumption, therefore, clearly is that they do not oppose the prayer made in this writ petition and it must be regarded that there is a consensus amongst all of them that there should be inter-linking of rivers in India.

In the counter affidavit filed on behalf of the Union of India, it has, inter alia, been stated that after Rao Committee’s report was received, the Government of India has been studying and planning inter-linking of rivers for over two decades. It is also mentioned in this affidavit that the Ministry of Water Resources had made a representation on 5th October, 2002 before the Prime Minister on inter-linking of rivers and in that presentation the Dy. Prime Minister and other senior ministers and officers were also present. It was suggested that a High Level Task Force can be formed which will go into the modalities for bringing consensus among the States. This affidavit further states that the presentation was also made to the President of India on 16th October, 2002 which also shows the interest of the President of India in this project and it is in view of his broadcast to the nation on the eve of the Independence Day where emphasis was laid on the inter-linking of rivers that has given rise to the filing of the present petition.

Learned Attorney General states that a High Powered Task Force, as referred in the Affidavit of the Union of India, has not yet been formed and by the next date of hearing he should be in a position to inform this Court with regard to the formation of the said task force as well as the decision of the said Force. The Union of India has accepted the concept of inter-linking of rivers and in the affidavit spelt out the benefits which will annure after the entire project has been completed.

The State of Tamil Nadu is the only State which has responded to the notice issued by this Court and filed an affidavit. The said State also supports inter-linking of the rivers and in its affidavit has prayed that a direction be issued to the Union of India for constituting a High Powered Committee in order to see that the project is completed in time schedule. Alongwith this affidavit the prospective plan for implementation of inter-basin water transfer proposals prepared by the National Water Development Agency in May, 2000 has been placed on record. We are distressed to note that milestone for the perspective plan indicated in the report of the Agency shows that even though the Pre- Feasibility Reports regarding the Peninsular and Himalayan projects are already completed, the completion of the linked projects ultimately will be by the year 2035 in respect of Peninsular Link Project and 2043 regarding Himalayan Link Project.

It is difficult to appreciate that in this country with all the resources available to it, there will be a further delay of 43 years for completion of the project to which no State has any objection and whose necessity and desirability is recognised and acknowledged by the Union of India. The project will not only give relief to the drought prone areas but will also be an effective flood control measure and would be a form of water harvesting which is being rightly propagated by the Union of India and all the States.

Learned Attorney General states that a more realistic view will be taken and a revised programme on completion would be drawn up and be presented to the Court. We do expect that the programme when drawn up would tray and ensure that the link projects are completed within a reasonable time of not more than ten years. We say so because recently the National Highways Projects have been undertaken and the same is nearing completion and the inter-linking of the rivers is complementary to the said Project and the water ways which are so constructed will be of immense benefit to the country as a whole.

The report of the National Water Development Agency refers to negotiations and signing of agreements. This aspect is also adverted to by the Union of India in its affidavit when it mentioned that consent of all the States affected by the inter-linking of the rivers has to be obtained. Learned Attorney General would like to consider this aspect as it is contended by Mr. Ranjit Kumar that if a legislation under Entry 56 of List I of the Constitution is made, the need for the consent would not arise and the Centre would be in a position to undertake the project and complete the same within a reasonable period of time.

It is not open to this Court to issue any direction to the Parliament to legislate but the Attorney General submits that the Government will consider this aspect and, if so advised, will bring an appropriate legislation.

Mr. Ranjit Kumar, learned amicus has drawn our attention to River Board Act, 1956 which has been enacted by the Parliament. Learned Attorney General would look into this in order to examine whether any further piece of legislation is necessary for bringing about inter-linking of the rivers.

The parties are at liberty to file in Court any reports or papers containing studies in respect of the said project. To come up for further orders on 16th                  December 2002.

SUPREME COURT OF INDIA RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS

Writ Petition (Civil) No. 512/ 2002 “IN RE: NETWORKING OF RIVERS” Date: 16/12/2002 These petitions were called on for hearing today CORAM:

HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE Y.K SABHARWAL HON’BLE MR. JUSTICE ARIJIT PASYAT

UPON hearing counsel the Court made the following ORDER

Learned Attorney General has brought to our notice resolution dated 13.12.2002 passed by Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, inter alia, stating that National Water Development Agency has, after carrying out detailed studies and investigations for preparations of feasibility reports identified 30 links and prepared feasibility reports of six such links. It also notices various basin States have expressed divergent views about the studies and feasibility reports prepared by the said Agency and with a view to bringing out a consensus among the States and provide guidance on norms of appraisal of individual projects and modalities for project funding etc. the Central Government has set up a Task Force, details whereof are given in paras. 3 and 4 of the resolution. para 5 sets out the terms of reference of the said Task Force and para 8 sets out the time table for achieving the goal of inter-linking of river by the end of 2016. Mr. Ranjit Kumar, learned amicus curiae, prays for a short adjournment for filing response thereto. List on 20th January 2003.

ANNEXURE - II

ANNEXURE - III