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Jayanta Bandyopadhyay

THE project for interlinking of the rivers has recently found wide coverage in the print media. However, it does not provide a proportional amount of technical information on what is going to be done in the project.

To the common man, there is no information available beyond lines on the map of the country, and promises of water supplies, largely unsubstantiated by any data in the public domain. This follows the age-old tradition of unavailability of information on mega-projects on water resources for any transparent and independent professional assessment.

As of now, it looks that the interlinking mega-project is going to cost $112 billion. If the frequently experienced cost overrun of 400-500 per cent in large water projects in India is any indicator, the final bill to be paid by the people for this mega-project may as well be $500 billion.

This amount is larger than the present annual GDP of the country. The total absence from the public domain of any technical and economic assessment report on these projects surely creates a lack of comfort and confidence in the public mind on the wisdom behind such an investment decision.

Even the richest countries such as the US or Switzerland will think several times and undertake several independent professional assessments, before taking a decision on an investment that is greater than their annual GDP. The matter will be completely different, however, if the project on interlinking of rivers is put to sleep once the coming elections are over.

Whatever be the origin of the ideas of interlinking of rivers, the whole project has now been presented to the country as a response to an order from the Supreme Court.

The Court has consistently upheld the citizen's right to know, especially when public interest and investment is concerned. Water security is dear to all, and, there is no doubt that the citizens of India have suffered for too long from water insecurity. The citizens of India expect that a large project such as the one on interlinking of the rivers, for which they will have to pay dearly, is assessed openly and professionally at all levels.

This scrutiny 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 base.

How much ever logical it may look, getting such an open assessment of the project is not going to be easy in India. For reasons best known to the officials, information on most water resources of the country and related projects are kept away from any open assessment.

At a recent workshop in New Delhi on the interlinking project, it was disappointing to find that all that the officials from the project presented was a short video that merely showed the interlinkage lines on the map and made claims of gains from the project that were not substantiated by accompanying data.

There was no presentation of any techno-economic feasibility of the project, nor was any description of possible ecological costs of the project. The secrecy of water resource data is, however, not a problem faced by the civil society alone. The tragi-comedy is that even the National Commission (NCIWRDP) that was appointed by the Centre to develop an integrated plan for the development of India's water resources, itself failed to have access to data on the Himalayan rivers.

Pointing at the detrimental effects of such secrecy, the Commission had to specially stress that "the secrecy maintained about water resources data for some of the basins is not only highly detrimental but is also counter-productive.

Hydrological data of all the basins need to be made available to the public on demand". When an officially-appointed Commission has to complete its job without access to adequate data, one cannot expect the civil society to have an easy time doing the same, whatever be the needs of professionalism. It is here that the apex court may be of help in ensuring that people can know more about the technical details of what constitute the interlinking project, so that a professional and transparent assessment of the full costs and benefits of the project can be undertaken in the public interest.

The concern of the Supreme Court for the early removal of water scarcity in some parts of the country is commendable.

The judiciary has set the goal correctly. It is not, however, the responsibility of the judiciary to show the most appropriate and cost-effective technical path to achieve this goal. That task is best done by professionals in the civil society and the government. Aswater is everybody's business, gaining detailed knowledge of water-related projects is also everybody's responsibility.

Notwithstanding the non-availability of any detailed project report or assessment in the public domain, one can raise certain basic conceptual questions on the scientific and technological status of the project. The project plans to divert surplus water from one river basin and take it to scarce ones.

The very first question one can ask is: What precise parameters does the project use to characterise river basins as water-surplus or -scarce and estimate the amount of surplus or scarcity?

Rajasthan is always projected as an area with water scarcity, in need of water from other areas. However, people's movement for water conservation proved that much of the scarcity can be solved by conserving local water resources. For Chennai, drinking water is supplied from sources several hundreds of kilometers away.

A thumb rule assessment says that Chennai's drinking water needs can largely be met by water conservation within the river basin concerned. Cherapunji receives the second highest rainfall in the world, and yet, children's schools in that town start to close down from February onwards for lack of water supplies. Should Cherapunji be identified as a water-surplus area or a -scarce one? How can we ensure that the interlinking project is not going to create new water scarcities and conflicts? In addition, by prior-appropriation of water, the project would restrict water development within the so-called surplus basins.

This leads one to raise the second conceptual question: How are the environmental damage that may be caused by the interlinking project identified and their financial costs estimated, if at all?

At the New Delhi workshop, officials described as `waste', all the natural outflow of the rivers into the seas and oceans. Such a description is frequently given by the water resource engineers.

However, ecological knowledge on the hydrological cycle has grown significantly over the past decades and scientists have accorded great value to the flows of the rivers into the seas and oceans. What changes will be thrust on the ecology of the fertile Gangetic plains if the annual monsoon flood flows are stopped or diverted by building large dams in the Himalayan uplands?

It is common knowledge that the usual floods regenerate the water resources of the plains and rejuvenate farmlands both chemically and physically, maintaining high level of agricultural productivity. Further downstream lies the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta and the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans. A systematic and full benefit-cost analysis for the project on ecological changes caused in the lower parts of the basin by the diversions may turn out to be economically fatal for the project.

The same is the nature of the question on the details of the flow transfer, whose water goes to whom, how and when? What are the social and environmental costs of the construction of dams, barrages and canals that are presently on the drawing board? Many such questions exist and remain unanswered.

The urgent need for a comprehensive, transparent, participatory and extended benefit-cost analysis of the project was clearly established in New Delhi discussions. People in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, East UP, West Bengal, etc., may not agree that theirs' is a water surplus area.

Considering the diversity of issues involved, the National Commission, which examined the proposed links in detail, observed that "the Himalayan component would require more detailed study using systems analysis techniques. Actual implementation is unlikely to be undertaken in the immediate coming decades''.

Thus, there is a strong reason for the $500 billion project to be made transparent in technical details and open to independent non-government professional assessment, before it is cleared.

(The author is Professor, Centre for Development and Environment Policy, IIM, Calcutta. The views are personal and not of the institution he is associated with.)

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