The Union Cabinet’s decision to defer a decision on interlinking the Ken and Betwa rivers, the first of 30 such projects, reflects a lack of clarity and purpose when it comes to creating a river link network. The idea of interlinking rivers is far from new. In 1972, a ‘garland canal’ with the Ganga-Cauvery as its central component was proposed. A decade later, the National Water Development Agency was set up to carry out technical studies to examine the feasibility of 30 links — 14 Himalayan and 16 peninsular. Given the sheer scale of the project, it was perhaps inevitable there were disputes about its practicability and necessity — which also included hydrological and technical feasibility, rehabilitation and a clutch of general environmental concerns.

Typically, these led to the proposal going into something of a limbo until the Supreme Court — in 2002 and 2012 — directed its implementation in a time-bound manner. The Ken-Betwa project was one of the priority peninsular links for which the detailed project report has been completed and even a tripartite memorandum has been signed between Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the Centre. But this project has its opponents within the Union Cabinet (Jairam Ramesh has described it as “disastrous”) and the Congress (party vice-president Rahul Gandhi has spoken of the “severe environmental implications” of interlinking). The Cabinet’s deferral is probably largely a result of people pulling in different directions and the lack of a clear vision about whether to go ahead or not.

In the noisy debate between proponents and opponents, a couple of things are self-evident. First, it is myopic and unfeeling to ignore the enormous potential that river interlinking, the transfer of water from surplus basins to deficit basins, has on the lives of people living in drought-prone regions as well as in areas routinely ravaged by floods. Second, while environmental issues deserve the utmost consideration, just as those relating to rehabilitation and resettlement, interlinking should not be shot down merely because of the vague and unscientific feeling or argument that it constitutes an interference with Mother Nature. It is this feeling that has been partly responsible for scuppering the introduction of new GM crops, a decision with considerable livelihood implications.

The rational approach to interlinking is to consider projects on individual merit — factoring in the total cost and time for implementation, the extent of land to be submerged, the logistics for resettlement, and evolving mechanisms for dispute settlement between the ‘receiving’ and ‘donating’ river states. It is also worthwhile to keep in mind that diversion of river waters has taken place since Mesopotamian times. Interlinking is not new as well — the Periyar-Vaigai link, the Kurnool-Cuddapah canal and the Beas-Sutlej projects have all involved inter-basin transfers. Neither these at home nor the likes of the Colorado-Big Thomson project abroad qualify as environmental disasters.

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