The Hindu : `Water-sufficient States can help interlinking'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 02, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka

`Water-sufficient States can help interlinking'

By Our Staff Correspondent

MYSORE DEC. 1. The former Chief Engineer of Madhya Pradesh, B.S.Bhavanishankar, on Sunday said that interlinking of rivers and sharing of water was not possible, as most of the States did not have enough water and power.

He was presenting a paper at a seminar on "National water policy on the establishment of regional and national water grid in India'' organised here by the Institution of Engineers.

He said that only when water-sufficient States came forward for such a project, it was possible. The experience with the river water tribunals that had been set up to distribute water among riparian States had been far from satisfactory.

He said that even after more than two decades of the establishment of National Waterways Development Agency, the country had not achieved anything as far as water grids were concerned. It was a remote possibility to make an effort to implement any inter-State link due to inter-State disputes over sharing of water. While the Cauvery dispute was glaring, the Krishna water dispute was brewing up, he added.

Listing out the deficiencies in the water policy being pursued by the country, he pointed out that water being a State subject, the Union Government did not have the power to direct the States to harness and exploit river water. Except for giving a policy directive to the States on water issues that were more often being flouted, the Union Government did not have much power, he added.

In such a context where water continued to be a State subject and with each State exercising its rights at the cost of the others, Mr. Bhavanishankar felt that it was impossible to interlink inter-State rivers ignoring political boundaries. In the light of such conflicting interests, it was appropriate to develop regional water grids within the State rather than attempting inter-State links that seemed to be impractical for now, he added.

Stressing the need for an amendment to the Constitution, he said, "in view of the experiences in the past, whatever national plans to interlink the rivers are made to divert water from surplus basins to deficit basins, they cannot be implemented without an amendment to the Constitution. It will be a futile exercise to pursue the issue unless water was transferred from the State List to the Concurrent List.''

Regarding the regional grid for the State that comprised 80 per cent drought prone areas in both the Cauvery and Krishna basins, he said that the hilly areas in the State that constituted 13 per cent, yielded 2,000 tmcft of water. A large amount of water drained into Arabian Sea without benefiting the people, except helping power generation that could be harnessed for use in the plains, he added.

Mr. Bhavanishankar felt that the parties concerned could consider the options in Western Ghats and tap water resources on a sustainable basis without endangering the fragile ecology and environment of the ghats. However, no serious thought had been given to this aspect, he lamented.

The former Chairman of Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board, B.N.Thyagaraja, who inaugurated the seminar, said that unless the States showed the willingness to spare available water with other deficient States, it was not possible to interlink the rivers and to form a national water grid.

Speaking on "Interlinking of rivers in the country and formation of national water grid'', Mr. Thyagaraja said that no State would agree to spare water till its own demand was met, and that they aimed at near saturation of land and water resources. Before embarking on a national water policy, he said that provisions had to be made to meet the demands of the surplus States for their future requirement.

Stating that transfer of water from surplus river basins to deficient basins required huge finances, he said that the project could be made viable if it was made a multipurpose one.

He suggested that the Union Government could form a national water authority having representatives from all States for implementing the project. A corpus fund could be established by imposing a cess on petroleum products and on each unit of power generated in the country. The project could be implemented by obtaining loans from foreign funding agencies, he added.

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