In a new paper recently published in the Water Security journal, Amruta Pradhan, a PhD scholar and Veena Srinivasan, a senior fellow at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), conducted a review of the post facto evaluation of dams to understand how dams actually impact water security. The researchers looked at the studies of the dams implemented on the ground as opposed to the dam projects as conceptualised on paper. The review highlights gaps in the design and planning of the water infrastructure along with gaps in the types of data and evidence used to inform them. Speaking with The Indian Express, Srinivasan, a senior fellow at ATREE said, “There are virtually no technical studies that go back and check if all promises/ hypotheses panned out. One thing that is certain from the review is that the dams probably perform worse than the claims that are used to promote them. Without quantitative evaluations of individual projects, we just don't know if their actual performance renders the investment unviable.” Today, more than 60% of India’s irrigation is through groundwater and the net area irrigated by canals has stagnated since 1991. One of the reasons which Srinivasan highlighted in the paper is that a lot of dam projects do not get built as envisioned. “I think there are two strands to this. First a lot of dam projects do not get built as envisioned, some parts of the system are never completed, or inadequately constructed. Often mitigating actions like fish ladders are constructed with very little thought or attention. Engineers don't understand fish ecology much. But the point is if the dam projects are nothing like what was conceived on paper, shouldn't we go back and check if they are still worth it as implemented versus what was conceived?,” Srinivasan asked. She added, “For example, if the original cost-benefit ratio claimed when clearances were given was 1.5 but the costs doubled and half the benefits never panned out, is it not useful to know this and avoid the mistakes the next time round?” In the way forward, the authors of the study have discussed the need to design and implement dams as socio-technical systems and the need for empirical field-based ex-post research to establish factual evidence. The study mentions, “Going forward, if we are to solve India’s water and food security issues, we need evidence-based decision making. We need more post-facto studies that take a hard look at existing water infrastructure projects to see what worked and what did not and why. Once we have evidence, it must feed back into infrastructure design and planning processes to improve future performance.” It adds, “Dams must be proposed within the context of integrated river basin planning and evaluated alongside alternative options like groundwater and recharge of local water bodies. Currently, these are compartmentalized into major irrigation vs. minor irrigation / rural development /agriculture departments. Dam projects must be evaluated on their likely performance, and compared against alternatives including “soft” measures like changing cropping patterns to grow water intensive crops only in wetter regions. We need new dams to be designed and operated to actually mitigate environmental concerns and we need to hold agencies accountable for promises made and public money spent.”
