Delta blues

Now that the initial attempts at disaster relief are over, it is time to look at the management of flood basins.

Now that the initial attempts at disaster relief are over, it is time to look at the management of flood basins. I must be one of the few people in India to have read the text of the original Ganges Flood Control Commission and Brahmaputra Flood Control Board Report, each running into hundreds of pages with annexures and maps. The Ganga studies, unlike the Brahmaputra ones, do not really strategise properly. The Brahmaputra Flood Control Board went through a chequered history at one stage with a large number of employees, who had little to do with flood control, absorbed thanks to political pressure; but when I was in the Planning Commission, we chose A.B. Mohile and he did a super job.

Mohile developed the Brahmaputra flood control strategy in the larger context of the river as part of the economy and ecology of the region. For example, he dealt with the communications linkages of the Brahmaputra within the Northeast and with adjoining countries, which had been sadly disturbed over time. With the efforts of Mani Shankar Aiyar and Jairam Ramesh, the concept of the Brahmaputra basin as a region which has links with the Mekong and can become the strong arm of India8217;s strategic objectives to the east is being revived. We need to talk about the Brahmaputra-Mekong region, rather than the Ganga-Mekong region.

Apart from this larger concept, Mohile8217;s long-term plans included decentralised water development for energy, tree-based agriculture and inland waterway communication. Also, Mohile knew that a river changes its course. Embankments by themselves are never the whole answer and he developed the concept of 8220;training8221; the river. This means a lot of work on hydrology, on sedimentation and an eye to the larger facts which determine the strategy of river basin development. It is obvious that flood management will have to be thought of in this larger perspective, rather than as just big dams.

Any strategy must view drainage as a mirror image of the desired water flows 8212; which raises questions of land use and of the power of local oligarchies. Study after study in India show that local water bodies are clogged because influential people encroach either on the water body itself or on the approaches to it. In towns and large villages in flood prone areas, urban authorities think nothing of clogging historical drainage systems which took care of rivers in flood and monsoon waters.

The vice-chancellor of the Bidhan Agricultural University, a distinguished son of the soil and a scientist, showed that if every pond or pukur in the delta of Bengal is deepened by three metres, say, with an employment guarantee scheme, then around 10 per cent of surplus rainfall would be absorbed in village water bodies. Since floods can invariably be followed by droughts, in the winter and summer seasons the stored water could be used for paddy and other high value crops.

Even if we begin the long haul of sensible management of river basins, including afforestation and soil management of the area from which the rivers originally rise, there would still remain the Himalayan problem of dealing with our neighbours. There is no point in saying that Bhutan is already out of being a least developed country, having developed two hydel projects in cooperation with India, or that there was an agreement on a large hydel project with Nepal. If it has to start all over again, we need the patience to do it. We also need the vision to show how our larger reform processes are relevant for inter-regional trade and resource flows. I agree with some visionary Nepali policy-makers that India must pay the long-run marginal cost of energy and water. But diplomats who insist on starting negotiations with the phrase 8220;low cost of the hydel project8221; have to keep in mind that, at the same time, the country is negotiating for gas-based power or nuclear power. Interestingly, every time we send an energy sector manager to negotiate outcomes with his counterparts instead of a diplomat, he comes back with roughly agreed solutions. Someone who manages a power grid thinks of the price at which the power can sell in India. India should also set aside 8212; as I argued in 8220;Our Common Future8221; 8212; a billion dollars out of its hundreds of billions of dollars of exchange reserves for sustainable development of water and energy projects in the poorest districts of the sub-continent. Dams will only be a small part of it. The bigger part will be to share experiences at the village and aquifer and watershed levels to move the triangles of poverty and misery to a future of prosperity.

The writer, a former Union minister, is chairman, Institute of Rural Management, Anand

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