Drought due to destruction of catchment areas — Medha

Patkar, who was in the city to hold discussions with members of WCD, dismissed allegations that the stay on works at the Sardar Sarovar Dam was responsible for the drought in Gujarat and other states and claimed that the dams would serve little purpose in the betterment of the rural population “as is evident by studies done by the NAB and the WCD”.

Himanshu Thakkar, an expert from South Asian Network for Dams, Rivers and People from New Delhi and member of WCD, described the drought in Gujarat as the century’s worst hydrological drought.

“The state had experienced consecutive good monsoons before this year’s drought. hence, the drought did not come as a surprise. It is rather a government generated drought as they were quite aware of about the gravity of the situation since September last”, he said.

Justifying his claim that the Sardar Sarovar project would not be a solution to the drought, Thakkar said even if the work on the project had proceeded, only 1.6 per cent of land in Kutch and 9.24 per cent of Saurashtra regions of Gujarat would have benefitted from it.

Prof Shekhar Singh, an expert in drinking water management from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, attributed the scarcity of drinking water in the country to the poor handling of ground water by the state governments.

He called for a revival of the traditional method of groundwater exploitation to help “recharge” groundwater.

An expert in traditional water conservation, Sanjay Sanghvi said the state governments should go in a big way for traditional and decentralised water conservation and groundwater recharge techniques.

“Sardar Sarovar, which takes about 85 per cent of the irrigation budget, is coming in the way of implementing these lasting and real solutions”, he alleged.