Linking rivers is a complex job

The counterfactual is now on the ground and it won8217;t wash to say that the canal will not convey water or drinking water will not go to Saurashtra and Kutch. On a brief trip abroad, I was horrified to find that this impression is still being assiduously cultivated. In India, it is claimed that the rehabilitation package was designed and agreed to on account of the pressure of the opponents of the project. This is factually incorrect, since the rehab package including, land for land, a separate professional rehabilitation agency for implementation and an autonomous agency for evaluation on a continuing basis, were decided a long time ago and powerful NGOs like Anil Patel8217;s Archvahini, then decided to work on implementation issues, rather than continue their protest. The project itself was approved for construction with a paripassu clause on implementation of the rehabilitation and environment clearances added by me as the member in charge in the Planning Commission. Fortunately, the Supreme Court added a strict monitoring mechanism for this.

The essence of Sardar Sarovar is the attempt, for the first time in India, to deliver water in different ways and in different quantums to the different agro-climatic regions of the state. The strategy for the hard rock areas is different from that from the plains and that of the coastal belt. After the canal crosses the Sabarmati again, it has different ways of handling the soils, rainfall and groundwater in the complexity of the agricultures of North Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch. This is true of almost all the rivers outside the Gangetic Plain.

When agro-climatic exercises were done at the instance of the late Rajiv Gandhi, it was clear that the great peninsular rivers flow from the west to the east like the Godavari, the Mahanadi or the Kaveri or east to west like the Narmada. Invariably the river sources in the highlands, cuts through the Deccan Plateau, with different characteristics of different segments of the valley and then flows through the rich coastal plains and into the sea.

The management of each region of the river basin needs different practical strategies and the management of the ground and surface water of the area, with forty inches of rainfall and water which flows down the hill slope into the valley, being very different from that of the ghats or again the coastal plains. Of course, intervention upstream affects the downstream populations. In this fundamental sense of regionally differentiated action possibilities linked together by the river as an entity, managing a river is a complex business. Those who deny this are either oversimplifying or evading the complexity of the problem.

Intervention in rivers, therefore, are far more complex as compared to the quadrilateral road project, for instance. This does not mean that the problem should be ignored. But it would be naively optimistic to deny its complexity. When in the plateau, the rainfall erodes the hill slope and falls into the river flowing in the valley, the watershed has to be managed together with the river flows. In the coastal plains, the river has to be managed together with the ground water, whether it is in Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu or in the coastal districts of the Mahanadi and Godavari in Andhra or Orissa, or in the Narmada in Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Each agro-ecology has its own demands and needs careful nurturing. Water has to be transferred across basins taking all this into account or nature has a way of making us all pay for our sins. Further, the rivers are a part of our culture. Our religions are based on them. I spent the last few days with those who would nurture all this and then manage rivers. They need support. Meanwhile, I still believe, that the Cauvery arrangement works as is shown by the fact that it creates equal unhappiness for all. It is better to be unhappy than violent. Which is sometimes what leadership is all about.