North Gujarat was green this July. It had rained torrentially. Mehsana experiencing a precipitation unmatched in 75 years. Come October and the landscape will turn brown again, as it usually does for most of the year. The floods this year were an exception; the more normal predicament is drought and distress, with water shortage and migration.This is soon to change. The Narmada Main Canal, taking off from the Sardar Sarovar, has already thrust 231 km into North Gujarat. It will start flowing next year certainly two years from now thrusting deeper into the arid heart of Saurashtra and through the Little Rann on its way to Kutch and the Rajasthan desert another 215 km away. It makes this great traverse across several catchments, disappearing under the Sabarmati and other rivers in massive siphons and flying over the Mahi and other streams in aqueducts.About 83 per cent of the dam is complete. As much as 1.1 million cubic metres of chilled concrete was laid during the last full working season. It should be no problem in pouring another 600,000 cu m to raise the dam to 110 m within a single season. Once this height is reached, water will flow through the canal-head powerhouse turbines (250 MW) and enter the main canal to provide Phase-I irrigation up to the Mahi by kharif 1998. This is no mirage. This is the delayed schedule to which the Sardar Sarovar Nigam can work if the Supreme Court's stay on further raising of the dam's height is lifted. MP's plaint is that the burden of R&R falling on it is too onerous and would be acceptable if the height were lowered from the designed 138.68 m (455 feet), sanctioned by the Narmada Tribunal, to 132.68 m (436 feet).At the full reservoir level (FRL) of 455 feet, 193 MP villages will be submerged, all but one partially. Of 33,014 project-affected families (PAFs), 18,890 are to be settled in MP itself and 14,124 in Gujarat. Of the latter, 2,695 have already resettled there. Lowering the dam to 436 feet would ``save'' between 1,254-1,829 ha of private land and the homes of 6,198 PAFs in 67 MP villages. In cognizance of this, in November 1994 the Narmada Control Authority asked the Central Water Commission to examine whether habitations above 436 feet could be protected from backwater effects by constructing low embankment or afflux bunds. The CWC produced a nine-volume technical report in late 1995 after detailed investigations, with MP's consent.This indicated that 11,653 families could be protected in 35 villages and two townships by constructing 112 km of discontinuous earthen afflux bunds three to 10 m high along the Narmada and tributaries en route. Related soil investigations were undertaken by the Central Soils and Materials Research Institute.The afflux bunds can be completed pari passu with raising the dam at a saving of Rs 100 crore as against the comparable cost of R&R. Tentatively, another 1,931 families could be protected by afflux bunds at an FRL of 455 feet, though this option has yet to be fully investigated and costed.The CWC-CSMRI study was considered by the NCA in April 1996 and circulated. It also examined the ring bund constructed by MP in 1962 to prevent Rampura township (15,000 inhabitants) and its well-known dargah from being submerged by the Gandhisagar reservoir (Chambal Project). Flood embankments are in any event commonplace in China, the US and elsewhere and thousands of kilometres of these earthen structures exist all over India.If there is a well-investigated and humane answer to Madhya Pradesh's plaint, what survives? With its PAF burden reduced by 60 per cent to 7,237 families, its cause of action before the Supreme Court would seem to disappear.On the other hand, were the dam lowered to 436 feet, Rajasthan would get little or no irrigation and SSP benefits to Gujarat would decline. The annual loss of 230-350 and 279 mn units of cheap energy in the canal and river-bed powerhouses respectively would be over Rs 125 crore per annum in perpetuity at current prices, 57 per cent of this having to be borne by MP. Why?If the stay were lifted, the dam could rise to 110 m to secure a flow of benefits with the 1998 monsoon. Thousands of PAFs from MP will, of course, need resettlement in Gujarat, which will not find it easy to augment its current 1,050 ha land pool. Alternatively, Gujarat could either offer to purchase adjacent lands on higher ground for R&R in MP itself or seek permission for diversion of degraded forest lands. It would in that event have to defray the R&R cost and undertake compensatory afforestation on double the diverted area. The early realisation of significant national benefits and avoidance of further cost escalation would justify a one-time exception.Madhya Pradesh's argument that the dam profile must change above 83 m if the final height is to be limited to 436 feet is technically untenable. Parts of the auxiliary spillway and other sections are already above 110 m and the powerhouses and turbine beds have been custom-built to a designed FRL of 138.68 m (455 feet). Freezing the height at 436 feet will also entail reopening a carefully optimised Tribunal Award. MP's real problem is the opposition of benami Patidar farmers in Nimad. If their fields and orchards above 425 feet are submerged, compensation will go to the tribal owners whose resettlement elsewhere will also deny remaining patidars of cheap labour.The notion that R&R has left PAFs worse off is simply not true. Specific defects or lapses have been remedied. The latest Monitoring and Evaluation Report of the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, indicates that 90 per cent of those resettled in Gujarat perceive themselves to be better off.Irrigation ends problems of fodder and fuel. Children, including girls, are going to school; electric lights burn in homes and hand-pumps, buses and dispensaries are accessible. TV, scooters and even the stray tractor can be seen. The neat pucca houses set in spacious homestead plots in the new MP R&R villages are noteworthy.Contrary to what has been propagated by critics, the crucial Narmada drinking water supply scheme covering all of North Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch is moving forward. A master plan has been prepared, a statutory authority is in the making and a vast pipe grid is on the drawing board. Drinking water could begin reaching households by 1999, ultimately benefiting 25-35 million people.Given all this, can the nation afford to delay the SSP and the enormous transformation in store?
