River Interlinking : The Interplay Of Ecology And Economics

The Union Water Resource Minister Mr. Nitin Gadkari has announced that the government intends to work on building two dams and three river interlinking projects in the next three months. This will cost around Rs 40,000 crore. The complete project envisages linking 30 rivers, constructing 3,000 storages structures, 87 millions of irrigated land at an estimated cost of Rs 5.6 lakh crores.

The Viability quotient

The river interlinking projects in India are learnt to have been divided between those who advocate for the potential benefits of power generation and irrigation and those who warn about the ecological consequences.

While the Damanganga-Pinjal and Par-Tapi-Narmada river inter-linking projects are estimated to cost Rs 16,000 crores, they are envisaged to meet the requirements of Gujarat and Maharashtra. The Ken-Betwa river inter linking project serves to states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Taking both the states on board is inevitable as water is a state issue.

The viability of these projects has been under scanner as the critics believe that there is very little clarity about the actual impact of the project which incurs a huge cost, both ecological and monetary.

Nothing more than a wishful thinking

In response to a Public Interest Litigation, the Supreme Court in 2003 had asked for the completion of project plan by 2006 and the project itself by 2016. Government runs a huge fiscal deficit .The project cost is already humongous; the delay in project has escalated its cost.

Experts believe that the government had set out with a huge agenda of interlinking so many rivers. They believe that it should have rather conducted a pilot first and then based on that the future course of action should have been decided. A lot of time could thus be saved and there could have been a fair picture of the impact of river linking.

The First Step

The recent move by the government is seen as the first step towards realizing the mammoth objectives set by Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister of India. It is expected that the results of the three interlinking projects would thus help in making an informed decision for the government and would pave the way for future course of action.

To realise the dream of Atal ji and vision of PM @narendramodi we have decided to expedite Interlinking of Rivers Project /2

— Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) September 5, 2017