NEW DELHI: Indian Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharati has said that India is set to divert water from its rivers, including from major rivers like the Brahmaputra and the Ganges, to deal with a severe drought in the country.
She said that transferring water to drought-prone areas was now government’s top priority, as at least 330 million people are affected by drought which is taking place as a heatwave extends across much of India, with temperature in excess of 40C.
The Inter-Linking of Rivers (ILR) has 30 links planned for water-transfer, 14 of them fed by Himalayan glaciers in the north and 16 in peninsular India. Environmentalists have opposed the project, arguing it will invite ecological disaster but the Supreme Court has ordered its implementation.
“Interlinking of rivers is our prime agenda and we have got the public support and I am determined to do it on the fast track,” Uma said. “We are going ahead with five links of the rivers now and the first one, the Ken-Betwa link, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh is going to start any time now,” she said.
“And then we will have the Damnaganga-Pinjal interlink which will sort out the Mumbai drinking water facility,” the minister said. She also said that the river-linking project would be the first in the Indian history since the independence in 1947.
There were also other projects aimed at supplying water for irrigation and drinking in the next few years and the ILR was a long-term scheme, she said. Following two consecutive bad monsoons, India is facing one of its worst droughts. Of its 29 states, nearly half were reported to have suffered from severe water crisis this dry season.
Among others, the worst hit has been Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In New Delhi, the government has had to send trains carrying water to the worst affected places. India has faced a water crisis for years. Its ground waters have depleted to alarming levels, mainly because of unsustainable extraction for agriculture and industries.
Critics said that the project was not viable financially, environmentally or socially. The government has also been accused of granting environmental clearances without proper assessments. “It is even more impossible in the context of climate change as you don’t know what will happen to the rivers’ flows,” said Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network for Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP).
He said that the project was based on the idea of diverting water from where it was surplus to dry areas but there has been no scientific study yet on which places have more water and which ones less. The government said that the scheme would irrigate 35,000 hectares of land and generate 34,000 megawatts of electricity.