The result of artificial interference to raise water expectancy in arid regions has been tragic across the globe  

The proponents of the proposed Rs 560,000-crore mega-project for interlinking major rivers have not apparently looked into its geophysical and geological implications. Even the division bench of the Supreme Court did not consider the vital questions relating to the fundamental geotectonics of the Indian peninsula.  

In India, more than 50 per cent of a little over 300,000 sq km land area has moderate-to-high seismic intensity. The mega-water grid project ignores this reality and aims at imposition of kinetic energy on a natural activity that constantly enlivens itself on potential energy. Subrata Sinha, an eminent environmental geologist, has observed that the existing fluvial dynamics of river systems would be seriously affected by the project. This project-idea “is violative of the laws governing the life support system, and the principles of natural dynamics. It undermines the natural bounties provided by river systems. A river flows under the influence of gravity. During the process of its flow, it excavates channels and maintains a dynamic equilibrium of the groundwater and surface water components of the hydrological cycle. It promotes the life-supporting cycles of erosion and sedimentation. It also aids and abets the operation of the nutrient cycle and food chain of nature. All this is a sine qua non for life to survive,” he observed with a note of caution. 

Sinha’s incisive critique is likely to be the basis of a joint appeal by environmental scientists and activists to the President of India to drop the project. Cautioning that the project will destroy the natural dynamics, Sinha states: “It is bound to rob the rivers of their immense energy potential in the series of dams, artificial lakes and channels that are slated to be a vital component of the proposal. This is besides the vast inputs of energy necessary for lifting river waters by pumping — an unavoidable corollary.”  

Basic precepts  
There are certain basic precepts about project ideas that interfere with the natural phenomena. Yet due to the disturbing growth of a nexus between a section of contractors, civil technocrats, bureaucrats, self-styled experts and hydrologists, such knowledge-base is reduced to shelved curios. Any river generates a huge amount of utilisable clean and renewable energy as it flows downward. Sinha explains: “Ideally, this calls for an unfettered and unimpeded flow of the river. In fact, normal flooding is a part of the process. Embankments and other anthropocentric restrictions hamper the good work being performed by river systems.” Students from their secondary levels upward will be taught these things but tragically in real life they will see things forced to happen in an exactly opposite fashion. There is an onslaught on the academic serenity and scientific temper although those who engineer this crime against science pose themselves as “avatars” of superlative technological era.” 

Some argue that water grid project is a necessity for rational distribution of agricultural and other related wealth. But this argument is flawed and myopic. Agricultural economists like Dharm Narain and Biplab Dasgupta have observed that green revolution failed in years of drought or deficient rainfall. It is much more judicious to think of better management of existing dryland farming in lieu of imposing intensive farming of traditional strains of grains along with “pasturages with grass and fodder; and horticulture and forestry. Artificial interference in order to raise the water expectancy among people living in the semi-arid and arid regions turned into tragic mirage. This took place in many regions in India and Pakistan, the Rajasthan Canal Project being one such example of catastrophic consequences. 

This happened in the West too in the past. John Bellamy Foster, in his seminal work, Marx’s Ecology observed that “depletion of soil fertility was the chief environmental concern of the capitalist society throughout Europe and North America”. He referred to the crisis that engulfed those countries in the 1820s and 1830s when there was hyperbolic propaganda about the second agricultural revolution. Marx studied the unique treatise by Justus von Liebig, Organic Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology in refuting Malthusian fears to infer that the dearth of food due to population growth was misplaced. In his Capital Marx identified “the actual natural causes for the exhaustion of land”.  

Traditional methods 
The feasibility of transfer of water from water-surplus region too has not been adequately studied, not even from the Brahmaputra Basin with an average monsoonal flow of 30,000 cubic metres per second. First of all, only a fraction of this may be transferred, that too theoretically, judging by the international experience. Secondly, its upstream is in China and it has Bangladesh on the downstream. It is not advisable at all to expand the areas of disputes between India and those two countries whose fluviometric balance will be disturbed if the basin transfer is implemented.  

Sinha comes out with an alternative model that deserves a patient scrutiny. “The local community controlled tanks, ahars, aikats and other water harvesting structures and innovations were deliberately marginalised by the British colonial masters to gain control over India’s farmlands and farming community. For this, they started excavating an extensive network of water transferring canals and collecting cess.” He is of the view that the rich variety of traditional knowledge should be restored, reinvigorated and applied extensively. 

Powerful global lobbies are hell-bent on implementing the project. Their aim is to strengthen their coffer and they are not concerned about the posterity and the Indian people. Nor are they interested to note that some 45,000 large dams the world over are in dysfunction. During the last two centuries one new large dam was built a day on an average, but in reality, they barricaded 61 per cent of the world’s rivers.