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Technocrats have been the most significant players in the world of water resources development and management. They are the ones who plan, conceive, design, build, operate and manage our water resources from dams, hydro-power projects, urban and industrial water supply systems, including the sewage and effluent treatment plants.
So in this world there are neat categories like users of water and suppliers of water, and solutions, similar to any other resource use say energy, telecom, roads or goods. There are issues of resource scarcity, efficiency, quality, allocation of scarce resource, and regulation and there are business models to deal with them. One key difference, however, unlike in case of other resources mentioned above, is that storage, use, development, management, and disposal of used water has impacts on the environment. Our water technocrat would say yes, of course we know this. So there are environment impact assessments and environment management plans.
However, water is a bit strange. Water is in fact embedded in the environment. So whatever you do with water has an impact on the environment.
So in this world there are neat categories like users of water and suppliers of water, and solutions, similar to any other resource use say energy, telecom, roads or goods. There are issues of resource scarcity, efficiency, quality, allocation of scarce resource, and regulation and there are business models to deal with them. One key difference, however, unlike in case of other resources mentioned above, is that storage, use, development, management, and disposal of used water has impacts on the environment. Our water technocrat would say yes, of course we know this. So there are environment impact assessments and environment management plans.
However, water is a bit strange. Water is in fact embedded in the environment. So whatever you do with water has an impact on the environment. Secondly, water is so essential for all life that if we want to see any sign of life, we look for signs of water. So water in nature is essential for every living being. Water in nature also is a resource on which livelihoods of a vast number of people, particularly the poor, depends. Water in nature also occurs in complex ways.
We engineers are taught to define a resource so we were looking for a definition of river. We soon realised, no comprehensive definition exists, the government has not even attempted one, as Union Water Resources Minister accepted publicly.
Take rivers for example. We engineers are taught to define a resource so we were looking for a definition of river. We soon realised, no comprehensive definition exists, the government has not even attempted one, as Union Water Resources Minister accepted publicly. At India Rivers Week, that some organisations including South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) organised in November 2014, a detailed definition of rivers was arrived at:
A river is more than a channel carrying water; it is also a transporter of sediment; it is also the catchment, the river-bed, the banks, the vegetation on both sides, and the floodplain. The totality of these constitutes a river. A river harbours and interacts with innumerable organisms (plant, animal, and microbes). It is a natural, living, organic whole, a hydrological and ecological system, and part of a larger ecological system. A river is also a network of tributaries and distributaries spread over its basin and the estuary. As rivers flow, they perform many functions. Rivers are the major geomorphic agents which sculpt the earth’s surface by incising deep valleys, carrying rocks and boulders and turning them to gravel, sand and clay. They support aquatic and riparian bio-diversity (flora and fauna); provide drinking water to human beings, their livestock and wildlife; influence the micro-climate; recharge groundwater; dilute pollutants and purify themselves; sustain a wide range of livelihoods; transport silt and enrich the soil; carry essential sediment to the estuary and to the sea; close the hydrological cycle by flowing to the sea, and maintain the temperature and salinity gradient in the sea, which are among the key drivers of the monsoon; prevent the incursion of salinity inland from the sea; provide nutrients to marine life; and so on. Rivers are also integral parts of human settlements, their lives, landscape, society, culture, history and religion.
Wish our civil engineers take note of this definition! The definition sounds complicated, but a river is a complicated ecosystem.
A dam or hydro-power project destroys a river as it exists. It certainly generates benefits, but should the river be mentioned among the costs?
Indians are known to revere rivers, more than possibly any other nation or society. But what is the value of a river in the scheme of our government? The answer could be found if you pick up any policy or plan document or an EIA or cost benefit analysis of any dam, hydro-power project, irrigation project or diversion or embankment project. You won’t find any value for a river in any of these documents. A dam or hydro-power project destroys a river as it exists. It certainly generates benefits, but should the river be mentioned among the costs?
Let us see how our official agencies deal with rivers and water resources. Take Central Water Commission, India’s premier technical body on water resources. It is the generator and storehouse of all kinds of water resources data and studies. It is also in charge of policy making, development, management, flood forecasting, dam sanctioning, dam safety, techno-economic clearances, monitoring, disputes resolution, environmental reviews, rehabilitation review, river basin planning, and so on. For any official expertise in water resources, even judiciary has no one to turn to, except CWC. However, the first issue that strikes you about CWC is that there is a conflict of interest among the various functions of the CWC. In USA, for example, United States Geological Survey is in charge of only generating credible hydrological data and putting it all out in public domain promptly. USGS does no development work, so its data tends to be reliable. You ask anyone familiar with hydrological data in India, the first thing you would be told is that most of it a state secret and secondly, the quality of the data is rarely reliable. But there is very little questioning of the functioning of CWC. CWC has not set a definition or value for rivers except seeing them as sites for dam building.
The trouble is, this word environment is a bit of an irritant for most of the water technocrats. They have traditionally disliked it.
If you watch CWC closely, you will notice that it is more like a big dam lobby that does not like any independent participation, transparency or accountability. In fact, CWC generally refuses to accept that any expertise exists outside CWC!
CWC also does not like the word environment. The trouble is, this word environment is a bit of an irritant for most of the water technocrats. They have traditionally disliked it. They also dislike phrases like conflict of interest. The dam engineers also seem afraid of a word called decommissioning. They have striven to keep that word out of the official jargon so far. That is one of the reasons why CWC does not want to allow decommissioning of the 120-year old Mullaperiyar dam in Kerala.
But there is also some positive things to report even in Dam world! The report of the World Commission on Dams, released in November 2000 by Nelson Mandela in presence of the then World Bank President in London is one for example. It is not possible to go into all the details of WCD here, but in brief, majority of the 12 members of WCD were dam supporters all their life. The commission was funded by World Bank, UN, and a number of governments around the world. Most stakeholders including governments (India, China, among others) participated in the work of WCD. The report did not criticise all dams nor did it recommend that no dams should be build. In fact the report started by saying that the dams have made significant contributions. However, it also stated that huge, and many times unnecessary, costs have been paid for the dams and the benefits accrued were not as promised. It recommended a framework for future decision making. We believe this provides a way forward and any project that follows the WCD recommendations will have wide public acceptance. But unfortunately, we have yet to see their Implementation.
Out of over 5,100 large dams that India has built, over 95% are purely irrigation projects.
Another positive news was even more recent and involved an alumnus of IITB. Jairam Ramesh was arguably India’s best ever environment minister. He did a lot of interesting work as environment minister. One of them was the commissioning of the Ganga River Basin Management Plan. Unfortunately, he was so enamored by his alma mater that he gave that task to a consortium of IITs! It was a bit of problematic decision. For the issue of rivers or Ganga is not a purely technological issue. It is not even primarily technological issue, but essentially a governance issue, where I believe, IITs have very little expertise. But that is another story.
Coming back to the dams that dominate our water resources development so completely, let me provide a couple of snapshots about these dams.
Out of over 5,100 large dams that India has built, over 95% are purely irrigation projects. These are called major and medium irrigation projects in government parlance. In the graph below, I have plotted area irrigated by these M&M irrigation projects over the last couple of decades. This is all based on government data, such water data are government monopoly in India. It shows that net area irrigated by such projects reached a peak of 17.7 million ha in 1991-92 and never reached that level again. In fact the trend line is going down with loss of about 1.5 million ha in two decades. In these two decades, India has spent over Rs 800,000 crores on M&M Projects.
Let us look at hydro-power projects. In the graph below I have plotted electricity generation (million units) per MW installed capacity from India’s all generating hydro-power projects, over the last two decades. This is based on data from Central Electricity Authority, India’s premier technical body on electricity issues. This graphs shows that generation per MW installed capacity has been falling and has reduced by over 20% in the last two decades. This means that every MW hydro-power project generated about 20% less power than it did in 1993-94.
This is not an advocacy against large dams. These two snapshots are provided to raise questions even about the performance of India’s dams. I feel institutes like the IITs need to grapple with real life issues like these in real time, in an independent, fearless way. I hope that happens and soon!
