River interlinking project

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's rivers interlinking project is a priority of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and it would be "considered" very soon by the Union cabinet, Railway minister Suresh Prabhu said on December 26.

Vajpayee had emphasised on development of the infrastructure in the country and the 'Indian Rivers Inter-link' was proposed with an aim to link Indian rivers by a network of reservoirs and canals to reduce persistent floods in some parts and water shortages in other parts of the country. India’s incredibly ambitious – and some say, incredibly reckless – Rs 11 lakh crore project to interlink its rivers seems to be getting underway.

On September 16, the Godavari and Krishna rivers – the second and the fourth longest rivers in the country – were linked through a canal in Andhra Pradesh. The project was completed at a cost of Rs 1,300 crore. A second scheme, the Ken-Betwa river project – estimated to cost Rs 11,676 crore – is currently under development, with completion likely by December this year, Manu Balachandran writes in qz.com.

Here is how the river-linking project works: The big idea is to connect 37 Himalayan and peninsular rivers. So, water-surplus rivers will be dammed, and the flow will be diverted to rivers that could do with more water. In all, some 30 canals and 3,000 small and large reservoirs will be constructed with potential to generate 34 gigawatt of hydroelectric power.

The canals, planned between 50 and 100 meters in width, will stretch some 15,000 kilometres. The project is expected to create some 87 million acres of irrigated land, and transfer 174 trillion litres of water a year. Also, half a million people are likely to be displaced in the process, according to a report by Upali Amarasinghe, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute.

One of the most effective ways considered to increase the irrigation potential for increasing the food grain production, mitigate floods and droughts and reduce regional imbalance in the availability of water is the Inter Basin Water Transfer (IBWT) from the surplus rivers to deficit areas. Brahmaputra and Ganga particularly their northern tributaries, Mahanadi, Godavari and West Flowing Rivers originating from the Western Ghats are found to be surplus in water resources.