Shipra is not just a river; it’s much more than that. When the gods battled demons over nectar, a drop of it fell in the river. That’s why it is eternal and that’s why we come here during the Kumbh, to bathe in the river and be closer to the Gods.Bhimdev Paliwal
Like his forebears before him, 70-year-old Bhimdev Paliwal was telling a tale of faith and tradition to his grandson and other children in a makeshift tent on the banks of the Shipra River in Ujjain, an ancient city in central India. Paliwal had led a group of his extended family and neighbours from Dausa in the western state of Rajasthan to take a holy dip during the month long Kumbh Mela in May.
Paliwal — and so many more like him — would have been shaken to the core had he known the river that promised everlasting life was itself dying. The water that flowed past placidly had been pumped in from the Narmada, scores of miles away. Decades of neglect and mismanagement, and the recent years of drought, had reduced the Shipra to less a river. It was more a stinking drain of domestic and industrial waste. It was on life support, fed by Narmada water driven by electric pumps through 50-km-long concrete pipes.
It is not the first time a river in India has been ‘resurrected’ in this manner. The Sabarmati in Ahmedabad was magically transformed in 2005 when water from the Narmada meant to irrigate parched farms in northern Gujarat was diverted to its dead channel instead. The cricket matches on the dry riverbed were left behind and a massive riverfront development project is now expected to add gloss to the city.
The National Democratic Alliance government in New Delhi has put its weight behind a mammoth river-linking programme that is expected to cost INR 5.6 trillion (USD 83 billion) at 2002 prices, with an annual outlay of INR 1.6 billion to be spent over 35 years. The plan, which seeks to transfer “excess” water from one river basin to another for irrigation, domestic and industrial use and generate 34,000 MW of hydropower, has been frequently criticised for being hydrologically and environmentally unsound and hugely expensive. The federal government has already announced many such linking projects despite misgivings by experts and affected populations.
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Politics of Water
The rejuvenation of the Sabarmati in Gujarat and the Shipra in Madhya Pradesh by diverting water from the Narmada are showpiece projects of the linking scheme that pay fat political dividends, provincial administrations have found. “Rejuvenating Sabarmati was an opportunistic move. It was not planned,” says Somnath Bandyopadhyay, associate professor at the School of Ecology and Environmental Studies at Nalanda University. “The water of Narmada from the Sardar Sarovar dam was made available before the irrigation infrastructure was ready.”
The diversion of Narmada waters into the Sabarmati channel had at least one major consequence. “The people in Ahmedabad loved the sight of a flowing Sabarmati,” says Bandyopadhyay, who worked at Gujarat Ecology Commission for many years. “Public opinion was created and riverfront development became possible.” Sabarmati is a dead river for most practical purposes, he says. “All dams on rivers in north Gujarat are over-designed and hence water in the downstream is extremely rare. This is true for Sabarmati downstream of Dharoi. Circuses and cricket matches were common on the Sabarmati riverbed in Ahmedabad before the Narmada waters filled it.”
The decision to rejuvenate the Sabarmati was taken by the state government led by Narendra Modi, who was then chief minister of Gujarat. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies rode to power in New Delhi with a huge mandate in 2014. As Prime Minister, Modi has continued to support the interlinking of rivers.
Such diversions of large quantities of water are inevitable if the authorities continue to indulge in short-term populism, experts say. “The politics of water is extremely tense and complicated in India, where expediency often overrides good sense,” says Himanshu Thakkar, co-ordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an advocacy group.
“The basic issue is to de-politicize water management. If it remains political, it will certainly move in the direction of vested interests — sugarcane farmers in Maharashtra, industries in Kachchh (in Gujarat) or Delhi,” says Bandyopadhyay. “Governments will make allocations for competing uses as per their political considerations unless there is a way to freeze allocations — as a proportion of total water availability in a river, perhaps —and then allow the market to determine its best use.”
Entitlement matters
Such unplanned diversions are a subversion of people’s rights, says Thakkar. “There has been a gradual transfer of water rights to urban and industrial users, away from farms and ecosystems. This is being done in a completely non-transparent manner. This will lead to unrest and volatility in many sections of society.”
There is no way to entirely do away with inter-state rivalry over waters in a river basin. As temperatures rise across India due to climate change and water becomes scarcer, this competition has the potential to cause great harm. “The allocation of water of river basins has to be done in an equitable and transparent manner,” says Thakkar. “The government needs to involve all stakeholders before it chalks out any plan to redistribute this vital resource.”
Thakkar is worried that the decisions of the government will increasingly be skewed towards business interests. Industries in Pithampur and Dewas near Ujjain, which expect to benefit from the Shipra-Narmada link, have already started lobbying the government for increased allocations.
This story was first published in indiaclimatedialogue.net. To read a fuller version, click on this link.
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