A noted Indian river expert Dinesh Mishra recalls the fate of two large barrages built in the Bihar state in the early 60’s and mid 70’s. The purpose of the first, Kosi barrage completed in 1962, was to control the Kosi River, called “the sorrow of Bihar” due to the fluctuations of its course and the floods it caused on a regular basis. In 1975, the Farakka barrage was constructed to help maintain navigability of Kolkata port. Both failed miserably in their purpose. While the Kosi continues to create immense flood damage most years, the Kolkata port is choked with silt. Not only that, the Farakka barrage is often cited by Bangladesh as a reason for lack of water in its rivers and progressive increase in salinity.
It is this context which explains why the Bihar representatives are up in arms against a plan by the Indian central government to build 15 small barrages on the Ganges as part of an ambitious waterway project. Just a few days before the Indian Parliament passed the National Waterway Act, ministers from Bihar decided to protest. The water resource minister from Bihar, Rajiv Ranjan Singh, addressing the state assembly, said the plan not only ignores environmental norms but also adds one more major flood threat to the state.
The project
The bill converts 111 rivers into a national waterway to develop India’s mostly-untapped potential of using rivers for transport. It will create nearly 14,500km of navigable waterways at an estimated cost of Rs700bn.
The Indian minister for road transport, highways and shipping, Nitin Gadkari, informed Lok Sabha that only 3.5% of trade within India is carried via waterways. Comparatively, in China 47% of trade, in Europe 40%, in Japan 44%, and in Korea and Bangladesh 35% of trade happens through waterways.
The project will develop six national waterways. The longest, National Waterway (NW) 1 will be on the Ganges from West Bengal’s Haldia to Allahabad stretching 1,620km. It will serve the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. NW 2 to 6 will be built on the Brahmaputra, West Coast Canal, Godavari, Krishna, Brahamani and Barak rivers respectively.
A detailed project report has already been prepared for the Rs42bn NW 1 project, and it is to be funded by the World Bank. This aims to develop the stretch from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh to Haldia in West Bengal for water traffic, crossing through the entire state of Bihar. This is the project that is worrying the politicians of Bihar.
The fears
The waterway project plans construction of dams and barrages every 100km on the 1,600km stretch of the Ganges covered by NW 1. “There is no blueprint on how this will affect silt deposition in the river. Silt will raise the water table, leading to floods,” Bihar Water Resource Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh added.
According to the Bihar State Disaster Management Authority, nearly 74% of the state’s area is prone to flooding. Twenty-eight out of the state’s 38 districts are affected by floods almost every year.
Nupur Bose, a member of the Indian State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority, pointed out that the hydrology of the Ganges in Bihar is very different from rivers in Europe.
“A major stretch of the river lies in the seismic zone and construction of 15 dams and barrages is a huge risk,” she said. She added that a proper environment assessment of the project is needed. Bose claimed that the barrage-and-dam component of the waterway project has a striking similarity with that of the Farakka barrage.
“The Farakka barrage destroyed the Hilsa fish population. And the waterway project will wipe out the Gangetic dolphins. The entire waterway runs through the dolphin habitat of the Ganges,” she said.
This is not to dismiss the potential of the project. She believes, like Gadkari, that the waterway project could be a game changing idea for the country’s transport sector. “But such a mammoth project needs a detailed study before implementation,” she said.
Highlighting the project may need constant dredging of the waterway, Ashok Ghosh, a member of the regional empowerment committee of the central ministry of environment, forests and climate change, said: “Silt deposition is a major concern and the project should try to resolve this issue.”
A lack of clarity on the technical aspects of the project further baffles experts. Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, pointed out that the bill does not mention any technical or environment assessment of the proposed waterway.
“I think it’s highly unlikely that such a large number of barrages would be constructed on Ganges. But then nothing is clear at present,” he said. Thakkar feels that the government will adopt the method of dredging to ensure navigability. “But the silt that comes out of dredging needs to go somewhere. I think a detailed technical part of the project will resolve this mystery.”
History of bad engineering
Dinesh Mishra pointed out that in 1952 there was only 60km of embankments in the state. Today the embankment length is more than 3,700km. “Improper maintenance of these barrages and embankments is a major cause of floods,” he said. In 2008, a crack in an embankment led to the Kosi floods that displaced nearly 3.5m people in Bihar. Almost every year relief camps are set up and villagers evacuated in seven districts on the banks of the Kosi during the monsoon.
It is not only about the Kosi, embankments have increased frequency and magnitude of floods in Bihar districts like Muzaffarpur and Sitamarhi in the last 30 years. “The badly conceptualised concrete structures are ruining rivers and the people whose livelihoods are dependent on river are suffering the most,” claimed Nupur Bose.
She again pointed out that the Farakka barrage was conceptualised to transfer 40,000 cusecs of water to Hooghly River to wash away silt and keep the Kolkata port navigable. “The barrage has failed to serve the purpose and become a tomb of engineering failure.” In 2012, a group of lawmakers had demanded decommissioning of Farakka barrage. “We could well imagine what will happen when 15 barrages are constructed on the Ganges,” Bose warned.
Unsure of how this will all play out, ministers in Bihar are still trying to figure out how to deal with the plan. It is not easy to protest against a bill passed in Lok Sabha, but the scale of threat is too high to ignore. “We will take legal opinion to stop this devastating project,” Rajiv Ranjan said.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
