Activists Rubbish India's Iconic Dam and Its Benefits
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NEW DELHI, Apr 19 (OneWorld) - Water activists rubbished historical claims of the Indian government and engineers that one of India's most successful big dam projects - the Bhakra project constructed in 1963 - had a role in bringing economic prosperity to north India and food security to the country.
The Bhakra dam project, situated in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh on river Sutlej also taps water from river Beas, provides water for irrigation to the north Indian states of Haryana and Punjab through an extensive network of canals. The dam has been associated with the green revolution that brought self-sufficiency in food grains to India and is cited as a success story for the construction of large dams. The report, "Unravelling Bhakra: Assessing the Temple of Resurgent India," has been released by Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, a central India-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), which works on water and energy issues. Releasing the report, Sripad Dharmadhikary of Manthan said: "The main reason for bringing out the report is that there is no official study which has analysed the impact of Bhakra dam on irrigation, food production or on the financial, social and environmental impacts. So, we decided to do a cost-benefit analysis of the project in relation to food security, food production and the green revolution." Noted writer Arundhati Roy lambasted the political establishment. She said: "Nearly 33 million people have been displaced by 3,600 large dams in India, yet studies on large projects have not been done. It is not merely bumbling mismanagement but a political design. Dams are political creations and not just technology to provide water and produce electricity." The report says that the Bhakra project has been wrongly cited for contributing to the green revolution. The green revolution took place because high yielding seeds were introduced and farmers started using groundwater extensively to irrigate their fields, making them less dependent on unreliable sources of irrigation. Sripad adds: "Canal systems are not reliable in their delivery of water. Farmers realised that tube wells provide them with complete control over the timing and the quantity of water due to which there was a significant improvement in the production of food grain. And the farmers in both Haryana and Punjab were in fact mining that groundwater which does not get recharged." Himanshu Thakkar from SANDRP (South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People), which is a network of NGOs said: "India has the largest irrigation infrastructure in the world but the efficiency of water use is the lowest. A study on the contribution of large dams in food production for the World Commission on Dams (WCD) says that only 10 per cent of the total food production in India can be attributed to large dams. We also conducted an independent study and found that the contribution was 11 per cent." The report says that the government glossed over the negative impacts of the Bhakra project like increase in soil salinity and water logging. Also, people who had been displaced decades ago have still not been rehabilitated properly. The negative ecological impacts have not been taken into account. One of the dam oustees, Ajmer Singh from Fatehabad district in Haryana, recounted the travails of the displaced people. He said: "Nearly 36,000 families were displaced from 446 villages in Himachal Pradesh in 1956. We were allotted forest land in the neighbouring state of Haryana but possession was given only in 1984 and we are still awaiting the tilling rights of that land." He adds that the people were relocated over a large area so that they could not collectively raise a voice or become politically powerful. Sripad says that extensive salinity and water logging in Haryana has led to a collapse of houses, sinking of roads and destruction of infrastructure. Trees have dried up due to salinity while crops do not grow on these soils. He said: "Water logging and salinity, which is currently 4,000 sq kms in Haryana, can increase to 20,000 sq kms in two to three decades which would affect nearly 70 per cent of the irrigation area in the state." Unravelling Bhakra points out that soil fertility has gone down greatly in Punjab due to which agricultural inputs are going up resulting in farmers taking loans and even committing suicide due to non-repayment. The report ends by saying that the Bhakra project has provided short-term gains but long-term losses. |
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