March 22 is observed every year as World Water Day. Much has been written about the impending crisis in water resources around the world, including India. But not much thought has been given to whether it is a crisis of water as a natural resource or of our ways of handling and using it. We jump to blame nature whenever there is a flood or a water scarcity. Elsewhere in the world, fundamental questions are being raised about the way water has been managed and used over the last few centuries. The United States of America, which led the world in dam construction, is moving towards decommissioning of their dams. A paradigm change in water-management is taking place.

With the annual per capita availability of water in India declining from around 5,177 cubic millimetre in 1951 to 1,869 cu m in 2001, India is approaching a regime of water stress. This can be attributed to increasing population and changes in consumption pattern. With an annual rainfall of about 4,000 cubic kilometre, India is one of the better-endowed countries as far as water is concerned. It has 2.45 per cent of the earth’s landmass, but receives about 4 per cent of its water resources. The scenario changes drastically when we consider that about 16 per cent of the population of the planet lives in this country. Experts feel that bad management of water resources has encouraged unsustainable ways of using water.

The dominance of the southwest monsoon in the making of India’s climate results in wide spatial and temporal variations in the availability of rainfall. About 75 per cent of the annual rainfall occurs during the monsoon months. The number of rainy days vary from about five in Rajasthan to about 150 in north-eastern India. Increasing demands on water for domestic use, irrigation and industry may lead to widespread inter-state conflicts. Unless water is used equitably, and in a non-partisan manner, playing with it may prove to be more risky than playing with fire.

The proposal of interlinking the Indian rivers has been projected as the perfect solution to the twin problems of flood and water-scarcity. The annual monsoon flows in the rivers of the North, East and North-east are perceived by engineers as “harmful surplus”. This surplus reaching the sea is seen as a waste. By connecting the “surplus” rivers with those in the drier West and South, both floods and water-scarcity is expected to be made things of the past. Quite simple, and on the face of it, this seems to be a great idea.

But there is no information in the public domain. What is available is a 28-page booklet published by the task force on interlinking of rivers which makes several claims about the benefits of the proposal, but does not care to substantiate it with scientific information or technical data.

It is clear from the booklet that the task force sees “the water flowing down to sea during monsoon as a wasted precious resource”. It also classifies some river basins as having “surplus flows” and some others as “water scarce” basins. But simple as this classification may sound, there is no such method in water science that can so easily label a river basin as having “surplus” or “scarce” water. A river basin evolves over geological periods by optimizing the use of each drop of water in it. In a river, all drops of water, from the top of the basin to the confluence, perform some critical environmental function or the other. Only when one fails to understand the importance of these ecosystem services can one naïvely declare them as “surplus” and “waste”. It may be a better idea to identify basins as “donor” and “recipient” types.

In modern and integrated water management theories, it is accepted that domestic water security should receive the highest priority. However, the proposed interlinking of rivers appears to have a single-point commitment to irrigation. Such basic things as drinking-water security do not even find a mention.

Most surprising of all, we are told that unless the interlinking of rivers is taken up to add another 35 million hectares of irrigation potential, food production in India “may become substantially short for meeting projected food requirements by 2050 AD.” This is nothing but a way to pressurize the country into supporting this mammoth proposal.

A closer professional analysis of the basic ideas behind the proposed interlinking, interestingly, presents a different picture. Let us examine the idea of declaring a river basin as “surplus”, based on a simple and ad hoc calculation of water supplies and “the genuine requirement of the population they support”. Guided by simple arithmetic, the “surplus” water in a river is calculated exactly in the way it is done for bags of cement. Who decides what is the “genuine requirement” of the people? Moreover, the inability of traditional engineering to understand the ecosystem services provided free of cost by the in-stream flow of water in a river raises the question, what is the method for assessing the “genuine requirements”? Some of these services are the recharge of inland water bodies and groundwater, conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity, sediment transportation and regeneration of the soil, protection of the river from the saline incursion of the sea, maintenance of the fishing economies in the plains and estuaries and bumper harvest after the recession of flood water. This limited vision of traditional engineering is behind the outflow of rivers to the seas being regarded as “wasted precious resource”. It is imperative that the people, as well as the state governments, in the downstream areas of the river basins marked “surplus” seek an open and comprehensive environmental costing of the proposal.

The strongest justification for the proposed interlinking seems to come from its assumption that “the country has to plan for 550 million tonnes of food grain production by 2050 AD”. Indians are extremely sensitive about food security. But how dependable are the targets set by the TFIR for India’s foodgrain production targets? These projections are base on an anticipated population of 1640 million in India by 2050. The annual foodgrain requirement can be estimated by multiplying this population figure with the projected annual per capita foodgrain consumption. The booklet is silent on the amount of per-capita foodgrain consumption used in making this vital projection. However, many National Sample Survey reports and recent studies indicate that the average annual per capita foodgrain consumption in India has remained almost constant at about 155 kilograms. A recently published study on India by the London School of Economics suggests that in 2026, the direct cereal demand will be roughly 220 million metric tonnes, with another 30 mmt being needed for other uses, giving a “ballpark” figure of 250 mmt. On the same basis, the foodgrain requirement would be about 290 mmt in 2050. What, then, is the basis on which the TFIR has made its projections?

As far as the basic domestic water and foodgrain supplies of an average Indian is concerned, there appears little reason to be worried that the present irrigation potential may not be able to ensure the basic foodgrain security. Bharat Singh, a water resources expert says, “there really seems to be no convincing argument or vital national interest which can justify this mammoth undertaking [interlinking] in its entirety”. Thus, neither from the point of view of providing drinking water security in water-scarcity areas, nor for the production of sufficient foodgrains in 2050, is there much scientific justification for the proposed interlinking.

Advocating self-sufficiency in food grains, the TFIR booklet states that “shortages and large scale of import of foodgrain is likely to be socially unacceptable even in a globalized economy”. However, a little later, it changes gear and goes to champion export-led growth in agriculture. The argument is that the country is “not only to be satisfied with producing enough to eat, but the strategy needs to be to produce surpluses for export to achieve a commanding position”. A proposal that started with the social objective of domestic water and foodgrain security starts to look more and more like an export promotion proposal.

Will this export-oriented water use, then, mainly produce speciality fruits, vegetables and flowers for European Union and the US in the water-scarce areas? It is not a bad idea provided it is sustainable. And if it is all a matter of earning dollars and euros, why should the average poor Indian pay so much for it? They should also get a return for the emerging agricultural revolution. This will mean that, first, the economic costs of all social and environmental damages to the donor river-basins are comprehensively assessed and fully met; and second, the donor-basins and concerned states of India, as the suppliers of the most critical component in that export-oriented agriculture, would get proportional returns from the new agricultural profits in the recipient states. Some states should not be treated as more equal than others in terms of the use of this natural resource. If the state governments in the donor river basins do not follow this principle, they will probably mortgage the economic future of the people in the donor basins to the recipient ones.

As it stands today, the proposed interlinking of rivers runs the risk of becoming an act of acquisition of water, which uses governmental powers to promote the economic activities of some, while destroying that of others. The proposed interlinking of rivers, if implemented, will surely help at least one thing grow — conflicts and litigations over water resources. The prospect of the Cauvery coming up to meet the Ganges only portends ill for India.