Does India Need Big Dams?

Many have labelled the prevailing drought situation as a man-made disaster.

Towns and villages over large parts of the country are desperate for water. Many are dependent on periodic tanker supplies ferried across considerable distances. As summer advances, communities may be compelled to migrate unless help comes their way.

Rainfall is often erratic and unevenly distributed over space and time. Many regions regularly experience recurrent drought and/or flood as part of their normal hydrological cycle. Droughts, like floods, are therefore no surprise. It can be mitigated, even averted, by drought-proofing and, like flood, must be appropriately managed as and when it occurs.

Population growth and development aimed at enhancing the quality of life entails larger water use. This is subjecting India to increasing seasonal and regional water stress, with deteriorating water quality being an aggravating factor. Water conservation at all times and places, improved water management and maintaining water quality are therefore critical. Since all freshwater emanates from rain (snow and glacial ice), it must be harvested at all levels through a variety of means and practices, groundwater recharge and micro to mega storages.

These measures are not necessarily mutually exclusive and each has certain costs and benefits. The objective should be to secure optimality. The notion that rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge and sound water management by themselves can provide a complete or sufficient answer to India's water needs is mistaken. Pursued as a panacea that obviates the need for large dams, it could rob the country of vital insurance against disaster.

It is wholly fallacious to argue that if hundreds of large dams (over 15 metres high) have not averted the drought this year, the hugely demonised Sardar Sarovar, for instance, will make no difference. The simple answer is that the hundreds of dams and storages on local rain-fed rivers and smaller conservation works and traditional systems must fail if the rains fail. Deserted villages are mute testimony to this truth.

Sufficient rain must first fall before it can be harvested in situ. North Gujarat, Saurashtra and Kutch suffer aridity. But the Narmada rises over 1300 kilometres away in a relatively high rainfall region. If its abundant flood waters are stored, these can be diverted from the terminal Sardar Sarovar dam to the very areas of Gujarat most troubled by drought. Gujarat's allotted share of nine million acre feet of water - or even half that quantum - would have averted much of the present distress had the dam height reached 110 metres when the canals would begin to flow and generate energy.

The distribution system is far advanced and would have guaranteed drinking water, fodder and livelihood to millions. It would have recharged groundwater and filled hundreds of village ponds and depressions en route.

Dams are not a unique or absolute solution. But it is a dangerous mantra that small is beautiful, big is bad. The two go together. What would northwest India, indeed all of India, be minus the Bhakra-Pong? The country has a huge task ahead to manage its water resources sensibly, optimally and equitably. This is what the nation must address unitedly without losing more time in futile, wholly unproductive arguments. The present drought is both a crisis and an opportunity. Which shall it be? -- B.G. Verghese
 

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