Fw: [Newsletter from CSE, India] - August 23 edition

[Guest guest]

Haribol. I'm sending an editorial from Down to Earth about water, and hope

it makes it through the conference.ys labangalatika dasi

>

> Down To Earth editorial: Two sides of an unnatural coin

>

> Last fortnight, I wrote of an impending drought. Fifteen days on, I

> stand corrected. Now devastating floods are drowning parts of the

> recently parched country. So much so that Gujarat chief minister

> Narendra Modi, who last fortnight sought Rs 2,500 crore as drought

> relief, has now asked the Centre for flood relief, saying his state

> should be treated at par with flood-devastated Bihar.

>

> But is this cycle of floods and droughts as natural as it looks? In

> 1986, the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi had asked my colleague Anil

> Agarwal the same question. He had scribbled a note to Anil asking him to

> explain how, "with environmental degradation, even low rainfall becomes

> a flash flood and the water rushes into the sea and then is not

> available as groundwater". He had wanted Anil to explain this vicious

> circle, as he had called it, to his parliamentary colleagues.

>

> The question sounded simple enough. But the answers were tough. As we

> explored it became clear to us that the practice of "living with floods"

> was as challenging and urgent as that of "living with droughts".

>

> Let me explain. By the mid-1980s it was clear that the annual

> flood-prone area - defined as the area affected by overflowing rivers

> (not areas submerged because of heavy rains) - had increased from 25

> million hectares (mha) in 1960 to 40 mha in 1978 and an estimated 58 mha

> by the mid-1980s. It was also clear that in these years, there was no

> evidence that the rainfall had increased. To understand why floods are

> increasing, it is important to go back in time.

>

> The initial years of independent India were a time full of a machismo

> called 'the new nation'. Planners had agreed "floods in the country can

> be contained and managed". The first five-year plan emphasised building

> dams to control floods. The devastating floods of 1954 lead to a

> China-like syndrome, where government wanted people to take on the task

> of building huge embankments to tame mighty rivers.

>

> By the late 1950s, enthusiasm for this strategy faded. But a monster had

> been set loose: a huge, powerful and entrenched industry hell-bent on

> making embankments. Embankments became the contractor-officials' dream

> project; even today, they make or break the fortunes of many a state

> politician. In Bihar, for instance, by mid-1980s, some 3,400 km of

> embankments were supposedly constructed. But during this same period,

> the flood-prone area in the state shot up from 2.5 mha to 6.4 mha. As

> floods continued, so did flood control. This, when it was well

> understood that embankments had exacerbated the flood intensity of the

> region. These structures, which bind the river, also do not allow the

> valuable and fertile silt to disperse when a river naturally tends to go

> into spate. The silt accumulates in the riverbed, raising the bed,

> leading to floods. The water has nowhere to go for all the natural

> drainage has been destroyed and this, in turn, intensifies the flood.

> But the vested interests that construct these structures have made sure

> this strategy for flood control remains intact.

>

> The strategy of the past was the exact reverse: to disperse the flood by

> channelising excess water across the land -- to regenerate soil and

> groundwater reserves. This system is best described by William

> Willcocks, a British irrigation expert, sent in the 1920s by the Raj to

> find solutions to the famine and malaria of Bengal. As he travelled and

> reconstructed ingenious engineering, Willcocks found that floods were

> managed through an intricate system of inundation canals, where overflow

> from swollen rivers would be channelised. These channels would be used

> to harvest fish, which in turn kept malaria at bay, and irrigated the

> land as people cut the banks of the artificial streams. In Bengal, these

> canals were known as "kani nadi" or dead or blind rivers. But just

> imagine his wonder, as Willcocks explains that these canals were the

> only 'seeing and living' irrigation works in all of Bengal. Willcocks

> wrote to his colonial masters that his advice would be to rebuild the

> system of water management of the region that had been wilfully

> destroyed by them.

>

> But unfortunately, neither the British, nor the whitewashed irrigation

> bureaucracy of India, ever heeded this advice. Instead, all the streams

> and wetlands, all flood cushions have been distributed in the name of

> land reform. Or simply destroyed. Think what this has done to the

> region. The flood devastates life. And it does not even recharge the

> groundwater reserves. As farming becomes ever-more dependent on these

> reserves, they deplete further.

>

> And when you think about it, this cycle is no different from the regions

> where people had learnt to live, not with the excesses of water, but

> with its scarcity. Think of the principle of rainwater harvesting in a

> country, which gets rain for only 100 hours of the 8760 hours in a year.

> All the rain of the year could come in just one cloudburst. The solution

> was to capture that rain and to use it to recharge groundwater reserves

> for the remaining year. The answer ultimately was to use the land for

> storing and channelising the rain -- over the ground, or under. Catching

> water where it falls and when it falls.

>

> Now let's return to Modi's flood- devastated Gujarat. Why has it

> happened? Is it a natural disaster or a humanmade one, because the rain

> had nowhere to go? Without tanks or ponds or structures to impede its

> flow, catch it, or channelise it, rainwater can also destroy.

>

> But this is a chronically water scarce area. Modi's claim his state is

> no different from Bihar has to be condemned, for this region has

> forgotten to cherish each drop of water that turns into a flood. It is

> for this reason that I would argue that chief ministers like Narendra

> Modi should not be given flood relief, but instead be penalised for the

> drought the floods will cause.

>

> - Sunita Narain

>

> Read this editorial online >>

> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=2

>

>

> ----------------

>

> Dossiers: Research & policy papers on RWH

>

> ----------------

>

> Thiruvananthapuram water profile: Outlines the water crisis and

> demand-supply gap, data, RWH case studies >>

> http://www.rainwaterharvesting.org/asp/d_feedback.htm

>

> ----------------

>

> News in Down To Earth magazine

>

> ----------------

>

> At Pench Tiger Reserve, it's the government's eco-development project

> that people fear the most >>

> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=3

> (Full text available)

>

> ------------------------------

>

> Spanner in Ranbaxy plan: Farmers fear the expanded unit will exhaust

> their water and dump waste >>

> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=4

>

> ------------------------------

>

> Delhi levies pollution cess on diesel - a first in the country >>

> http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=5

>

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