India which falls in the water scarcity zone of the world is getting more and more affected by water scarcity due to the quick increase of population along with rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. But the availability of freshwater is diminishing rapidly. The availability of water during the period 1951-2001 has declined from 5177 m3 to 1820 m3 per capita per year.
Due to the shortage of fresh water, it is apprehended that, by 2050, the availability of freshwater per capita per year would further reduce to 1140 m3 unless appropriate majors are taken to increase urgently freshwater resources of the country.
In India, there is a large variation in rainfall during monsoon from very low rainfall (11mm) in Rajasthan in the west to very high (1200mm) in Cherapunji in the east with an average rainfall of 1200mm during the year. Except for the main perennial rivers like the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, other rivers are comparatively much smaller and not perennial.
The freshwater available in surface sources of the country is estimated to be 1680 km3 which is mostly replenished every year through the rain. Due to the short period of the rainy season in a year and large variation in rainfall in different parts of India, coping with annual floods and droughts both occurring at the same time in different parts of the country has been a great concern of the nation. The rapid increase of water demand in India in agricultural, industrial and domestic sectors, has compelled the nation to look for alternate sources and one of these is transferring water from potentially water surplus Himalayan rivers to water-scarce river basins of western and peninsular India. In view of this, the idea of the National River Linking Project (NRLP) has come into the picture.
National River Linking Project (NRLP):
The National River Linking Project (NRLP) was proposed sometime back when it was envisaged to build 30 river links and approximately 3000 storages to connect 37 Himalayan and peninsular rivers to form a gigantic water grid. In this massive and ambitious project, construction of over 1000km of linked canals is proposed and 10000MW of electricity for lifting 11000 cusecs of water is required. The cost of the project has been estimated to be around 5600 billion rupees.
Some of the main reasons in favour of interlinking the rivers in India are summarised below:
To make this highly ambitious and costly project successful, a lot of information and critical analysis in each of the above areas by experts are highly desirable. It is reported that some strategic analyses of the NRLP of India have been carried out by experts.
Some Major Obstacles for the Implementation of NRLP are as follows:
The gigantic plan of linking all the rivers in North and South does not seem to be a wise proposal at this stage particularly because of the lack of enough technologies, high cost, environmental impacts and moreover to avoid interstates as well as international conflicts.
It is worthwhile to undertake at present alternate measures for solving our water crisis. Some of the promising programmes to solve water crisis in the country are given below.
The above programmes should be taken up urgently with the full participation of concerned government organisations and local people. At the appropriate time in future, a sober beginning can be made for linking rivers in one state or at best in two to three concerned states in the country. The experience in such programmes will certainly help in deciding to undertake bigger programmes like interlinking a perennial river of the North with a non-perennial one of the South.
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