Fw: Sub: Watersheds versus dams

[Jeevananda Reddy]

On Monday, October 17, 2016 3:52 PM, jeevananda reddy <jeevanan...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Will Watersheds Solve the India’s Water Problem and Provides the Sustainable Agriculture?

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

Under Indian rainfall conditions – that receives in four months in general – dams and inter-linking of rivers are of utmost important and watersheds will not meet the local water needs and thus will not make agriculture sustainable. For sustainable agriculture, we need sustainable water resources. Watersheds and check-dams cannot provide sustainable water in drought prone areas. This is clear from the history of water storage structures established hundreds and thousands of years back all over India. Let me present a case from Gundlakamma River.  This river originates in Nallamala Forests; and when it enters the mainland a small dam was built and through a canal this water was taken to a tank.  The village chief decides each year the ayacut to share the available water from the tank without affecting the crop.  The ayacut varies from year to year. This is the case with all the tanks. Watershed programmes does not meet even this.

With the Watershed Programmes the future a “Myth”

Speakers at Dr. Marri Chenna Reddy Memorial lecture in Hyderabad on Saturday, 15^th October 2016 pronounced that watersheds – check-dams would solve the water problems in India and provide sustainable agriculture.  This system they termed it as catch where it rain falls.  They also emphasized that India does not need major & medium irrigation projects at huge costs; and thus put a full stop to river water disputes and tribunal system. They argued that the watershed programme was the best option for the government to increase irrigation potential with minimum expenditure.  They also argued that through watershed programmes the spate of farmers suicides would have come down and check-dams under watershed programmes would increase groundwater level and as well soil moisture and it would help ensure drought-proof conditions all through the year.  All these are hypothetical in nature and the reality is that all these depends upon the rainfall pattern.  Also, past experience on watershed programmes do not support these.  After the introduction of Bt-Cotton, in all the four states [undivided Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat] wherein this crop was in cultivation are the regions with farmers’ suicides.

Same way Telangana government claims that due to Mission Kakatiya the tanks are full and helped recharging of groundwater – report states that this is 400 tmc, which is double to the water stored in Srisailem dam --. The fact is that the credit goes to past rulers who built the tanks and not to Telangana government.  So far under Mission Kakatiya only few tanks were de-silted and the rest were as they are.  However, all this is due to continuous rains in the state during the monsoon.  This was the case on several occasions in the history of tanks.  Only thing that government must do is to make the people utilize this water efficiently. I presented the year-to-year fluctuations in the area under tank cultivation and as well as the problem with watershed programme in my book “Andhra Pradesh Agriculture: Scenario of the last four decades” in 2000 along with cyclic variations in rainfall. Just at that time the TDP government brought out a vision document to implement corporate agriculture.  The government conducted an experiment on this scheme at Kuppam with government money.  This made farmers as labourers in their own farm. Neighbouring farmers’ bore-wells dried up affecting severely their crop production. This was a big failure.  I wrote several articles in daily newspapers on all these issues – inside of back cover of the above-referred book contains a report presented in Deccan Chronicle on Kuppam failure story.

In the 7^th 5-Year Plan the concept of watershed was introduced in India.  For implementation of this concept the government put a limit on average rainfall of the area with more than 750 mm/year.  In the 8^th 5-Year Plan this limit on rainfall was removed.  This concept was mainly adapted in drought prone areas of the country.  On this thousands of crores were distributed and major share of it went in to the pockets of politicians.

Journalists [top editors] participated to felicitate Journalist Sainath from Mumbai on the occasion of he receiving an award at Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in Hyderabad. At this meet somebody said that people from Palamuru in Mahaboobnagar district, a drought prone region, created a special bus service to Mumbai. At this point one top editor observed that from Anantapur and Mahboobnagar, the drought prone districts of Andhra Pradesh, people used to travel by bicycles are now moving in BMW Cars.  Somebody then asked, how?  Some other editor in response said that it is the legacy of watershed scheme that helped politicians amass wealth. Even the then Chief Minister [TDP] during his visit to Mahboobnagar district openly admitted that the watersheds are utter failure in dry areas.

Few years back NDTv organized live discussion on pros and cons of watershed programme.  In this discussion former chief of CWC along with the irrigation minister from Gujarat and member [lady] from NBA of Medhapatkar participated. NBA member argued on the pro watershed and against Dams, more particularly on Normada Dam project.  On this Gujarat irrigation minister challenged NBA member to show where the watershed programme was successful. He presented details on this and asked NBA member to show the data on success.  NBA member failed to show the statistics on the successful rate of watersheds in Gujarat. 

Central Minister, Venkayya Naiudu Garu, in the last two months day-in and day-out at press meets asked “though for Polavaram project foundation stone was laid in 1981, why it was not completed and why you are raising this issue now for the delay?” Unfortunately he forgot the fact that after 1981 nearly two decades Andhra Pradesh was ruled by TDP and a partner of NDA government at the center earlier and as well now, gave importance to watersheds & check-dams [in urban areas rainwater pits] over the dams  -- put them in cold storage with cost escalations – and water bodies.  The present AP Chief Minister was also the Chief Minister at that time encouraged the watersheds and check-dams/rain water pits; and even invited Anna Hazare to educate people on watersheds as he was successful in his native village in Maharashtra.  Watershed programme was advocated by the World Bank groups-NGOs.

The people and groups, who talk of watersheds they rarely looked at the long-term patterns of rainfall over different parts of the country.  Traditionally farmers used to have bunds around their farms.  This allows the water collected in the farm to build soil moisture but rarely reaches the groundwater level.

With the Dams the future a “Reality”

The first Prime Minister of India, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru considered dams are the modern temples.  With this, he encouraged building of dams and solved the food problem in India.  This is also true with undivided Andhra Pradesh – Srisailem & Nagarjunasagar were built and became rice bowl of India. Nowhere in India or else where watersheds changed the face of the region.

Let us take the case of Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh: The annual rainfall varied between around 200 mm and 1200 mm per year in 120 years with drought proneness of about 60% of the years. This is the condition of in-situ precipitation. That means to achieve sustainable agriculture this region needs addition flows. This is possible only through dams as they receive inflows from the river catchment area in addition to in-situ rains. Rivers generally originate from hilly-forest zones, which we call it as catchment area. However, in-situ flows are minimum during the drought prone years.

Based on the water availability in a river, water is shared among riparian states. For example, from Krishna River, the undivided Andhra Pradesh share is around 811 TMC of which only less than half forms the in-situ water availability and the rest has to come from catchment area water. At present undivided Andhra Pradesh built projects to utilize that water. With the new tribunal order – built based on technical fraud --, if implemented there is no possibility to get water from catchment area of the river and thus projects built based on the previous award will collapse.  The first project Jurala receives most of its water from catchment area of the river. The next project Srisailem dam gets its water from Jurala surplus flows and Tungabadra dam surplus flows and as well in-situ flows from Kurnool district and Nallamala forests. Through power production also water flows enter the dam. The surplus and flows from power production from Srisailem goes to Nagarjunasagar dam. Here in-situ flows are meager and thus dam rarely full.  Here mismanagement is very high.

In the case of dams, the ethics of tribunal members play vital role. Even though the issues are technical in nature, tribunals are filled with retired judges. They invariably follow the biased path. To avoid such biased opinions that affect states interests in sharing the water, central government must establish a permanent technical body to resolve the issue. These are human problems and nothing to do with rainfall or river flows.

We invariably talk of negative impacts of dams on environment and displacement of local people.  We rarely talk of TDP government under undivided Andhra Pradesh converting lakhs of acres in to real estate ventures and thus affecting environment and as well causing displacement of lakhs of people who lived in those areas for projects such as Shamshabad Airport, Outer Ring Road and High Tech City. Now the same is happening at Amaravati, the new capital city of Andhra Pradesh. In all these major beneficiaries are ruling class.

Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy

Formerly Chief Technical Advisor – WMO/UN & Expert – FAO/UN

Fellow, Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences

Convenor, Forum for a Sustainable Environment

E-mail: jeevanan...@yahoo.com