The interlinking of rivers can provide viable solutions to the multi-dimensional inter-related problems of droughts, floods and interrupted navigation. Critically examine.
1. Define the project
The National River Linking Project proposes connecting India’s river basins through canals. It transfers water from water-surplus basins to water-deficit ones.
2. Two components
The project splits into a Himalayan component and a Peninsular component. Each targets a different set of northern or southern river basins.
3. Argument: flood control
Supporters argue interlinking reduces flood risk in surplus basins like the Brahmaputra and Ganga. Diverting excess water elsewhere lowers peak flood volumes downstream.
4. Argument: drought and irrigation relief
Interlinking could ease drought and irrigation shortages in deficit basins, especially across peninsular India. This is the project’s central economic justification.
5. Argument: inter-basin equity
Proponents frame interlinking as correcting an uneven natural distribution of water across India’s river basins. Some regions face chronic surplus, others chronic scarcity.
6. Concern: ecological disruption
Critics warn that large canal and dam works disrupt river ecology, sediment flow, and downstream estuarine ecosystems. These effects are hard to reverse once built.
7. Concern: submergence and displacement
Reservoirs and canal corridors submerge forest and agricultural land. This displaces local communities, echoing concerns already raised over large dam projects.
8. Argument: interrupted navigation
Many Indian rivers run too shallow, seasonal, or disconnected for continuous inland navigation. Interlinking canals could maintain year-round water levels, opening new inland waterway routes between basins.
9. Concern: inter-state water disputes
River interlinking touches inter-state water-sharing politics directly, since India’s rivers already generate disputes like the Cauvery conflict. Moving water across states raises new disputes on top of old ones.
10. The Pattiseema precedent
The Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Project, opened in 2016, linked the Godavari to the Krishna via the Polavaram right canal. It stands as India’s first completed river-interlinking project.
11. Ken-Betwa as the current flagship
The Ken-Betwa Link, under implementation, is the first project taken up under the national programme’s Himalayan-Peninsular framework, linking two Madhya Pradesh/Uttar Pradesh river basins.
12. Answer structure
State the project’s basic proposal and its two components, then critically weigh flood/drought/navigation relief against ecological and inter-state disputes, using Pattiseema and Ken-Betwa as concrete examples on each side.
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