Hydel projects to continue on Ganga, says IITs

Big hydel projects on river Ganga will continue despite opposition by Hindu religious groups and Save Ganga project will require Rs. 1,00,000 crore public investment, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have said.

Updated on: Aug 6, 2012, 19:38:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Big hydel projects on river Ganga will continue despite opposition by Hindu religious groups and Save Ganga project will require Rs. 1,00,000 crore public investment, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have said.

A consortium of seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and three other leading universities in India has told the goverment that Ganga cannot be saved by just closing down existing and upcoming hydel projects.

"Environmental flows, as determined through analysis of gelogical, ecological, socio-economic and cultural functions of the river systems, shall be maintained in all tributaries and the main stems of the Ganga river irrespective of season and circumstances," Professor Vinod Tare of IIT Kanpur said in a presentation on the new approach to save Ganga to the government last week.

Tare is the coordinator of the project to prepare environment management plan for Ganga river Basin and his presentation is in wake of protests led by BJP's Uma Bharati and former IIT Kanpur professor GD Aggarwal against hydel projects on Ganga and its tributaries. The environment ministry has already set up a committee under B K Chaturvedi to allow projects without hampering environmental flow of the river for which IITs are providing crucual inputs.

To maintain the flows, the IITs have said 11 policy level interventions including regulation for minimum flow of water from hydel projects and their constructon were required. "It required a sound water resource management," Tare said. The premier institutes have also said that there was a need of a policy for policy framework for sustanaible use of water, restoration of existing water bodies and soil conservation.

But, the IITs believe that these policies will fall apart if there isn't an overarching law --- Ganga River Basin Act --- to ensure long term implementation of basin environment management plan. "We are already working on a new law for Ganga," said a senior environment ministry official.

Under the new management plan, the IITs have suggested to divide the Ganga river basin --- covering around 60 % of India's population --- into nine clusters based on unique topography and enivronmental concerns.

The nine clusters include river Yamuna from Delhi till Etawah in Uttar Pradesh and several of Ganga's tributaries from Uttarakhand to West Bengal --- such as Ramganga, Kali and Mandakini, Chambal, Ken and Betwa.

Implementing such a gigantic plan expected to cost additional Rs one lakh crore will not be easy without a coordinated efforts of the all the state governments and stakeholders. It will also require, the IITs say, enormous scientific work to gauge impacts on river Ganga which have been missing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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