In-principle nod to more powers for river authority

The Central government today gave in principle approval to the National River Basin Authority with powers to approve major projects on Indian rivers aimed at balancing water needs for agriculture and protecting environment. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 15, 2011, 24:22:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Central government on Monday gave in principle approval to the National River Basin Authority with powers to approve major projects on Indian rivers aimed at balancing water needs for agriculture and protecting environment.

“There was an in-principle approval,” said Water Resources minister Salman Khurshid, after a meeting with Plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Environment minister Jairam Ramesh. PM Manmohan Singh has already been briefed on the tenements of the new policy.

A plan panel member Mihir Shah had proposed the authority as part of a policy for better water management considering that the demand will be more than the supply by 2050. India has 1,123 billion cubic meter (BCM) of water as against the demand of 634 BCM, which is expected to increase to 1,180 by 2050. However, independent scholars describe the present situation precarious saying there is just adequate water to meet the demand.

The panel had suggested there should be a river basin approach on the maximum amount of water that can be sustainably drawn, while meeting needs of drinking water and the environment.

The authority as envisaged will draw plans for each river basin such as Brahmaputra, Godavari and Krishna, on how much water would be available for agriculture and drinking in the coming years. Based on this assessment, major dams and hydel projects would be approved.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh emphasized on a need for a scientific basin management plan for sustainable management of rivers. Already, the government has constituted a National Ganga River Basin Authority having experts and state chief ministers as members.

Khurshid, however, emphasised that the water policy cannot be finalized without taking the state governments, who manage water resources, and the people, the users, into confidence. “We have to do indepth consultation with all stakeholders,” he said.

An important element of the new water policy is that people should pay a price for extracting underground water to ensure its rational use. A study using NASA Grace satellites in 2009 said large quantities of underground water in northern India was being used than it can be replenished.

The proposed policy also recommends building pathways for the return of all overdrawn ground water and surface water systems to environmentally sustainable levels of extraction. The Central Underground Water Authority will determine the level through a scientific study.

Shah, in his presentation to the ministers, said that the water user associations should be empowered to ensure that price for water is charged and people deploy water-harvesting systems to replenish fast depleting underground water.

The new policy will be implemented from the 12th five year plan starting from the financial year 2012-13.

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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