Public Statement on Supreme Court order on Inter Linking of Rivers
PLEASE PUT THE ORDER ON HOLD AND RECONSIDER
Greetings from Water Initiatives Odisha!
A number of citizens have made a public statement, expressing serious concern about the Supreme Court’s Order of Feb 27, 2012 on the Interlinking of Rivers Project. The statementendorsed by more than 60 persons has respectfully urged the Supreme Court to put this order on hold and reconsider the matter.
The statement first states the concerns relating to the propriety of the apex court making this specific order, and then proceeds to state the concerns relating to the Project itself. The full statement which has also been endorsed by WIO is pasted below.
Thanks and regards,
Ranjan
==================
29
March 2012
THE SUPREME COURT’S JUDGMENT ON
THE RIVER-LINKING PROJECT: A STATEMENT AND AN APPEAL BY CONCERNED CITIZENS
We, the
signatories to this statement, wish to record our utmost concern at the Hon’ble
Supreme Court’s judgment of 27 February 2012 on the Inter-Linking of Rivers
Project (ILR), on the following grounds:
(1) The judgment
gives categorical directions to the Executive Government on a matter which is
clearly in the executive domain, namely the implementation of a particular
project.
(2) It
gives the direction to implement the ‘project’, i.e., the grand design as a
whole, at a time when none of the thirty projects that constitute that grand
design has gone through the processes of examination, evaluation and approval
and received final sanction. In fact, even the earlier stage of project
formulation has not been completed in most cases; only three of the thirty
projects have reached the Detailed Project Stage, and even these are not final.
(3) By
declaring the project to be in the national interest it not only anticipates
the result of the examination that is yet to take place, but also makes it
extremely difficult for the various governmental agencies and Ministries to
undertake a rigorous and objective examination.
(4) Its reference
to “the unanimous view of all experts” that the project is “in the national
interest” is patently untrue, because there is a substantial body of expert opinion
that is highly critical of the project. Such a serious error would not have
occurred if there had been consultations with scholars of various disciplines
who have given thought to the matter.
(5) It fails
to take note of, or treats lightly, the strong dissent on the part of several State
Governments.
(6) The
following is a succinct statement of the case against the project:
(i)
Instead of starting from the identification of the needs of water-scarce areas
and finding area-specific answers, the project starts by looking at a map of
India, decides a priori that
the rivers of India can and should be linked, and then proceeds to consider the
modalities of doing so. This is a reckless and major redesigning of the
geography of the country.
(ii) The related ideas of a ‘national
water grid’ or the ‘networking of rivers’ give evidence of profoundly wrong
thinking about rivers. Rivers are not pipelines.
(iii)
The grand design consisting of 30 projects involving upwards of 80 dams is bound
to have major environmental/ecological consequences, which might even be
disastrous in some cases. Each dam will also mean the displacement of people to
varying extents, and may cause injustice and hardship.
(iv) The
Project is at variance with the growing recognition that it is necessary to
move away from the long-standing engineering tradition of a supply-side
response to a projected or imagined demand, and towards restraining the growth
of competitive unsustainable demand for water in all uses.
(v)
Assuming that some augmentation of supply is necessary, the project fails to
consider alternative possibilities, of which there are several very good
examples.
(vi) The idea of transferring
flood waters to arid or drought-prone areas is flawed because (a) there will be
hardly any flood-moderation; and (b) this project will be of no use at all to
the drylands and uplands of the country.
(vii) The idea of transferring water from
surplus to deficit basins is equally flawed because the very notions of
‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ are highly problematic. The
idea of a ‘surplus’ river ignores the multiple purposes that it serves as it
flows and joins the sea, and that of a ‘deficit’ river is based on ‘demands’ on
its waters derived from wasteful uses of water.
(viii) Careful, economical, conflict-free
and sustainable intra-basin management should come first, and bringing water
from elsewhere should be the last recourse.
(ix) The project holds the potential of
generating new conflicts between basins.
(x)
There are international dimensions to this project. Both Nepal and Bangladesh
have expressed serious apprehensions that need to be taken into account.
Having
regard to the points made above, we, the undersigned, would earnestly and
respectfully urge the Hon’ble Supreme Court to put the judgment on hold and
undertake a careful reconsideration of the entire matter. We would also
respectfully suggest a study of the available literature on the subject, and
consultations with several distinguished critics of the project.
Some of the signatories to this Statement include: Ramaswami R Iyer, Prashant Bhusan, Himanshu Thakkar, Manoj Mishra, A. Latha, Indira Khurana, Dinesh Kumar Mishra, Vandana Shiva, Ranjan Panda...
--
Ranjan K Panda
Convenor
Water Initiatives Odisha: Fighting water woes, combating climate change... more than two decades now!
BASERA, R-3/A-4, J. M. Colony, Budharaja, Sambalpur 768 004
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Email: ranjanpanda@gmail.com,
Email: ranjanpanda@gmail.com,
You can also mail me at: ranjan.waterman@facebook.
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Water talks to me, I speak for Water...
Water Initiatives Odisha (WIO) is a state level coalition of civil society organisations, farmers, academia, media and other concerned, which has been working on water, environment and climate change issues in the state for more than two decades now.
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