A Reality Check on Bhakra SANDRP Presentation April 18, 2005 India International Centre, New Delhi Release of Manthan Report Unraveling Bhakra

Some vital facts about this temple of modern India The people displaced by this project completed 42 years ago are still to be resettled as per Govt of Himachal Pradesh. The displaced people had no right to lift water from the Bhakra reservoir even for their drinking water needs. They did not get electricity from the project as BBMB felt that would be too great a demand on the BBMB. The Forest Dept has lodged numerous cases against BBMB for violation of FCA. The Reservoir never filled upto its full capacity till diversion of water from Beas river materialised in Even after that, the water level at Bhakra has rarely reached FRL. Never in last fifteen years. For many years now the Himachal Pradesh Govt has a case pending in the Supreme Court to get adequate share in the power benefits from the Bhakra Project.

Contribution of large dams to food production? That question has remained largely unanswered from the official circles. An assessment done by India Country Study done for the World Commission on Dams found that the contribution is about 10%. Another assessment done as part of the study for the WCD on Irrigation Options in India, done by SANDRP found that actually it is the gross contribution that is around 11%. Net contribution, net of the losses of lands in reservoirs, canals and waterlogging and net of the fact that those lands would have produced some food even with local water systems, would be much less. This contribution is not only of one Bhakra project, but of all the large dams of India put together. That Assessment has been in public domain for over five years now. We have not seen any credible response to that. We would like to see a credible assessment if this assessment is wrong. Else, this assessment should be accepted. Same goes with the Bhakra study of Manthan.

Bhakra has not been filled for last 15 years

Campaign to increase Storage Capacity There is a campaign to increase the water storage capacity through large dams. In fact the campaigners have little value or information about achieving the same objective through a network of small storages or potential of using underground aquifers for storage. There are 2 serious problems plaguing the existing storages. One is that, as per NCIWRD, about 1.4 BCM of existing storage capacity is getting silted up every year. At today’s rates creation of 1.4 BCM storage capacity would cost Rs 1448 crores. That means that on an average, each day we are losing Rs 4 crores worth of storage capacity through siltation. And there is little serious attempt to stop this. Secondly, a very large part of the existing water storage is not being used as you can see from the table in next slide.

Idle Reservoir Capacity during (BCM) Sr NoYear (Country wide monsoon rainfall) No of reservoirs monitored Monitored capacity, BCM Capacity filled up, BCM Idle Capacity, BCM (110%) (100%) (103%) (102%) (105%) (96%) (92%) (91%) (81%) (105%) (87%) (Source: Economic Survey, various years)

Implications of empty storage capacity On an average, each year about BCM (equivalent of 6.5 Sardar Sarovar Projects) of storage capacity out of only the monitored storage capacity is not filled up at least for the last 11 years. That means that on an average an investment of Rs crores has remained idle each year of the last 11 years. Above trend is happening when in 6 of the 11 years the rainfall was above average as can be seen from the figures in parenthesis in col. 2. In such a situation, should we not be trying to understand why this is happening and how we can make the existing storage capacity play the useful role it is supposed to, in stead of pushing for more storages?

Largest infrastructure, poorest performance? India has the largest Irrigation Infrastructure in the world but it is performing far below its capacity. Finance Minister Chidambaram said in his budget speech in Feb 2005, “Water-use efficiency in the Indian agriculture is one of the lowest in the world”. The mid term appraisal of 9th 5 Year Plan had noted, “With a 10% increase in the present level of water use efficiency, it is estimated, an additional 14 m ha can be brought under irrigation from existing irrigation facilities”. The 14 m ha of additional irrigation is an agenda for over a decade at current rate of additional irrigation being created. Why is there no serious attempt to make amends in this situation?

Blind advocacy of large hydro There is strong push for large hydro projects today, as if large hydro projects are good in themselves. Little attempt is to do a credible assessment of performance of large hydro projects. In fact installed capacity of large hydro has increased at a compound growth rate of 4.35% per annum during , HIGHER than all other power sectors. What is the performance, however?

Diminishing Returns from Large Hydro As can be seen from the chart here, the Million Units energy generated from large hydro projects has been almost continuously falling over the last eleven years. And the fall is huge 31%. There are many reasons for this, use of large hydro to provide peaking capacity is not one of them to the best of our information.

A very interesting Quote At the dawn of independence we relied, wistfully, on her high dam-builders. During this TVA phase of India’s economic development, a well-known Indian engineer used to proclaim off and on that he was going to build the highest dam in the world, suggesting implicitly a new yardstick for measuring national greatness – the height of a dam and the millions of cubic yards of concrete poured. Yet such flamboyance used to flatter many egos and invited surprisingly few frowns. That many engineers in India if left to themselves, like to build monuments to themselves regardless of the time and cost involved is a commonplace of history. India had yet to discover this. The commitments made were heavy, and once made, they ran into many years. In fact, one of the primary motives for launching of five year planning was to introduce, though belatedly, some “family planning” in this field and to put a brake on the commitments, which were piling up on account of long- term, high-cost, high-dam projects. “Despite all the points in their favour, minor irrigation works were eclipsed under the first three Five-Year Plans when attention was concentrated on large scale surface irrigation projects. Obviously, irrigation cannot be treated as an end itself; it must, under any rational scheme, serve as the handmaid of agricultural development. Sudhir Sen, A Richer Harvest: New Horizons for Developing Countries, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co New Delhi, 1974