Rivers on the run (The Pioneer 24 September 2010)

Ill-conceived projects have unleashed nature’s furyThe massive floods inundating north India, from Uttarakhand and Haryana to Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Bihar, are seen by ecologists to be the inevitable fallout of the disastrous policy of colonising floodplains and riverbeds; building embankments that fail to contain swelling seasonal waters; and as in the case of Tehri, mammoth dams at the wrong sites. As Ganga overflows the Tehri dam, built on the confluence of Bhagirathi and Bhilangana, submerging crowded settlements and farmland downstream, and the teeming waters of Yamuna rush towards Delhi and Agra, imperilling the successful hosting of the Commonwealth Games, all the activists, who for years have been warning against the policy of hemming in and altering the natural flow of mighty Himalayan rivers, fed by glacial melt and monsoon rains, feel vindicated. Their worst fears, of Apocalypse, are yet to be realised.The Yamuna has flooded areas in Delhi close to it, compelling people to move out with their domestic animals. The river’s fury demonstrates that the alarm raised over the possibility of a deluge threatening the Games village at this completely inappropriate location has substance. Protective bunds have prevented water from inundating the complex. The advice given earlier by campaigners to renovate existing stadia and Government housing at Lodhi Road and CGO complex as the staple of Games-related infrastructure, instead of beginning from scratch, and that, too, in the hazardous river environs, may prove portentous. For the river seems determined to wreck havoc in areas now colonised but formerly part of its bed and floodplains. Fortunately, the irrational plan to build a London Thames-like embankment along the river was scrapped under pressure from experts, who pointed out that the Yamuna, unlike Thames, was too volatile during the monsoons to allow such a structure to exist. Otherwise, the force of the deluge would have been more severe, especially if the embankment had breached.In view of past incidents of flooding, green campaigners are incredulous that policy-makers never took these into account while planning for the Games. Were they simply short-sighted or were they venal and greedy, hoping to cash in on projects and boost real estate prices in that part of the city? Available data cites August and September as flood-prone months. Major floods involving the Yamuna occurred in 1924, 1947, 1978, 1988 and in September 1995. Now, with incessant rainfall and water-logging disrupting completion of projects, the Sheila Dixit-headed Delhi Government, Delhi Development Authority, Organising Committee and other concerned agencies need to be made accountable for their lapses as the same power caucus has been in the city since India won the Games bid in 2003. Meanwhile, lower reaches of Uttarakhand, western Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are bearing the brunt of the overflow from Tehri and tributaries of the Ganga. This should convince policy-makers of the dangers of building large dams upon Himalayan rivers and changing their course. If anything, human interventions to subjugate these great rivers and channelise them for ill-conceived development purposes in contravention of all natural laws seem to spur them to break all bounds. Conservationist Ananda Banerjee pragmatically views floods as the rivers’ bid to reclaim their own lands, which have been lost to indiscriminate colonisation. Trans-Yamuna colonies, Noida, the Delhi Metro Railway Corporation complex at Shastri Park and at Yamuna Bank, Akshardham temple and the Games village all occupy fragile river precincts, and, thus, are exposed to flooding. Since Delhi is located in seismic zone IV, the second most earthquake-prone zone in India, these areas also face the additional danger of quakes, owing to the porous nature of the soil, thereby putting them at greater risk. Just last week, tremors of a quake with its epicentre in Afghanistan were felt in this region. In the case of the Games village, the Delhi Government and DDA cannot shrug off blame for deliberately locating it at a site that conservationists condemned as being hazardous. Earlier, the Delhi High Court in December 2005 had passed an order, meant to protect the river from encroachment by any structure. In the light of this order, litigation against the site of the Games village led the High Court to propose an environmental survey of the site by a committee, to determine whether it was part of the riverbed and floodplains. However, the apex court inexplicably overruled the High Court, allowing the Games village construction. The activists have applied to the apex court to expedite hearing of their review petition.As more water is released from the Hathnikund barrage in Haryana into the Yamuna river, Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan convener Manoj Mishra observes that it is time that water planning is transferred from engineers to ecologists if such disasters are to be pre-empted.