A parliamentary panel has exhorted the Ministry of Water Resources to accelerate the pace of implementation of ‘inter-linking of rivers’, project and set a timeline as many of the projects have neither been taken up. The panel has sought a greater role of Prime Minister Office and Ministry of External Affairs to prevent loss of crops and property caused every year by floods from rivers flowing in the country from the neighboring countries. This observation was made by a panel headed by senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge in its report “Disaster Preparedness in India”. The total flood affected area in the country is over 456.40 lakh hectares of land. An average of 72.25 lakh hectare of land is affected annually by floods of which37.89 lakh hectare is cropped area. Thus floods cause loss of livelihood of lakhs of farmers every year in the country. India has 4728 reservoirs or large dams in 29 states. According to an estimate in 2002, the total cost of inter linking of river is likely to be over Rs 5, 60,000 crore. The panel also examined the preparedness of states and union territories from floods in the country. “Only eight states have prepared emergency action plan for 192 large dams against 4728 large dams in 29 states,” the report said. According to officials of Ministry of Water Resources, National Water Development Agency has studied and prepared reports on 14 inter-link projects for Himalayan component, 16 inter-link projects for Peninsular component and 37 intrastate river linking projects The average rainfall in India is about 4,000 billion cubic meter, but most of India’s rainfall comes over a 4 month period - June through September. The idea of interlinking of rivers in the Indian subcontinent is atleast 150 years old. During the British Raj in India, Sir Arthur Cotton, a British general and irrigation engineer, first suggested linking the Ganga and the Cauvery for navigational purposes. Dr. K.L. Rao’s Proposal (1972), which had 2640 km. long Ganga - Cauvery link as its main component involved large scale pumping over a head of 550 m. The power requirement for lifting the water was huge, estimated to be 5000 to 7000 MW, for irrigating an additional area of 4 million hectares only. The scheme was also not having any flood control benefit. Dr. Rao had estimated this proposal to cost about Rs. 12,500 crores, which at 2002 price level comes to about Rs. 1,50,000 crores. The Central Water Commission, which examined the proposal, found it to be grossly under estimated and economically prohibitive. In another proposal, Capt. Dastur Proposal (1977) envisaged construction of two canals – the first 4200 km. Himalayan Canal at the foot of Himalayan slopes running from the Ravi in the West to the Brahmaputra and beyond in the east; and the second 9300 km Garland Canal covering the central and southern parts, with both the canals integrated with numerous lakes and interconnected with pipelines at two points, Delhi and Patna. The cost estimated by Capt. Dastur was Rs. 24,095 crores. The cost estimated by the experts in 1979 was about Rs. 12 million crores. The realistic cost at 2002 price level comes to about Rs. 70 million crores. The total expenditure likely to be incurred on inter-linking of rivers can only be known after completion of all individual Detailed Project Reports. As per DPR, the estimated cost of Ken-Betwa Link Project Phase-I and Phase-II are about Rs. 18057.08 crores and about Rs.2282.94 crores respectively. The estimated cost of Damanganga-Pinjal Link Project is about Rs.3008 crores. The estimated cost of Par – Tapi – Narmada Link project is Rs. 9279 Crore. “But the project is not simply a scheme to connect rivers by canals. It is a system of large dams and high-capacity canals to sequentially transfer very large volumes of water from one river basin to another, to connect the high-discharge, perennial Himalayan rivers with the seasonal rivers of peninsular India,” said officials. The decades-long Cauvery water dispute principally between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, is a typical example of States sharing water of one (Cauvery) river basin between two states. Another typical example is the decades-long SYL canal dispute of Punjab and Haryana, inter-basin (Sutlej and Yamuna) water sharing, with Punjab enacting a law not to share its water with Haryana, and the Supreme Court striking down that law as “unconstitutional”.