ગુજરાતી
English
Sanat Mehta – 2012 – 12 years ago
Republished on 24 July 2024 (Google translation from Gujarati)
Water flows day and night in the Sardar Lake and the main canal, but today no one is concerned about the actual situation of drinking water in the state. The Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada River has been considered the ‘lifeline’ of Gujarat since the beginning. Because it has a plan to provide water for irrigation, electricity, drinking water and partly for industrial use.
Not only this, according to the decision of the Water Dispute Tribunal after a decade-long hearing, apart from Gujarat, three other states – Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan also get the benefit of this. In this, Rajasthan is far away from Narmada and Maharashtra has only one bank of Narmada. Yet all of them have benefited from the water of Narmada.
On 18 October 2000, the Supreme Court gave conditional permission to increase the height of the dam for the Narmada project, which was passed amid various protests and obstacles. The height of the dam reached 100 metres in 2003 and 121.92 metres in 2006. As a result, the lake will be able to store 156.6 million cubic metres of water. This storage is even more than the water storage of the three lakes of Panam, Shetrunji and Damanganga. At the national level, the Krishnarajasagar scheme of Karnataka is bigger than the Idukki scheme of Kerala.
Thus, 70.5 million cubic metres of water was released into the main canal of the lake in 2001, which increased sharply to 587 million cubic metres in 2009. Since 2009, this huge amount of water is released into the main canal and reaches Kutch through branches or pipelines constructed for drinking water. But sadly, the water of Sardar Lake in Gujarat reaches Barmer in Rajasthan through the main canal, but even after fifteen years, Gujarat has no water for farming or drinking.
– Sardar Sarovar water reaches Barmer in Rajasthan through the main canal, but even after fifteen years Gujarat has no water for agriculture or drinking. The decision to use Narmada water as a permanent solution for drinking water was taken almost 22 years ago in 1990-91.
Not only this but how much drinking water will the needy villages, towns and cities need by 2011? If we calculate this, 10.6 lakh acre feet of water will be required for non-agricultural use. This was expected. It has seen huge investments since 2006.
But, no one is concerned about the drinking water situation in 2012. Since 2010, there has been a huge shortage of drinking water, especially in Saurashtra and North Gujarat. Talking about this year, Surendranagar in Saurashtra gets water every five to six days. Bhavnagar has been getting water for a month, Porbandar and Bhuj intermittently, Junagadh intermittently. Jamnagar has been facing intermittent power cuts for the last one year. While Amreli gets water every eight or ten days.
Despite the government’s claim that the volume of Narmadanir has increased, the land revenue is different in Jamnagar-Kutch or Rajkot. The government itself claims to supply water through tankers to only 133 villages, but the reality is different.
The water supply system covers the water shortage of villages in Dang, Bharuch and Patan districts. Water is supplied once in 10-12 days on the boat of the Minister of State for Energy.
The municipality has announced to provide water every four days in Veraval. Water is supplied through tankers to 50 villages in Sorath. Water is supplied through tankers to 56 villages in Rajkot district. Schemes are announced but the scheme to supply 60 lakh litres per day to Una taluk was completed in two years. This is about drinking water.
As of December 2010, 19,248 km of canal weaving work has been completed. This means that only one-fourth of the work on sub-canals, branches, branches and water management has been completed. Out of the scheduled irrigation capacity of 4.5 lakh acres, only 1.2 lakh acres have been irrigated. If we assume that all this water actually goes to agriculture, the total irrigation from the Narmada scheme is barely 26 per cent. It is difficult to know the extent of this area of Kutch-Saurashtra-North Gujarat.
At the same time, Rs 24,841 crore has been spent till May 9, 2012. Rs 16 thousand crore will be needed to complete the canal work. Rs 300 crore will be needed to install gates on the dams. As a result, the total cost will be Rs. 60 thousand crores will reach.
Now the deadline for completion of all the work has been given till 2015. For the rehabilitation of those whose village, house or land of the house has been submerged in the flood during the scheme, Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra’s share and Gujarat’s entire expenditure is only Rs. 1360 crores. Which will be two and a half percent of the total structure.
This percentage is a matter of special concern for those worried about the cost of rehabilitation. Despite all this, since the approval of the Planning Commission in 1988 till today, everyone knows how many Chief Ministers of Gujarat dreamed of becoming Sardar or Bhagirath? Well, the question of questions is where has the water of Narmada gone till date?
-Sanat Mehta The author was the former Finance Minister of Gujarat State.
