Physiography

This paper deals with basin water use accounting and is a contribution to the synthesis work of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) Basin Focal Projects. It applies principles of water use accounts, developed in the first of the series to the Ganges river basin in South Asia. It provides a means to assess the interactions between water, food, poverty, and the environment and helps develop sound information about water availability in a basin, where it goes and how it is used.

This is a translation from the Nepali of an article that first appeared in Nepal magazine on 11 July 2010. Dipak Gyawali is member of the panel of experts reviewing the Mekong River Commission’s Basin Development Plan and vice-chair of the technical committee of the UN’s World Water Assessment Programme. He was Nepal’s Minister for Water Resources during 2002-03.

Many Nepalis would be shocked to hear that Bhutan will face load- shedding from the coming winter. The citizens of Nepal have, after all, been told for decades that Bhutan has done a great job of developing hydroelectricity, that it has earned significant money by exporting electricity to India, and thus it has been able to achieve the highest per capita income in Southasia. Conversely, Nepal has been ridiculed for wallowing in ‘empty nationalism’ and stirring ‘needless’ controversies over the Mahakali Treaty of 1996 (for water sharing on the Mahakali River) as well as hydropower projects such as the West Seti, both of which involve export of electricity to India.

This paper discusses the relevance of the process of decentralisation in water resources management. The paper argues that decentralisation is not about formulating a top-down reform package to transfer power from central government to other actors to manage water resources, nor is it about emphasising the existence of the bottom up agency.

Rather, the paper draws on "New Institutionalism" and argues that decentralisation is a complex adaptive process that involves natural as well as political actions of actors and agents who draw on existing structures to negotiate and renegotiate the existing unequal power relations to manage water.

This report deals with the social conflicts emerging out of the encroachments owing to the change in course of the Ganga upstream and downstream of the Farakka barrage. The barrage was built with the intention of diverting water into the Hugli river with a view to flush the sediment load into the deeper part of the estuary and revive the navigational status of Kolkata port. During the last three decades of its operation, the silt-management in the barrage was given scant or no attention. The sediment movement in the tidal estuary of Hugli is a function of a complex fluvial system that can hardly be governed by inducing 40000 cusec of water.

This paper by Centre for Studies in Social Sciences and Jadavpur University, aims at explaining the factors that determine private investment in groundwater irrigation in West Bengal. It also addresses the issues pertaining to institutional arrangements, particularly provision of facilities by the government. The study, largely empirical in nature, is based on data collected from surveys conducted in close to one thousand moujas (villages) spread across the major agro-climatic zones in West Bengal. It begins with a descriptive account of the changes in the agricultural scenario in West Bengal over the last thirty years. The research questions are discussed and the econometric methodology presented.

A peer paper in Science Magazine focuses on the core of a riverine system, the upstream basin, and its impact on the entire river basin.

Intervening at the urgency of the water situation of the country and need in larger interest of the people and nation from political, legal, social, administrative, commerce,trade,cultural, world tourism angles, apart from agricultural and drinking water angle; annual devastation by floods,and loss by drought. One single Authority, with P.M. as Chairman may hopefully bring expected and good results in river management; riverine rejuvenation - National River Authority of India

Here is a draft proposal for such an authority to be created.

We are looking for collaborations on making this a reality.

Please post your comments.

In this study, regional flood frequency relationships have been developed using L-moments for South Bihar, in the alluvial plains of Indo-Gangetic basin and Kaimur-Chhotanagpur Santhal Pargana plateau. The annual maximum peak flood data of twenty-two gauging sites whose catchment areas vary from 11.7 to 3171 sqkm have been used. The mean annual peak floods of these sites vary from 29.15 cumec to 1293.2 cumec. Comparative regional flood frequency analysis studies have been carried out using some of the commonly used frequency distributions viz Extreme Value (EV1), General Extreme Value (GEV), Normal, Log Pareto (GPA) and Wakeby based on L-moments approach.

Abstract

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