Rivers

Highlights of the February 2010 issue of "Water MOVES", a quarterly newsletter on Water Governance from the Water Governance Project at Society For Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD):

SIMPLE & EFFECTIVE Method to increase WATER to east flowing RIVERS of SOUTH INDIA.

WESTERN GHATS are the mighty walls created by the nature.

Guest Post by Himanshu Thakkar

New Delhi: A workshop organised yesterday on the sidelines of a South Asia civil society gathering under the banner of Assembly of a Union of South Asian Peoples at Jawaharlal Nehru University came up with a set of recommendations to address the question of conflict over shared rivers in the region. The key message from the meeting, which addressed issues pertaining to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and India, was that South Asia’s rivers should be a source of uniting peoples, not dividing them. The Assembly is being organised as a civil society counter to the official SAARC meeting to be held in Thimpu from 28-29 April 2010.

The report was prepared by the Water Resources Division, Planning Commission in response to a Supreme Court directive to verify whether the funds allocated to Ganga Action Plan (GAP) had been duly utilized by the States. The report is based on data obtained from Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and field visits made to plant sites in Uttarakhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

This research report by the National Institute of Hydrology deals with optimum water management in a command area. The dynamics of water within the unsaturated zone of soil is a complex phenomenon dependent on properties of the atmosphere, soil and vegetation. For agriculture water management, it is necessary to have models that accurately predict the behavior of soil moisture.

In this study, a model is developed to stimulate the dynamics of soil moisture within the root zone in an agriculture command. Focus is given to incorporate the spatial variation in crop type, soil type and rainfall in the command area and the dynamics of soil-water-plant interaction is stimulated.

This report by National Institute of Hydrology provides a compilation of the hydrological information of seventeen different river basins of South Bihar (now Jharkhand). Hydrological modeling of a basin requires detailed hydrological information about the basin. Further, the hydrological information of a region or a basin is of immense use to water resources planners and managers. However, the hydrological information collected by different organizations are often scattered and are not in representable form.

Ariticle Courtesy: National Alliance of Peoples' Movements

Dear Saaathis,

You all must have got the word by now ...Narmada is in serious crisis ...Not just the people and the environemnt, but the very project itself today...And unjust politics is also at its peak again ...This is the last and critical leg of the SSP battle...

Thousands of us are to embark on an indefinite mass action of Narmada from April 11th and sit before the Narmada Control Authority from the 13th at Indore. The situation is very serious and highly politicized, since even as there are 2 lakh adiavasis, farmers, fish workers, labourers yet to be rehabilitated in the submergence area, only corruption has increased ten-fold and gross environmental non-compliance has been exposed by the latest Devender Pandey Committee.

A bi-monthly newsletter - Dams, Rivers & People: February / March 2010 issue of the newsletter

Hihghlights

• Kerala’s initiative to desilt reservoirs: the Euphoria & the Concerns     
• Book Review: Why are the rivers source of conflicts?
• Gujarat makes up stories about Sardar Sarovar Project
• Only 13-17% water losses in Mumbai, Chennai, why not Delhi?
• World Bank’s Double speak on Large Hydro: Renewable or not? 
• Pakistan: Glacial lake dam threatens Hunza Valley

SANDRP website

When the foundation stone for the Kosi embankment was laid on January 14, 1955, near Nirmali in Saharsa district in Bihar, euphoric people shouted, Aadhi roti khayenge, Kosi bandh banayenge (we will eat only half a chapati but we will surely build the embankment), writes the prolific engineer and activist Dinesh Mishra in his book, “ Trapped! Between the Devil and the Deep Waters.” No one really paid any attention to the protests and the fears of the people who would live with these embankments and what would happen to their lives.

BARRAGES AS A BETTER ALTERNATIVE  TO POLAVARAM DAM  POJECT

(Replies to Discussion Report of Advisory Committee on alternate proposals made for

Polavaram project by Sri.T.Hanumantha Rao, former Engineer-in-Chief, AP State)