The current debate in India on the government's river linking proposal is occurring when the coalition in power at the centre is preparing to face general elections next year. On the issue of water, agriculture, food and energy resources' development and management, the coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party could not have done much worse. The clearest evidence of under-achievement comes from the way the coalition managed the droughts of 2000 and again in 2002-3, and the way it is managing floods this monsoon. There has been a comprehensive failure to regulate releases from dams, to adequately forecast floods and to provide timely flood warning and relief. The river linking proposal is a way to divert attention away from real performance. The proposal found support in the suggestion made by the Supreme Court on 31 October 2002 without really going into the merits of the project, following rather a unscientific mention of the proposal by India´s scientist President in his speech to the nation on 14 August 2002. The supporting cast of the charade was made up of a gullible political opposition, uncritical (a section of) media and scientific community.
The events are unfolding at a rapid pace. The megalomaniac water resources establishment in India suddenly found a new reason to reassert its reason to exist. The emergence of the World Bank´s new Water Resources Sector Strategy where it has said that it is again time to back High Risk High Reward projects like large dams and long distance water transfer projects was, we are told, only coincidental. Suresh Prabhu, the former Power Minister from India´s right wing Shiv Sena Party who had to leave the Power Ministry last year following the his party leadership being unhappy with his performance, got what he thinks to be a fitting new role as Chairman of the Task Force for River Linking Proposal. His over confidence notwithstanding, it must be a unique event in the history of development planning, when all concerned authorities are swearing by the completion date of a project whose feasibility, even they admit, is yet to be established. Come to think of it, even the need and optimality of the proposal are yet to be ascertained.
Proposals to the linking of watercourses are not new in the Subcontinent. More than a century ago, Sir Arthur Cotton of the British Government proposed linking of India´s rivers to provide navigation as an alternative to the railways that were being planned. In more recent times, it was in 1972 that Dr K L Rao came forward with the Ganga Cauvery Link proposal, which was dumped by the Ministry of Water Resources after the Central Water Commission found it to be "grossly under-estimated". Earlier, Captain Dastur had proposed a garland of canals connecting Himalayan rivers and the Peninsular rivers, which the Ministry declared "technically unsound and economically prohibitive".
The latest episode in the run of river linking proposals started on 14 August 2002 when India´s President Dr A P J Kalam, in his speech to the nation on the eve of Independence Day said, "It is paradoxical to see floods in one part of our country while some other parts face drought. This drought – flood phenomenon is a recurring feature". Dr Kalam went on to recommend a water mission, " One major part of the water mission would be networking of our rivers". This seemingly rather compelling logic of transferring water from "flood affected" and "surplus" areas to "drought affected" and "deficit" areas has been repeatedly used to justify river-linking proposals.