Five river linking projects announced in Union Budget

• IAS NEXT, Lucknow
• 03, Feb 2022

Reference News

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has proposed a project to link five rivers in India in her budget speech.

The rivers identified for linking are:

Godavari-Krishna, Krishna-Pennar and Pennar-Cauvery, Damanganga-Pinjal and Par-Tapi-Narmada.

A brief overview of these rivers:

• Krishna, the fourth largest river in India, originates in Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra and flows through Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
• Cauvery originates in Kodagu and flows through Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
• Penna originates in Chikkaballapura and flows through Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
• Godavari which is the third largest river in India originates in Nashik and flows through Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa.

The Damanganga-Pinjal river linking aims to divert surplus water from the Damanganga basin to provide domestic water for Mumbai city.

• The Par-Tapi-Narmada project proposes to provide water to doubt-prone regions of Kutch and Saurashtra by diverting excess water from seven reservoirs in the Western Ghats in North Maharashtra and south Gujarat.

Benefits of interlinking:

• Enhances water and food security.
• Proper utilisation of water.
• Boost to agriculture.
• Disaster mitigation.
• Boost to transportation.

Issues and Concerns:

• Interlinking of rivers is a very expensive proposal. It will adversely affect land, forests, biodiversity, rivers and the livelihood of millions of people.
• Interlinking of rivers will lead to destruction of forests, wetlands and local water bodies, which are major groundwater recharge mechanisms.
• It causes massive displacement of people. Huge burden on the government to deal with the issue of rehabilitation of displaced people.
• Due to interlinking of rivers, there will be decrease in the amount of fresh water entering seas and this will cause a serious threat to the marine life.