CRUSADE
DISASTER AWAITS!
A Sham in the Name of Indira Gandhi
The drought cycle that looms large around the Indira Gandhi Canal in
Rajasthan has been a sordid story of top-heavy development, reports
Rahul Ghai
Famished Road: barren and green, Indira Gandhi Canal's core area
(above and below) Photo Rahul Ghai
As always, droughts would remain the defining condition of the lives
of communities in the ecologically fragile regions of the Thar. So
pervasive and severe have been the effects of the drought that
started in 1998-99, that the state has been forced to declare drought
even in the canal command area of the gigantic Indira Gandhi Canal
from 2000 onwards. This year too the government declaration has
marked about 75 percent of the Indira Gandhi Nahar Project (IGNP)
canal area in the Bikaner and Jaisalmer districts as affected by a
severe drought.
The IGNP is among the biggest irrigation schemes in the world,
having fed on loans from the World Bank, the Japanese and the
government of India. It was conceived as a project with multiple
objectives of 'greening' and 'settling' the desert. Hailing as the
'kingpin' of state planning for developing the desert, it started in
1960s and till 2002 about Rs 2,204-crore had already been spent on
it. The 445 km long-lined main canal running parallel to the Indo-Pak
border, with nine branches, seven lift schemes and 21 direct
distributaries, apart from 8,187 km of minor canal network, have
inscribed a new hydraulic spectacle traversing the sandy plains and
sand dunes. According to official reports, more than 9.5 lack
hectares of area have been opened for irrigation. The IGNP is meant
to provide drinking water to 3,461 villages and 29 towns in nine
districts of western Rajasthan. So far so good.
Compare these statistics to the grim contemporary realities in the
canal command area: IGNP Stage ii. Over these continuous drought
years, there have been massive drops in crop production, restrictions
imposed on crops like wheat and groundnut that were one-time
favourites, shrinking of agro-business in once burgeoning mandis,
steep fall in the markets for agricultural land and searing of water
conflicts among the farmers at different locations of the canal
network. These horror stories flourish in the backdrop of increasing
vagueness of state declarations about water availability schedules
and sharpening dilemmas about allocations and usage of water for
drinking or agricultural purposes.
The peculiar credit and speculation-oriented cash economy of the
command area has precipitated increasing debt burden on the farmers
as they have been forced to invest on items like land levelling,
field preparation, sowing, fertilisers and insecticides despite
uncertainties about the availability of water. The majority of
farmers have barely got water for the winter crop since 1999-2000,
and that too for crops with fairly low market prospects.
From the beginning, the IGNP has promoted the culture of growing
water guzzling cash crops. Today, for most farmers, these have become
a distant dream. Given the high costs of maintaining agricultural
land in the canal area, most of the farmers no longer consider it
feasible to sow crops for meeting food and fodder security needs of
their households. More than 90 percent of the farmers rely on the
market or the Public Distribution System (pds) for procuring food to
meet their daily needs. Agricultural labourers whose numbers have
swelled in these drought years of acute scarcity have been forced to
migrate to areas of Ganganagar and Punjab where they have to compete
not only with migrant labour from other states but with harvesters as
well.
The drinking water system is run on the whims and fancies of the
lower bureaucracy. Hence the erratic electricity supply
and stark water scarcity. Most open reservoirs do not have water
filters. People are forced to drink water that gets contaminated over
hundreds of kilometre
Nowhere is the rampant and insatiable greed of the State more clearly
evident than in the cases of selling traditional water catchments and
grasslands, the common property resources, in IGNP, Stage ii area.
With the dissolution of these critical security nets and the
communitarian practices and rights associated with them, most of the
traditional strategies of the people to cope with droughts have been
thrown asunder. The drinking water supply system is mostly mechanised
leaving little for people to do other than rely on the whims and
fancies of the lower bureaucracy for erratic electricity supply and
water availability. Majority of the open reservoirs (DIGGIS) do not
have adequate water filters. People are forced to drink water that
gets contaminated over hundreds of kilometres.
Those who are settled in their fields are unable to access even these
DIGGIS for their drinking water, as the DIGGIS are mostly located in
habitations. They have to either pay for tank water from the DIGGIS
or drink from the water supply in the field water channels. As the
summer sets in, access to water is going to depend on the
pronouncements of the canal bureaucracy who keep the people guessing
by giving contradictory statements about the status of water
availability.
Still, the IGNP continues to be presented as a perennial canal
system. The present water crisis has been explained by the 'failure
of rains' in Himachal and Punjab or by giving pleas about discords in
inter-state water sharing. No doubt, there is more than a grain of
truth in these metrological observations, but ascribing these for the
water crisis looks a bit too preposterous.
The grim realities of the IGNP throw up several issues that put to
question many assumptions that inform the wisdom of State policy and
planning not only about disaster management, but about a broader
notion of development. The drought cycle that looms large over the
command area has brought to the fore the debacle the IGNP has been,
the sordid story of State-sponsored big development from the top,
parodying the Green Revolution of Punjab and playing havoc with the
fragile ecology of the region and the destiny of the local
communities.
Before the writing on the wall becomes too painful and unmanageable,
is it not time to question the pitfalls of the myopic and selective
historical vision of the State, the consequences of purging the
organic experiences, rights of desert communities and their
ecological regimes? How many more droughts are needed to acknowledge
the crisis of the development paradigm that nurtures the nefarious
dealings in the circles of the IGNP bureaucracy, politicians and the
influential rural elite? By extending the IGNP to yet another 2 lack
hectare area in the Barmer region, are we not extending the human and
social devastation?
June 18 , 2005
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