Nowhere To Flow

Over 60 years after the country got its first plan to rejuvenate the rivers, not a single basin has been spared from over-exploitation

- Sushmita Sengupta & Rashmi Verma

All the 20 river basins of the country share the story of the Cauvery: how human interference has changed every river’s form and flow pattern over the past few decades.

Water in the country’s three major rivers—the Indus, the Brahmaputra, and the Ganga—has plummeted drastically. Central Water Commission’s 2017 data shows that between 1984-85 and 2014-15 water in the Indus dropped by 27.78 billion cubic meters (BCM), almost equal to the average water available in the Cauvery during this time. In the Brahmaputra, it dropped by 95.56 BCM and in the Ganga by 15.5 BCM. The report shows another disturbing trend: between 2004-05 and 2014-15, the catchment area of the Indus reduced by 1 percent, that of the Ganga by 2.7 percent, and of the Brahmaputra by 0.6 percent. The per capita surface water availability also dropped from 5,200 cubic meters in 1951 to 1,588 in 2010.

The Ganga basin, the country’s largest river basin, is degraded as forest areas are rapidly transforming into agricultural and urban lands. It is alarming that in the lower parts of the basin—in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and West Bengal— land in many areas has turned barren.

Rampant deforestation has cost the Ganga over 1,500 billion cusecs water near the Himalayas, says Prakash C Tiwari, lead author of a 2015 study on the Himalayan basin conducted along with the Australian National University of Canberra. It is, therefore, not surprising that along with the Ganga, the flow of its major tributaries has also slowed down. Between 2005-2006 and 2014-2015, the flow of Sone and Ramganga reduced the most—69 and 55 percent respectively, shows an analysis by Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment.