The question is why we want ...
Published by Yogesh Agrawal, Director (retired), Minor irrigation schemes, Water Resources Department at Govt of Rajasthan
The question is why we want to do interlinking of rivers? A river serves to drain off a natural drainage basin, except in the case of ice fed rivers. Interlinking of rivers is proposed to augment the short water supply in a river ( say river A ) by joining it to a river (say river B ) which has an excess of water as compared to its requirement. Now a question arises why water is short than the requirement in river A. Whether the diagnostic analysis of water use in the drainage basin A has been done and the water use has been found economical, reasonable and convincing? If not, efforts should be done to improve water delivery system and to make the water consumption reasonable. As regards river B, whether the existing and future demands of water say for 50 years, in river basin B have been determined and water is in excess? if so, than the quantity of water in excess of the calculated demand, should be determined and may be considered for transfer to river basin B. If the river basin B does not have adequate water, then the idea of interlinking of river B with A may be dropped.