Hydropower

Forwarded to the Portal by: Himanshu Thakkar
Article and Image Courtesy: SANDRP
Author: Himanshu Thakkar

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s forthcoming India visit (15-17 Dec 2010) provides another useful opportunity for India to be firm and forthright with China on India’s concerns about Chinese dam and hydropower projects on the shared rivers, including in the Brahmaputra basin. The importance of this issue cannot be underscored considering that this issue has been raised in the Parliament several times, even the Prime Minister has had to make clarifications in the recent past, the people and governments of several states, including Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have been agitated about this. India’s Planning Commission, Environment, Water Resources and Power Ministries have also been raising these concerns.

Content Courtesy: Solution Exchange and Nitya Jacob
Author: Nitya Jacob

India’s arteries are choking. Her rivers, the lifeline of hundreds of millions, are over-taxed, polluted and encroached. They are being mined, dammed and emptied of water. Save for the four monsoon months, most rivers are streams of drains, depending on how many cities they pass through. This year people gaped in awe at the River Yamuna (I am sure they were over-awed by other rivers elsewhere too) as for the first time since 1978 looked like a river and not a drain.

This paper by the World Resources Institute outlines potential water-related risks facing the mining industry and highlights important gaps in water-related disclosure. The purpose is to provide information, questions, and tools to help the financial community better evaluate water-related risks facing mining companies.

This working paper by the University of Bonn attempts to give a spatial and temporal overview of water management in India. It traces how people and the successive regimes made choices across space and time from a wide range of water control and distribution technologies. The paper divides the water management in India into four periods –

• the traditional system of water management before colonial times;
• response from the colonial rulers to manage the complex socio-ecological system;
• large scale surface water development after independence; and
• finally, the small-scale community and market-led revolution.

23rd November 2010, New Delhi

• Seeking a moratorium on clearances for large dams in Northeast India
• Withdrawal of clearances granted to 2000 MW Lower Subansiri, 1750 MW Demwe Lower & 1500 MW Tipaimukh dams
• Future steps on hydropower projects and dams only after full, prior and informed consent of people in the region
• Protect the Brahmaputra river basin as a cultural and ecological endowment

The report by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses is premised on the fact that India is facing a serious water resource problem and is expected to become 'water stressed' by 2025 and 'water scarce' by 2050. It raises fundamental questions about the forces driving water demand and the political dynamics of riparian relations, both in terms of hindrances and opportunities, amongst states in the subcontinent. Rivers, a crucial source of water resources, physically link upstream and downstream users and at the same time create barriers.

This series by Thingnam Anjulika Samom deals with the impact of modernisation, development and state policy on the traditional use, control and management of Loktak lake, the largest common property aquatic resource in Manipur. The Loktak Hydropower Project commissioned in 1983 has damaged the ecology of the largest freshwater lake in the northeast, and has altered the culture, agricultural and livelihood patterns of communities residing around Loktak. The series looks at what this common property resource used to be and what it has become.

Loktak, the 300-square-km lake is spread over three districts in the valley – Imphal West, Bisnupur and Thoubal and covers 61% of the total identified wetlands of Manipur. Besides being the source of livelihood for hundreds of people, Loktak also houses the floating national park Keibul Lamjao, the only home in the world to the endangered Sangai deer. It is not only the geographical topography of the lake that has changed in the last few decades. The lake is also beset by increasing pollution, siltation, rapid proliferation of phumdis and the commissioning of the Loktak hydel project in the 1980s Manipur or Imphal River, with the Loktak lake forming the headwaters to provide regulated storage for power generation.

One of the oldest "People's electricity" systems I have ever seen (Please read the notes for each of the videos).  Of course this trip had even better high points - wine made from Gooseberry and Nutmeg - all locally brewed.  So travelling in the midst of hills, sipping local wine, seeing some great work, (and providing perspectives for someone-else to write - is this work or what?

This Civil Engineering Course under the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) on the broad subject of Water Resources Engineering and Management is being carried out by Indian Institute of Technology’s and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as a collaborative project supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India) to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country, by developing curriculum based video and web courses. In these web based lectures, the authors have developed the subject in detail and in stages in a student-friendly manner. The broad group of Water Resources Engineering is structured into modules on the topic by IIT Kharagpur as follows: