Hydropower

Dr G.D. Agrawal’s tapasya, his third fast-unto-death, has finally achieved the desired result.  Since 2008, Dr Agrawal has been trying to persuade the Government of Uttarakhand and the Government of India that R. (Bhagirathi) Ganga must be allowed to flow in its natural state in the uppermost reach between Gangotri and Uttarkashi.  The two governments had plans to construct three new large hydropower projects in this stretch.  Dr Agrawal’s fasts have led to the scrapping of all the three projects.

Reviews of some of the movies screened -

“Be water, My friend”

This UNESCO funded film, “Be water, My friend” tracks the research of Professor Gordon Lightgoot, an expert on ancient water monuments as he tries to understand and rectify the alarming drying up of Karez’s in northern Iragi region of Kurdistan.

The paper by the Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF) - Basin Focal Project provides a brief situation analysis related to water, agriculture & poverty, water resources, water productivity, institutional aspects and opportunities & risks related to the development of the Indo-Gangetic basin (IGB). Management of IGB water resources presents some formidable challenges and, therefore, steps must be taken towards integrated management of the IGB’s water and land resources in order to ensure the future sustainability of all production and ecosystems in the basin. 

This is a translation from the Nepali of an article that first appeared in Nepal magazine on 11 July 2010. Dipak Gyawali is member of the panel of experts reviewing the Mekong River Commission’s Basin Development Plan and vice-chair of the technical committee of the UN’s World Water Assessment Programme. He was Nepal’s Minister for Water Resources during 2002-03.

Many Nepalis would be shocked to hear that Bhutan will face load- shedding from the coming winter. The citizens of Nepal have, after all, been told for decades that Bhutan has done a great job of developing hydroelectricity, that it has earned significant money by exporting electricity to India, and thus it has been able to achieve the highest per capita income in Southasia. Conversely, Nepal has been ridiculed for wallowing in ‘empty nationalism’ and stirring ‘needless’ controversies over the Mahakali Treaty of 1996 (for water sharing on the Mahakali River) as well as hydropower projects such as the West Seti, both of which involve export of electricity to India.

The India Water Portal is pleased to announce to its users, that a comprehensive archive of over two hundred and fifty technical research reports of the National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee, have now been made available on the portal, and in the public domain for the first time.

This report published by SANDRP, Urgewald and International Rivers Network (IRN) provides a brief background on India's power and financial sectors and illustrates the issues at stake by giving examples of two important power projects in India, the Dabhol project and the Maheshwar project.

The next part of the report describes the role that the domestic and international financial institutions have played and continue to play and the controversies that have been associated with the functioning of these institutions in the implementation of the hydropower projects in India.

The report emphasises the importance of the role of NGOs and civil society movements in making these institutions accountable to the common people whose lives are affected by the projects/ interventions.

This document by Urgewald provides a brief overview on the role of India's premier dam building agency, the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) in the construction of dams in India and is highly critical of the mode in which the NHPC has been aggressively expanding its operations of building dams across rivers in the country. 

It aims to inform the public, investors and financiers about NHPC’s track record and expansion plans and presents compiled information from three regions where NHPC has been actively involved in the construction of dams namely:

• Narmada Valley in Central India
• Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in Northeastern India
• The lands of the Kuki people in Northwestern Burma, where NHPC is building a dam for the military junta.

This book is essential reading for economists, power sector officials, power generation companies and environmentalists alike.

Dr.Bharat Jhunjhumwala holds a BSc degree in physics, chemistry and mathematics. He earned his PhD in food and Resource Economics from University of Florida at a tender age of 23 years. He joined Indian institute of management, Bangalore as Assistant professor immediately thereafter. He lived in a slum for two years to understand poverty and organized the Trade Union at IIM during the Emergency. He resigned from the IIM and became a consultant to donor agencies like Swiss Development Cooperation, Oxfam, Care, Overseas Development Institute and others mainly on rural development and watershed issues. He writes a column on economic issues for about 50 newspapers in india. He lives on the banks of River Alaknanda in uttarakhand on the feet of Lord Badri Vishal.

Floods: lessons to be learnt from the massive flooding in Surat city

A report by IIM criticises the way in which dams are managed in the country and calls for the need to apply Management Science / Operations Research techniques and information technology to improve dam management and prevention of floods

Flood fury: are we ready to face such an event?

This report by the IES presents the findings of a study that explores the likely impacts of the recent proposals in India to build a dam at Pancheshwar in the Himalayas on the river ecosystems and the surrounding areas and people involved. This dam will be the world's second tallest structure intended to harness hydroelectric power and water by controlling the flow of the Kali river and its tributaries.

The document argues that although there are many benefits of the dam in terms of energy and water, the wider ramifications of the dam and its consequences for the people staying around the area have not been thought about in the planning process. The planning process has not engaged local people in the decision-making process, there is paucity of published information and the environmental and social consequences have been considered belatedly in the planning process.