Causes and consequences of river water conflicts in India, with a case study

Introduction

A river water conflict is a dispute between users who draw on the same river, whether villages, farmers and towns, or whole states, when one party's use leaves less for another. The DU syllabus places inter-state conflicts over water within its study of water resources. In India such disputes no longer stay local: they have grown into quarrels between states, as between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Causes of river water conflicts in India

1. Scarcity set against rising demand. A river carries a limited amount of water while the needs of farms, cities and industry keep growing; in a poor year every claimant presses harder for its share.
2. One river, many uses. A dam built for electricity is also wanted for irrigation, for drinking water in towns and for factories, and these claims on the same store of water collide.
3. Position along the river. Whoever is upstream can hold back or divert water that people downstream depend on. Bharucha makes the point for rivers shared between countries; the same tension arises between Indian states sharing one basin.
4. Unequal costs and benefits of dams. The land and forests drowned by a reservoir belong to people in the valley, while the stored water mostly serves others further away; the better-off landholders downstream gain most, and the poor of the valley bear the loss.
5. Breakdown of local sharing customs. Where the old village arrangements for dividing water fairly have weakened, no accepted rule is left for settling shares, and that remains a major source of dispute.

Case study: the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada

The project. Sardar Sarovar is a dam in Gujarat on the Narmada and part of the very large Narmada river scheme; it stores the river's water for irrigation and hydroelectric power.

The two sides. The water is meant mainly for farmland downstream, and wealthier farmers there stand to gain most from it. On the other side are the people of the valley: thousands of tribal people whose homes, fields and forest livelihoods were tied to the river have been displaced by the submergence area, and fishing communities at the estuary lose their living too.

How the dispute unfolded. Opposition in the valley grew into the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a movement against large dams. Pressure from people facing the loss of homes and livelihoods led the World Bank to pull out of the project in 1993.

What the case shows. The quarrel is not only over litres of water. It is over who pays: whether the poorer people of the valley should carry the costs of development that profits others, along with the loss of the biological wealth of the drowned Narmada forests. It also shows a weakness of enforcement: a national review of dam projects cleared in the 1980s and 1990s found that in nine cases out of ten the environmental conditions of clearance had not been met.

Consequences of river water conflicts

• Delay and uncertainty. While a dispute drags on, projects stall and farmers and towns cannot be sure how much water they will get, so planting, investment and drinking-water planning all suffer, and a dry year turns into lost crops (our reasoning from the causes above).
• Protest and political strain. Disputes produce mass movements such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan, strained relations between the states sharing a river, and, as shortages deepen, the risk of conflict between countries that share waters.
• Unresolved human and environmental costs. Where the dispute is over a dam, the costs the dam itself imposes remain the sore point: drowned forests and farmland, reservoirs silting up faster where catchments are bare, harder fishing and navigation below the dam, and displaced families for whom resettlement has seldom worked.

Conclusion

River water conflicts in India grow out of scarcity and out of an unfair spread of the gains and losses from using rivers. They can be eased by basin-wide agreements on shares, by using water more carefully in farms and cities, and by building a number of small dams instead of one giant one, since small dams do less harm to the environment.