Agony of Floods: Flood Induced Water Conflicts in India Eklavya Prasad, K. J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape, Shruti Vispute Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India October 2012 Agony of Floods: Flood Induced Water Conflicts in India Eklavya Prasad, K. J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape, Shruti Vispute © Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India, Pune, Maharashtra, India Supported by: ARGHYAM Trust, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Cover Design and Layout by: Marion Jhunja Cover Photos by: Eklavya Prasad and Luisa Cortesi Published by: Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India, Pune c/o Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM) 16, Kale Park, Someshwarwadi Road, Pashan, Pune 411 008 Maharashtra, INDIA Tel: +91-20-2588 0786/ 2588 6542 Fax: +91-020-2588 6542 Email: [email protected] URL: http://conflicts.indiawaterportal.org Copies are available at the above address First published in October 2012 The contents of this report may be used with due acknowledgement of the source. Any form of reproduction, storage in a retrieval system or transmission by any means requires a prior written permission from the publisher. Citation: Prasad Eklavya, K. J. Joy, Suhas Paranjape, Shruti Vispute, (Ed.), 2012, Agony of Floods: Flood Induced Water Conflicts in India, Pune: Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India. Contributory Price : Rs. 200/- Contents Acknowledgements i Preface ii- vi Understanding Conflicts around Floods in India Eklavya Prasad and K. J. Joy vii-xiii Will Someone Share Our Extra Water? Dinesh Kumar Mishra xiv-xxvix Case study 1: India’s First Geo-Tube Embankment: Erosion of Community Hopes Parag Jyoti Saikia 1-9 Case study 2: The Char Dwellers of Assam: Flowing River, Floating People Gorky Chakraborty 10-22 Case study 3: Bridge over Kosi: Connecting People or Banishing Them? Jitendra Choubey 23-32 Case study 4: Floods in North Bihar: A Recurrent Source of Conflicts Vinay Kumar, Ramesh Kumar, Prem Kumar Verma, Rajendra Jha, Chandrashekhar and Pradeep Kumar Poddar 33-47 Case study 5: Flash Floods in Eastern UP: Hill Rivers Flood the Low Lying Region of Eastern Uttar Pradesh Causing Annual Distress Migration Alka Pande 48-56 Case study 6: Ghaggar Floods: A Manmade Disaster with Tragic Consequences T. V. Jayan 57-68 Case study 7: Floods in South West Punjab: Flood in the Arid Regions? Arshinder Kaur 69-81 Case study 8: Floods in Western Rajasthan: Life after the Deluge T. V. Jayan 82-89 Case study 9: Mumbai under Floods: A Natural Disaster or Manifestation of an Underlying Conflict in Mumbai City’s Skewed Urban Planning? Nidhi Jamwal 90-100 Case study 10: Flood in Krishna Basin: Institutional Responses to Flood Regulation Narendra V. Killada, Shrinivas Badiger and Bejoy K. Thomas 101-112 Case study 11: Floods in Bengaluru: No Respect for Water Bodies and Water Courses S. Manasi and K.C. Smitha 113-123 Nature is Hard to Know: Conflicts over Floods as Struggles of Knowledge Luisa Cortesi 124-138 About Contributors 139-146 Acknowledgements On behalf of the Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Forum) we would like to thank all those who have contributed to the preparation and production of 'Agony of Floods: Flood Induced Water Conflicts in India'. First of all we would like to thank all the authors. We are deeply grateful for their contribution, patient response and clarifications to our persistent queries. Alongside, we also thank Dr. D. K. Mishra and Luisa Cortesi for their overarching articles on floods, their occurrence and impact. We thank Eklavya Prasad and K. J. Joy for peer reviewing all the case studies. We acknowledge the guidance from Steering Committee Members Prof. Janakarajan, Prof. Chandan Mahanta, Dr. Latha A., Shripad Dharmadhikary, Dr. Vinod Goud, Pranab Choudhury and Dr. Partha Das in this initiative of documentation of flood induced water conflicts. We also sincerely thank Prof. Ramaswamy Iyer, for his advice and guidance during the initial period of the documentation work. We are also grateful to Suchita Jain for working on the maps included in this compendium and other SOPPECOM team members for their help in bringing out this compendium. In addition, we also appreciate the contribution of all those who have shared their photographs for the compendium. We thank Vidya Vaidya who helped us with the translation of the North Bihar case study which was originally written in Hindi. We would like to acknowledge the financial support and encouragement provided by Arghyam Trust, Bangaluru. Special thanks to Amrtha K. of Arghyam for her enthusiastic support and inputs. We thank Marion Jhunja for the cover and layout of the report and Mudra printers for its production. i Preface There is now a growing awareness about conflicts related to water. However, most of it is of the doomsayer variety, given the regularity with which it is predicted that the next world war will be over water! This growing concern and anxiety is not matched by systematic work on developing an understanding of water conflicts. While individual cases have been studied intensely – for instance, the conflict around the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River – not much work has been done to document water conflicts in a methodical and sustained manner. The Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts (the Forum, in brief) has been engaged in documenting several kinds of water conflicts in India since 2004-05. The present compendium of case studies of flood induced water conflicts in India is part of the same initiative. The Forum owes its emergence to the first attempt to document water conflicts in India. In 2004, R. Doraiswamy and Biksham Gujja collected information on water conflicts in South India, and published a summary of the cases as a booklet called ‘Understanding Water Conflicts: Case Studies from South India’1. At a meeting to discuss this booklet, it was decided to set up the Forum as a loose network to work on water conflicts, and provide a platform to individuals and organisations engaged in such work. Today, the Forum includes more than 150 individuals and organisations across the country. In its first phase, the Forum concentrated on documenting water conflicts in India at a national level. In this phase, the Forum documented 63 cases of water conflicts in peninsular India put together by nearly a hundred authors. These case 1 Doraiswamy R. and studies have been published as a book, Water Conflicts in India: A Million Revolts Biksham Gujja, 2004, Understanding Water 2 in the Making, by Routledge . The book was released at the India International Conflicts: Case Studies Centre in Delhi on 13th December 2006. Prof. Saif-ud-Din Soz, the then Minister, from South India, Water Resources, Government of India, released the book. A panel discussion WWF-ICRISAT Project, was organised among eminent researchers in the water sector including Dr. Kirit Patancheru (Andhra Pradesh) and Pragathi, Parikh, Professor Y. K. Alagh, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, and Dr. Mahesh Rangarajan. Bangalore The book is a modest attempt to capture a large number of cases representing a 2 Joy K. J., Bikasham variety of water conflicts across India. It is largely pre-analytical documentation to Gujja, Suhas build an information base that could aid deeper analysis in the future. The 63 case Paranjape, Vinod Goud, studies in the book are classified into eight broad themes with eight thematic Shruti Vispute, 2008, Water Conflicts in India: reviews. The Economic and Political Weekly also brought out a special issue on A Million Revolts in the 3 water conflicts based on the compendium, featuring 18 of the case studies . Making, New Delhi: Routledge In the present phase of the Forum’s work which is about to end soon, the emphasis has shifted from understanding water conflicts to water conflict 3 See Economic and resolution. The Forum is now engaged in four broad areas of work: a) conflict Political Weekly, 18-14 February 2006, Vol. documentation, b) conflict resolution, c) conflict prevention and d) networking and XLI, No. 2 awareness. Two resource centres have been set up in Kerala and Odisha. Two working groups have been constituted to focus on the following themes which are ii of central importance in resolving water conflicts, namely, 1) equity and allocations for ecosystem needs and livelihoods; 2) legal and institutional issues related to conflict resolution. The reports of both these working groups have now been published.4 The Forum has a central secretariat housed in the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Management (SOPPECOM), Pune. Its resource centre in Kerala is managed by the Chalakudy River Samrakshan Samiti, and the one in Odisha is managed by the Odisha Water Forum and Srishti. The Forum has Steering Committees and Advisory Committees at the central and state levels that oversee and guide its work. It has also tied up with Megh Pyne Abhiyan, Bihar for documentation of conflicts around floods, and Aaranyak, Guwahati, for documentation of water conflicts in the north-east. The Forum has a website (http:/ /waterconflictforum.org) and a portlet (http://conflicts.indiawaterportal.org) within the India Water Portal of Arghyam Trust, Bangalore. Though the Forum has added more components to its work, the work on documentation itself is far from over. For example, the first compendium did not cover non-peninsular India, urban water conflicts, and flood related conflicts. We are finding that there is a great diversity in the local contexts around which water conflicts occur. Secondly, the process of documentation is as important as its outcome, since it raises awareness and facilitates networking which is a valuable asset for any grassroots work on water conflicts. It was with these purposes in mind that the Forum decided to document conflicts in Odisha, Bihar and Guwahati.