The Ganga: Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent (Water Science
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The Ganga Water Science and Technology Library VOLUME 64 Editor-in-Chief V. P. Singh, Texas A&M University, College Station, U.S.A. Editorial Advisory Board M. Anderson, Bristol, U.K L. Bengtsson, Lund, Sweden J. F. Cruise, Huntsville, U.S.A. U. C. Kothyari, Roorkee, India S. E. Serrano, Philadelphia, U.S.A D. Stephensen, Johannesburg, South Africa W. G. Strupczewski, Warsaw, Poland For other titles published in this series, go to http://www.springer.com/series/6689 The Ganga Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent by Pranab Kumar Parua Consulting Engineering, Asian Development Bank Foreword by Dr. S. S. Ganguly 123 Dr. Pranab Kumar Parua Consulting Engineer Asian Development Bank New Delhi India [email protected] ISBN 978-90-481-3102-0 e-ISBN 978-90-481-3103-7 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3103-7 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938167 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Disclaimer: The facts and opinions expressed in this work are those of the author and not necessarily those of the publisher. Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the figures and tables which have been reproduced from other sources. Anyone who has not been properly credited is requested to contact the publishers, so that due acknowledgement may be made in subsequent editions. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) The author dedicates this book to his beloved parents Late Sudhir Chandra Parua and Late Santa Bala Parua and hopes to receive their blessings from Heaven. He further hopes that their Souls rest in Peace in Heaven. Foreword From time immemorial the Bengal Delta had been an important maritime desti- nation for traders from all parts of the world. The actual location of the port of call varied from time to time in line with the natural hydrographic changes. From the early decades of the second millennium AD, traders from the European conti- nent also joined the traders from the Arab countries, who had been the Forerunners in maritime trading with India. Daring traders and fortune seekers from Denmark, Holland, Belgium and England arrived at different ports of call along the Hooghly river. The river had been, in the meantime, losing its pre-eminence as the main outlet channel of the sacred Ganga into the Bay of Bengal, owing to a shift of flow towards east near Rajmahal into the Padma, which had been so long, carried very small part of the large volume of flow. On a cloudy afternoon on August 24, 1690 the British seafarer Job Charnock rested his oars at Kolkata and started a new chapter in the life of a sleepy village, bordering the Sunderbans which was ‘a tangled region of estuaries, rivers and water courses, enclosing a vast number of islands of various shapes and sizes.’ and infested with a large variety of wild animals. In the language of the British Nobel Laureate (1907) Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Thus the midday halt of Charnock ∗∗∗∗ grew a city.∗∗∗∗ Chance directed, chance erected, laid and built On the silt - Palace, byre, hovel - poverty and pride - Side by side; The city grew at a fast rate, true to the epithet of the second largest city of the British Empire and drew princes and paupers alike from all parts of the globe in their search of a better fortune. As a result, Kolkata became a vibrant, cosmopolitan city resplendent with manifestations of high levels of commerce and culture. And in this growth process the port of Kolkata played a pivotal role. However from the day one, the Calcutta Port seems to have experienced nav- igational problems with particular reference to the availability of draught. Due to the twin problems of reduced upland flow and the extraordinary large volume of sediment, brought down from the upper catchment, the state of the navigation channel deteriorated and consequently the existence of the Calcutta Port became vii viii Foreword extremely tenuous. Demand for deeper draughts for incoming ships of larger and larger capacity compounded the problem. In 1795 there was a proposal to shift the port to Diamond Harbour. Again in 1863 a port was set up in Canning on the river Matla. The Matla silted up and the port died. Concern for the preservation of the port remained unresolved. From 1653 to 1957 at least 16 experts and expert committees studied the problem and suggested remedial measures. In this connection, mention may be made of Sir Arthur Cotton (1853), Major Hirst (1914–1915), Stevenson-Moore (1914–1916), Sir William Willcocks (1930), S. C. Majumdar (1953) and Dr. Ing. W. Hensen (1957). The reduction in upland flow ultimately became so acute that during the 1960s the upland sup- ply remained completely cut-off from the Padma for full nine months. In most of the reports, mentioned earlier, the basic recommendation was a barrage across the Ganga to ensure diversion of sufficient headwater supplies for a lasting preserva- tion of the Calcutta Port. Specially Dr. Hensen had concluded that the best and only technical solution of the problem is the construction of a barrage across the Ganga at Farakka, with which the upland discharge into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly can be regulated to stop the long-term deterioration of the river. In 1960, a WHO consultant team expressed concern over increasing salinity in the river water at the intake point at Palta water works and warned ‘If measures are not taken to increase the flow of fresh water down the Hooghly and so prevent the intrusion of salt water into the reach in which the Palta intake is situated, the raw water will become so saline that it will be unusable over a period of weeks or even months. The seriousness of this threat should not be minimized since all the indi- cations are that the salinity will increase and that this situation may in consequence arise within a few years’ time.’ Even while marking the partition of Bengal in 1947, Sir Radcliffe took notice of this matter very seriously and retained Murshidabad, which was a Muslim majority district in West Bengal and in exchange allowed the Hindu - majority district Khulna to be included in East Pakistan, so that eventual construction of the Farakka barrage does not pose any problem. The objectives of the Farakka barrage project were: 1. Preservation and the maintenance of the Calcutta Port and the regime and navigability of the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river. 2. Considerable improvement of communication facilities including a rail-road link to north Bengal, drainage and sanitation. 3. Improvement of water supply including reduction in salinity, in Calcutta and its industrial suburbs. The barrage was inaugurated in 1975. Since then it has partially fulfilled its first objective. The failure to achieve this objective fully is primarily due to lack of availability of sufficient flow of the river at Farakka during the lean season. But the second and third objectives have been achieved successfully. The percentage of salinity has gone down to such an extent that not only the salinity of the river - water is within permissible limits at Palta water works but it is being utilized for irrigation of summer crops successfully in the coastal areas of Hooghly, Howrah, Midnapore and 24-Parganas districts. Foreword ix However, there has been lot of criticism on the after - effects of the barrage. The criticism mainly centered round the following items: (1) Accelerated bank erosion on the left bank on the upstream of the barrage and on the right bank downstream. (2) Failure to divert adequate volume of flow during the lean season. (3) Failure to reach a long-time agreement with Bangladesh regarding distribution of water at Farakka during the lean season. (4) Drainage congestion owing to excavation of the Feeder Canal cutting across existing drainage lines. (5) Flooding in the upstream reaches of the barrage pond owing to afflux. Any major anthropogenic intervention on a river is bound to result in remarkable changes in its behaviour. The changes may not be always benign or favourable. Steps have to be taken to ameliorate the situation. Moreover since bank erosion results in loss of agricultural land and habitations particularly belonging to the economically weaker sections of the society, the human distress has been rightly focused in the media. This matter has to be addressed with sympathy and understanding. At the same time the technical aspect of the problem needs to be analysed and addressed accordingly. Dr. Pranab Kumar Parua, who has a civil engineering background has a Ph.D from the Jadavpur University. The topic of his Ph.D thesis was associated with stability of banks of Bhagirathi-Hooghly river. Moreover, he has spent his entire service career in the Farakka Barrage Project and Calcutta Port Trust (1965–2002) and was intimately associated with its design, construction and maintenance. He had been associated with river hydrology, bank erosion and the river training works of the Bhagirathi-Hooghly river in the Calcutta Port Trust as Engineer-on-Special Duty of Hydraulic Study Department from 1985 to 1988. Judging from his creden- tials it will be rather difficult to find a more knowledgeable person to deal with this complex subject.