When the Kosi river floods in Bihar each year, Indian politicians and policy makers always have the same prescription: a high dam upstream ...
When the Kosi river floods in Bihar each year, Indian politicians and policy makers always have the same prescription: a high dam upstream in Nepal.
But as the two previous parts of this series have explained, the Saptakosi High Dam will not be effective against the massive inundation that the plains frequently experience. The project could cost up to (Indian) Rs 50,000 crores and the quick rate of sedimentation would give it a life of only three decades to five decades.
All solutions dictated by big government, big business and big infrastructure must be questioned as it relates to the Kosi inland delta and its three million people. One such mind-boggling boondoggle is plan of river-linking so favoured by the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership. The scheme would cost an amount outside the imagination, and create socio-political conflicts between upstream-downstream regions, provinces and countries. Mostly importantly, this plan to transfer water from surplus to deficit areas would change the ecology of the subcontinent.
The Indian authorities – without consulting the Nepali counterparts – imperiously propose the Saptakosi High Dam and canals across the length of the Nepal Tarai as key elements to the river-linking scheme. As a dangerous plan cooked up by untidy minds that will bring untold misery to South...
