MEKONG-GANGA DIALOGUE - Observer Research Foundation

ecovery, distribution, subsidies and equity. So this is one area which requires our
attention.
How to enhance the availability of water? Enhancing the availability, there have been
many ideas in this country and one of the grand ideas was interlinking of rivers. Of
course, interlinking of basins at the margin has been possible; in fact it has been in
practiced. Latest example is Narmada project which takes water from Narmada basin
and part of it is put to Rajasthan, which belongs to another basin. So it is inter-basin
transfer of water. There have been some small projects like this. But at a grand level,
this type of a transfer perhaps is not very feasible. In fact, our largest water resources
which flow to the sea are in the eastern region, Brahmaputra valley, and Brahmaputra
water cannot be just simply transferred to this side because of the topography. It goes
down and then again it starts arising towards the north-west. It would be very difficult
and in fact it would involve an enormous amount of energy to transfer such waters, too
much of energy that perhaps the value of water will not be worth it.
Water use efficiency has been another important concern with us. The way we use our
water has been very inefficient. In fact, more than 80% to 83% of the water that we
have goes for irrigation and most of this water is carried through earthen canals which
are unpaved and then through channels in the fields and a lot of water gets absorbed in
the land, lot of water sieves through. In fact, the irrigation efficiency so far on an
average is about 30% to 35%. You have brought the water to surface to the canals after
spending a lot of energy ultimately and if you put it down under the ground then to
extract it again you require a lot of energy. Underground aquifers should be charged
with surplus water, when it is not being used but not with that valuable water which has
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