Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
We still carry this legacy of a narrow understanding of rivers as an
exploitable resource. This idea is instilled in engineers in this country.
Even now rivers are considered to be a subject meant only for engineers.
The roles of other professionals like ecologists, hydrogeologists and
others are deemed irrelevant. In the Western countries, though, the
paradigm of river management and utilization has shifted to Integrated
Water Resource Management (IWRM). The new IWRM paradigm takes into
consideration demand management and provides for ecological needs
of water too. The ancient Indian ethos to revere our rivers and worship
them as goddesses took these two considerations into account as well as
the needs of all other living beings dependent on the river. However, the
current reductionist approach adopted towards rivers in India has given
rise to an unsustainable number of dams, irrigation canals and hydropower
projects.
SECOND KNOT - DEFORESTATION IN RIVER CATCHMENT AREAS
The shrinking of glaciers is largely perceived as the cause for
the reduction of water in the rivers, especially the Himalayan rivers.
Glaciers are important to rivers, no doubt, but the extent of glaciation
that contributes to the river is only 10% on an average. To elaborate on
this further, the case of Ganga is represented in Table 1, which indicates
the catchment area from glaciers in comparison to the catchment area
covered by mountains. Similar is the case for other Himalayan rivers too.
It may, therefore, be concluded that majority of water in the rivers
come from the runoff from the catchment area rather than glaciers. If
the contribution of runoff from catchment areas is so high in the case of
Himalayan rivers fed by glaciers, then, the central Indian and peninsular
rivers must have an even higher dependency on this runoff. 41
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