Rivers: sharing, linking and disputes

Prelims and Mains

The Sone agreement divides the water of the Sone, a right bank tributary that rises near Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh and joins the Ganga near Patna.

• Its water was first divided under the Bansagar Agreement of 1973 between Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and undivided Bihar.

Prelims and Mains

River linking is the transfer of water from a basin in surplus to one in deficit, an inter basin transfer.

• It rests on the National Perspective Plan of 1980, worked up by the National Water Development Agency into 30 links.
• The objection is that a receiving region becomes a fresh claimant on water that already has users, and may demand its transferred water even in a distress year.
• The alternative is demand side management: conserving, rewarding efficient farm use and curbing groundwater drawn on free power.
• Ken Betwa is the first link being built; its Daudhan dam lies inside Panna Tiger Reserve, and ten villages are submerged.

Prelims and Mains

The Brahmaputra is the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, so India and Bangladesh lie downstream of whatever China builds on it.

Prelims and Mains

The Farakka Barrage, commissioned in 1975 on the Ganga in West Bengal, diverts water into the Bhagirathi Hooghly to keep Kolkata port navigable, a purpose inside India rather than at the border.

• On the Ganga India is the upstream State and Bangladesh the downstream one, the reverse of India's position on the Brahmaputra.
• The 1996 India Bangladesh Ganga Water Sharing Treaty shares the lean season flow at Farakka; Bangladesh gets half the flow when it is below 70,000 cusecs, and in March to May each side gets at least 35,000 cusecs in alternating ten day periods.
• The treaty expires in December 2026, and both countries say talks to extend it are under way.
• Reduced flow downstream has dried rivers, lowered groundwater, raised salinity and cut fresh water to the Sundarbans.
• Bihar, upstream of the barrage, blames it for trapping silt and worsening its floods, a contested claim.

Prelims and Mains

The Brahmaputra Board is a body set up under the Brahmaputra Board Act, 1980 to prepare master plans for flood control, erosion and drainage, and it remains advisory.

Prelims and Mains

The Cauvery Water Management Authority implements the sharing of the river between Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry as fixed by the tribunal and modified by the Supreme Court in 2018.

• Mekedatu is a dam Karnataka proposes on the river inside its own territory.

Prelims and Mains

The Mahanadi dispute between Chhattisgarh and Odisha went to a tribunal set up in 2018 under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956, and the States may instead settle it by negotiation.

Prelims and Mains

The Tungabhadra is a tributary of the Krishna, formed where the Tunga and Bhadra, which rise in the Western Ghats, join near Shivamogga. Its dam of 1955 irrigates land in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

• The Tungabhadra Board regulates supplies under the Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal, which in 1976 fixed a 65:35 Karnataka to Andhra Pradesh share; the fixed formula and the Board have kept the project largely free of disputes.

Prelims and Mains

The Teesta is a river shared by India and Bangladesh, rising from Tso Lhamu lake in Sikkim.

• India uses it for hydropower in Sikkim and irrigation at the Gajoldoba barrage in West Bengal.
• Bangladesh's flows drop to a trickle from December to February when India holds water upstream, and the Teesta treaty remains unsigned.
• A lower riparian project cannot alter the river upstream in India.

See also: Farakka and the 1996 Ganges Water Treaty

Prelims

The 1994 Upper Yamuna agreement divides the river's water among the basin States.

• It also envisaged three storage dams, Renuka, Kishau and Lakhwar, which remain incomplete after three decades.