NEW DELHI, Sep 4 (IPS) - While they are a perennial feature of the
Indian subcontinent, this year's floods have left leading
environmental activists pointing fingers at the many large dams built
with the idea of controlling natural water systems.

''There is much to learn from the experience of floods this monsoon.
Contrary to the case made out for large dams for controlling floods,
the flood situation has actually been worsened by the dams,'' said
Medha Patkar, internationally-known campaigner against big dams.

This year, with several downstream states accusing those upstream of
releasing water with improper timing, it has become particularly hard
for the champions of big dams to hit back at people like Patkar. Even
officials in neighbouring Nepal have accused India of not opening
sluice channels on time, aggravating floods in that Himalayan country.

''Mismanagement and negligent operations of the large reservoirs on
the Tapti, Narmada, Krishna, Godavari, Mahi and Sabarmati rivers have
created man-made disaster in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh,'' said Himanshu
Thakkar, hydrologist and coordinator for the South Asia Network on
Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP). ''The worst affected states are
also the ones with the biggest dams''.

Thakkar has been demanding a ''credible, independent enquiry as to
why such a situation arose when they it could have been avoided with
more optimal operation of projects.'' The true extent of the damage
cause by the floods is yet to be estimated but hundreds of thousands
of people are reported to have been affected.

Some experts believe that this year's deluge, affecting large parts
of the country, resulted from a failure to balance properly flood
control with the other major uses of big dams --irrigation and
hydropower generation.

Ramaswamy Iyer, former chief secretary in the water resources
ministry, told IPS that many of the dams were specifically designed
for flood control. ''But there is an inherent conflict of this
objective with the other objective of trying to maximise hydropower
and irrigation,'' he said.

Iyer said while flood control demands that dams allow adequate space
to receive flood flows, the objective of maximising hydropower
potential means that water level in dams is kept as high as possible.
''As there is greater pressure to increase power generation, the
objective of flood control gets lesser attention. This can lead to a
situation when water has to be released suddenly on a large scale
leading to disastrous flash floods,'' he said.

Dinesh Mishra, an engineer and convenor of the Barh Mukti Abhiyan
(Campaign for Freedom from Foods) says: ''It has been widely
acknowledged in official documents that the siltation rate of an
overwhelming number of dams has been much higher than original
estimates. The real problem is silt, not water. Silt eats up the
storage capacity of reservoirs. Hence, their capacity to absorb flood
flow is reduced."

But Thakkar attributes this year's devastation to sheer
mismanagement. In particular, he says, the floods which ravaged Surat
city in the western state of Gujarat could have been prevented. Known
for its diamond cutting industry, the city saw three-fourths of its
area submerged so that the army had to be called out to rescue
thousands of marooned people.

An estimated three million people had to do without basic needs such
as food and clean water on the evening of Aug. 6, when the irrigation
department suddenly released 800,000 cusecs of water from the Ukai dam.

According to Thakkar, enough information on rainfall was available to
suggest that water release in manageable quantities should have
started from Aug. 1. But this was neglected so that when water was
finally released, it was about double the drainage capacity of the
Tapti river. Worse, water was released around high tide.

In the Marathawada region of western Maharashtra state, where
hundreds of farmers were reported to have committed suicide this year
due to the damages their incurred following the drought, the
situation changed to one of worse distress from floods.

Vijay Diwan, an activist with Nisarg Mitra Mandal who has monitored
the situation carefully, says: "A comparison with the rainfall for
the earlier five years shows that rain has not been significantly
higher this year in districts like Jalna, Parbani and Nanded, so
people are asking whether these floods were related to the
mismanagement of projects like Jayakwadi and Issaper dams and
Vishnupuri Lift Irrigation Project."

People in these parts were caught between large volumes of water
released from upper dams and no water release from lower dams, said
Diwan. There was considerable water already stored in the dams when
the rain started.

Thakkar points out that data available for several dams show that
they had substantial water just before the onset of monsoon and
therefore, had much less capacity to absorb monsoon flows.

''Of course, reservoirs need to store water as protection against the
possible failure of monsoon, but there have to be some norms about
what is adequate protection. In the case of Ukai, the water in
storage before monsoon was much greater than the needs of Surat,''
said Thakkar. ''Clearly there are several aspects of dam management
that can be debated, but this year's floods have led to serious
doubts about the usefulness of dams for flood-protection.''

Ravindranath, an activist closely involved with flood-warning in
northeastern Assam state, said: "Our past experience has been that
even relatively small dams have been able to unleash destructive
flash floods, but now nearly 160 dams are being planned in the
northeast and some of these are very massive projects''.

Moreover, the north-east has been witness to large-scale ecological
destruction in the catchment areas due to illegal lumbering,
quarrying and mining. ''With ruined catchments and large-scale dam
building, the future is hazardous,'' said Ravindranath who works with
'River Basin Friends', a well-known environmental organisation.

An important aspect of this year's floods was that while floods were
reported from what were regarded as water-deficit areas (there was a
highly destructive flood in one of India's most drought-prone
districts -- Barmer in Rajasthan), some of the surplus basins
experienced drought-like conditions, said Iyer.

Activists say this year's apparent mismanagement is the best argument
yet against India's ambitious but controversial plan to link together
its major rivers to offset floods against droughts that occur
simultaneously in widely-separated parts of the vast country. (END/
IPS/AP/IP/EN/DV/CV/CS/BD/RDR/JS/06)