A Sham in the Name of Indira Gandhi

As always, droughts would remain the defining condition of the lives of communities in the ecologically fragile regions of the Thar. So pervasive and severe have been the effects of the drought that started in 1998-99, that the state has been forced to declare drought even in the canal command area of the gigantic Indira Gandhi Canal from 2000 onwards. This year too the government declaration has marked about 75 percent of the Indira Gandhi Nahar Project (IGNP) canal area in the Bikaner and Jaisalmer districts as affected by a severe drought.

The IGNP is among the biggest irrigation schemes in the world, having fed on loans from the World Bank, the Japanese and the government of India. It was conceived as a project with multiple objectives of ‘greening’ and ‘settling’ the desert. Hailing as the ‘kingpin’ of state planning for developing the desert, it started in 1960s and till 2002 about Rs 2,204-crore had already been spent on it. The 445 km long-lined main canal running parallel to the Indo-Pak border, with nine branches, seven lift schemes and 21 direct distributaries, apart from 8,187 km of minor canal network, have inscribed a new hydraulic spectacle traversing the sandy plains and sand dunes. According to official reports, more than 9.5 lack hectares of area have been opened for irrigation. The IGNP is meant to provide drinking water to 3,461 villages and 29 towns in nine districts of western Rajasthan. So far so good.

Compare these statistics to the grim contemporary realities in the canal command area: IGNP Stage ii. Over these continuous drought years, there have been massive drops in crop production, restrictions imposed on crops like wheat and groundnut that were one-time favourites, shrinking of agro-business in once burgeoning mandis, steep fall in the markets for agricultural land and searing of water conflicts among the farmers at different locations of the canal network. These horror stories flourish in the backdrop of increasing vagueness of state declarations about water availability schedules and sharpening dilemmas about allocations and usage of water for drinking or agricultural purposes.

The peculiar credit and speculation-oriented cash economy of the command area has precipitated increasing debt burden on the farmers as they have been forced to invest on items like land levelling, field preparation, sowing, fertilisers and insecticides despite uncertainties about the availability of water. The majority of farmers have barely got water for the winter crop since 1999-2000, and that too for crops with fairly low market prospects.

From the beginning, the IGNP has promoted the culture of growing water guzzling cash crops. Today, for most farmers, these have become a distant dream. Given the high costs of maintaining agricultural land in the canal area, most of the farmers no longer consider it feasible to sow crops for meeting food and fodder security needs of their households. More than 90 percent of the farmers rely on the market or the Public Distribution System (pds) for procuring food to meet their daily needs. Agricultural labourers whose numbers have swelled in these drought years of acute scarcity have been forced to migrate to areas of Ganganagar and Punjab where they have to compete not only with migrant labour from other states but with harvesters as well.

Nowhere is the rampant and insatiable greed of the State more clearly evident than in the cases of selling traditional water catchments and grasslands, the common property resources, in IGNP, Stage ii area. With the dissolution of these critical security nets and the communitarian practices and rights associated with them, most of the traditional strategies of the people to cope with droughts have been thrown asunder. The drinking water supply system is mostly mechanised leaving little for people to do other than rely on the whims and fancies of the lower bureaucracy for erratic electricity supply and water availability. Majority of the open reservoirs (DIGGIS) do not have adequate water filters. People are forced to drink water that gets contaminated over hundreds of kilometres.

Those who are settled in their fields are unable to access even these DIGGIS for their drinking water, as the DIGGIS are mostly located in habitations. They have to either pay for tank water from the DIGGIS or drink from the water supply in the field water channels. As the summer sets in, access to water is going to depend on the pronouncements of the canal bureaucracy who keep the people guessing by giving contradictory statements about the status of water availability.

Still, the IGNP continues to be presented as a perennial canal system. The present water crisis has been explained by the ‘failure of rains’ in Himachal and Punjab or by giving pleas about discords in inter-state water sharing. No doubt, there is more than a grain of truth in these metrological observations, but ascribing these for the water crisis looks a bit too preposterous.

The grim realities of the IGNP throw up several issues that put to question many assumptions that inform the wisdom of State policy and planning not only about disaster management, but about a broader notion of development. The drought cycle that looms large over the command area has brought to the fore the debacle the IGNP has been, the sordid story of State-sponsored big development from the top, parodying the Green Revolution of Punjab and playing havoc with the fragile ecology of the region and the destiny of the local communities.

Before the writing on the wall becomes too painful and unmanageable, is it not time to question the pitfalls of the myopic and selective historical vision of the State, the consequences of purging the organic experiences, rights of desert communities and their ecological regimes? How many more droughts are needed to acknowledge the crisis of the development paradigm that nurtures the nefarious dealings in the circles of the IGNP bureaucracy, politicians and the influential rural elite? By extending the IGNP to yet another 2 lack hectare area in the Barmer region, are we not extending the human and social devastation?

This article first appeared in Tehelka on June 18, 2005