Listening to the BBC World Service in the early morning I heard a cultured Indian remark ‘I think the British have a lot to answer for’. His complaint was about the affect of the Tehri Dam on the River Ganges. The design was begun by the Russians, in 1961, and the dam was completed in 2007. Wiki explains the problems as follows: ‘In addition to the human rights concerns, the project has spurred concerns about the environmental consequences of locating a large dam in the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayan foothills. There are further concerns regarding the dam’s geological stability. The Tehri dam is located in the Central Himalayan Seismic Gap, a major geologic fault zone. This region was the site of a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in October 1991, with an epicenter 500 kilometres (310 mi) from the location of the dam. Dam proponents claim that the complex is designed to withstand an earthquake of 8.4 magnitude, but some seismologists say that earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.5 or more could occur in this region[citation needed]. Were such a catastrophe to occur, the potentially resulting dam-break would submerge numerous towns downstream, whose populations total near half a million. A protest message against Tehri dam, which was steered by Sundarlal Bahuguna for years. It says “We don’t want the dam. The dam is the mountain’s destruction.” The relocation of more than 100,000 people from the area has led to protracted legal battles over resettlement rights, and ultimately resulted in the project’s delayed completion. Since 2005, filling of the reservoir has led to the reduced flow of Bhagirathi water from the normal 1,000 cubic feet per second (28 m3/s) to a mere 200 cubic feet per second (5.7 m3/s). This reduction has been central to local protest against the dam, since the Bhagirathi is considered part of the sacred Ganges whose waters are crucial to Hindu beliefs.’
I take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of the British people. They did not build India’s first dams, but they accelerated the pace of dam-building and Ganges-spoilation. Rivers should regarded as sacred in the pre-Christian sense (‘set apart’) on account of their high importance. See this Wiki entry on the geology of the Himalayas to chill your spines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas#Geology. And see these photos of India’s water shortage to super-cool your spine. The dams, it appears, are being used to divert water from rivers and rural areas. It is used to generate electricity for the cities and to keep them supplied with water for lawns, swimming pools, car washing etc. Mahatma Gandi would not approve of this. But everyone wants to live in cities, so what can be done? Limiting the population is one thing but Indira Gandi had no luck with this policy. She was assassinated in her garden after commenting in a speech on the preceding day that ‘I am alive today I may not be there tomorrow I shall continue to serve till my last breath and when I die every drop of my blood will strengthen India and keep a united India alive’. Compulsory sterilization contributed to her unpopularity but Sikh separatism was the immediate motive for her assassination.