Linking of Godavari and Krishna – A major milestone in National River Linking Project
India is witnessing a very deficient monsoon this year that is threatening agriculture, industry and people equally. Yet states in North East and Western India have recently experienced floods that not only led to loss of lives and property but also led to wastage of the most precious resource of the 21st century, ‘WATER’. After hearing disheartening news about these floods, recently there was a news which caught me very happy and satisfied.
The Indian state of Andhra Pradesh took a historic step of interlinking Godavari and Krishna, the two of the most important rivers of the Deccan Plateau together. It was a decades’ pending development that is being seen as a major boost especially to the farmers who have been consistently facing intense water shortage. Incidentally this project namely Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Project was completed in record eight months ever since the work had commenced recently.
The commissioning of the project happened by performing of poojan at the hands of Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu a couple of weeks back. The project is situated near Vijayawada where the water of Godavari and Krishna are made to meet under this project. This event is particularly path breaking as it is claimed to be the first ever success at river interlinking in India, which is part of the larger project namely National Water Grid or the National River Linking Project.
The project is expected to be of great importance as it would meet the irrigation and drinking water needs of drought prone areas of most of the districts of Andhra Pradesh state. The initiative is believed to be a great boon for the human life in this region as this has always been water deficient region for last many years. In the recent times there has been an acute water shortage in Krishna delta forcing the farmers to declare ‘crop holiday’ which means they were totally unable to undertake any sort of cropping due to lack of water.
The magnanimity and reach of this project can be gauged from the predicted estimates that 17 lakh acres including 13 lakhs in the Krishna delta will get assured water for irrigation and for harvesting two agricultural crops in a year. Also thousands of villages en route will get supply of much needed drinking water. The Project would pump around 80 TMC of water from Godavari to Krishna via a canal. Now after commissioning of this project a total of four major rivers in Andhra Pradesh i.e. Godavari - Krishna, Krishna - Penna and Penna - Tungabhadra are connected to one another. Moreover this development is particularly important for India as the state of Andhra Pradesh is famously known as ‘Rice Bowl of India’.
The Pattiseema Project is a major project envisaged under the National River Linking Project that aims to connect almost 30 Himalayan and peninsular rivers. Andhra Pradesh is the first of the states that has four of these rivers interconnected. The rivers next in the pipeline to be interlinked are Ken in Madhya Pradesh with Betwa in Uttar Pradesh.
This milestone and the entire project is an important aspect in the water and food security of India in the days to come. I pray at Sadguru’s lotus feet that all the milestones planned under this project see the light of the day and meet complete success.
|| Hari Om || || Shriram || || Ambadnya ||