Dams in troubled waters

Centre and states must address issues of safety

Some of the revelations made at a recent national conference on dam safety are quite disturbing. Nearly 80 per cent of the country’s 5,000-odd major dams are over 25 years of age and are facing grave safety challenges. Worse still, about 170 of them are more than 100 years old, built with material and technologies deemed obsolete now. These are basically earthen structures that are innately far weaker than the concrete dams normally constructed now. Besides, their design and safety aspects fall woefully short of present norms. These, therefore, pose a grave danger to life, property and infrastructure. India is particularly susceptible to dam-related mishaps, given that the bulk of its landmass is prone to frequent earthquakes. This vulnerability has tended to escalate of late because water flows into reservoirs are turning increasingly unpredictable. Ageing, unabated wear and tear, and sub-par maintenance practices are further exacerbating this menace. 

True, outright dam failures are not very common, but they are not rare either. At least 36 such incidents, involving mostly earthen dams, are already on record. About half of them have been truly catastrophic in scale, causing extensive devastation. The recent ones include the Jamunia dam in Madhya Pradesh in 2002 and the Lawa-ka-bas dam in Rajasthan in 2003. The other notable dam failures in the past include the Panchat and Khadakwasala dams in 1961, Nanak Sagar in 1967, Tigra in 1970 and Chikkahole in 1972. Regrettably, even though India has the world’s third-largest count of dams, next only to China and the US, it does not have any statutory framework to ensure dam safety. A Bill for enacting a law to fix responsibility for dam maintenance and for specifying mechanisms and procedures for this purpose was introduced in Parliament by the previous government in 2010, but it was not pursued and allowed to lapse with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha. The present National Democratic Alliance government has now prepared its own draft of such a law and circulated it to the states. Its passage by Parliament needs to be expedited in view of the gravity of the situation.

However, much of the blame for the dismal condition of dams rests with the state governments which, being the custodians of these dams, are directly responsible for their upkeep. The Central Water Commission (CWC), the apex organisation for water resources management, had asked the states to prepare “emergency action plans” for large dams and had even laid down guidelines for this purpose way back in 2006. But not many states have chosen to prepare such strategies. The water resources ministry, too, had in 2011 mooted crisis management plans for states to handle dam-related contingencies. It had also asked them to establish dam safety organisations. Unfortunately, not even half of the states have done so till now. This apart, the five-year Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project, being run by the CWC with financial support from the World Bank, hardly covers 5 per cent of the unsafe dams in seven states. This scheme needs to be continued even after its scheduled culmination in 2018 and extended to all the ill-kept dams. Unless such safety issues are suitably addressed, the spectre of devastation due to dam-related mishaps will continue to haunt the country.