Pipe dream

Clues to the reason for Chouhan’s high-pitched propagation of the river-linking project can, however, be gleaned from the state secretariat in Bhopal. Apparently, the Narmada-Kshipra link is much smaller than the original mammoth Rs 8,000-crore project that entailed inviting global tenders. The current project is actually a little more than a pipeline linking the two rivers, rather than an elaborate exercise in building reservoirs and canal networks that interlinking involves. “A pipeline connects the two rivers, the rivers are not interlinked,” a government official clarified.