The biggest engineering project of the country. The interlinking of rivers in India is trying to connect 37 major Himalayan and Peninsular rivers of the country. The Interlinking in India was an old plan which started first in the year 1982, and it started by the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) government under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2002.
The mission is to make sure that greater equity in the issue of water by increasing the water in drought and rain-fed areas. Also, the Interlinking of River (ILR) program is of national importance and has been taken up on acute priority.
Ministry of Water Resources prepares a plan which is under the National Perspective Plan (NPP). National Water Development Authority has identified the 14 links under the Himalayan Rivers Component and 16 links under the Peninsular River. The part for the basin transfer of the water-based on the field look over and examine.
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The expectation from the Interlinking of Rivers project is:
- 30 rivers linkage.
- More than 3,000 storage structures will be developed.
- Spread across 15,000km canal network.
- Transfers 174 trillion liters of water every year.
- The total cost is up to Rs 5.6 trillion.
- This project becomes the most daring feats of engineering ever attempted.
The Pros of the Interlinking of River projects is:
- It will irrigate about 87 million acres of the farmland-roughly equal to Pakistan.
- Controls flood.
- It generates 34 GW of hydroelectric power.
Political Changes:
- Water transfer and water sharing are sensitive subjects that have already spawned century-long disputes.
- Water is the main state subject in India.
- The center empowers to bring the inter-state river under its control to serve the national interest, it has the effectively never done so owing to enormous resistance from the states.