Dam issue won’t go away

In clearing the ecological impact study for a new Mullaiperiyar dam, the Centre is clouding further a most complicated water issue. The histories of such water issues have been steeped in bitter disputes. In independent India, the Supreme Court benches have been arbiters of such disputes for decades without being able to satisfy the parties.

Authorising Kerala to conduct an impact study on the 120-year-old dam is bound to cloud further the issue. That the environment ministry has taken a U-turn in the matter exacerbates the political situation on the ground. The Mullaiperiyar dam is the brainchild of British engineer John Pennycuick, who pawned his family jewels to complete the project, diverting eastward waters running into the Arabian Sea to irrigate Tamil Nadu.

Kerala has been the generous benefactor and Tamil Nadu the obvious beneficiary in this complex arrangement that is now a political hot potato. Kerala makes the point that the old masonry dam is getting weak and, if it collapses, it could endanger the lives of people downstream, while Tamil Nadu contends that the engineering wonder is still in good shape. Furthermore, Kerala asserts that the construction of a new dam is not to deny Tamil Nadu irrigation water, but the latter is not convinced that the former’s word will be kept. There is scant hope that either state would be much the wiser by the preliminary ecological study for a new dam.