MULLAPERIYAR: THE ENGINEERING SOLUTION

By Er. K Vijayachandran FIE

Report of the expert committee report on Mullaperiyar headed by Dr. D Ghosh, appointed by GOK, has has brought out certain very sensitive facts related to the raising of reservoir levels above the 136 feet fixed in 1979. To quote from the the Hindu of 6th June: "It (the report) noted that at least six conglomerations of human settlements, predominantly tribal ones, had come up in areas that were under prior to 1979. Public institutions and commercial establishments have also grown. Raising of water level would mean displacement of a large number of families along with their economic activities. The question of allowing additional water to Tamilnadu (ie. by raising the maximum water level to 142 feet as directed by the Supreme Court) has to be weighed against the lives and livelihood of these tribal people, since they will be forced to go back into the forest and start exploiting the ecosystem. Signs of distress and fear are visible amongst the tribes........".

Ghosh Committee Report should be an eyeopener: Kerala Government was so far hiding these politically sensitive facts from the general public and the judiciary. Several questions arise out of the revelations of this three member committee: The few thousand acres of land vacated by the reservoir were obviously public property. Was it forest land, revenue land or simply classified as porampokku and who has alloted or sold the title of these land to their present owners? Or, are they illegal occupants?

Anybody familiar with the law of jungles that prevails over the highlands, as revealed elaborately by the recent JCB operations in Munnar, could guess what had happened to the few thousand acres of land vacated by Mullaperiyar reservoir, that had remained dry for nearly three decades! Land worth a few thousand Crore Rupees was cornered by forest mafia, for building public institutions and commercial establishments. They now hold out tribal people as hostage, in order to defend themselves against demolition by JCBs. Money power of these vested interests was spreading exaggerated fears about the dam safety through the media including audio-visuals on the Internet, blocking rational dialogues between neighboring states, and vitiating the fraternal relationship between Tamils and Malayalees.

Er. Krishnan has stated that because of Mullaperiyar diversion, Idukki project is not getting sufficient water. This is a factual error, because Idukki project was conceived and implemented much later, taking into account Mullaperiyar diversion, and Idukki power station has been working at its design capacity, now for years. However, according to my calculation, the design capacity as well as generation at Idukki could be doubled, if there were no diversion of Mullaperiyar waters. Kerala has, therefor, every right to demand a revision of the century old agreement based on this economic rationale. Unfortunately it has preferred the illogical argument of dam safety, because of the vested interests of illegal settlers on the reservoir land.

Tamilnadu operates Mullaperiyar dam and reservoir in such a way, that the entire yield is diverted for its own use. In fact, this could be achieved even after limiting the water level at 136 feet but, Tamilnadu wants to retain 152 ft as the maximum level for storing water over the season, in order to raise the third crop. Dams and reservoirs are, as we know, extremely flexible engineering tools that could be operated to satisfy a variety of conditions and parameters. Irrigation needs of Tamilnadu farmers need to be assessed as the first step, rational use of water insisted on, and their consumption priced realistically for compensating the sacrifice of power generation by Kerala. This is the right royal engineering approach: And, along with the inevitable political give and take this will lead us to fantastic consensus solutions.

Kerala Government should stop echoing the sole concerns of the illegal settlers on reservoir land, as now revealed by the Ghosh committee, and request the Supreme Court to initiate a constructive dialogue between Tamilnadu and Kerala, in order to seek a genuinely engineering solutions.

26..07.2007