Jairam Ramesh speaking at the inaugural session of India Rivers Week 2014
Channel: IndiaWater Portal
Date: 2015-01-04

Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh, delivering the inaugural address at the first ever India Rivers Week emphasized “Ours is a paradoxical society. While we show a lot of respect for rivers socially, we deal with rivers with utmost unconcern and disrespect… India Rivers Week and India Rivers Forum is most welcome, will look forward to participate in it… If we want to save our rivers, the first step is to ensure that no untreated industrial effluent or sewage finds its way into our rivers.” Standards and regulations do exist in the country but they are not enforced. Almost seventy five per cent of the pollution in Ganga is due to untreated sewage. It is relatively easy to control the discharge of industrial effluents but far more difficult to control the discharge of untreated sewage. In the last 20 years because of successive interventions the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Dissolved Oxygen (DO) levels has improved in large stretches of Ganga. But faecal coliform levels have deteriorated because of discharge of huge quantities of untreated sewage in both Ganga and Yamuna. 
Speaking on development objectives and the growing energy needs of India, he clarified, “Hydro projects may be a painful choice, but we cannot close our doors to it. This is because we cannot use too much of coal; mining of coal is environmentally disastrous, burning of coal leads to more carbon dioxide emission leading to global warming. Nuclear plants take along period to install and there are serious hazards associated with them. Solar and wind energy should be developed but can it meet the energy needs of a population of 1.2 billion? With the result that people looking at India’s energy situation come to the conclusion that we have to develop our hydel resources. 
Presently we have developed about one-third of our hydel potential and twenty per cent of our electricity comes from hydel sources. We have considerable hydel potential left to be harnessed but much of this potential is in rivers that are subject to inter-State disputes or are in environmentally fragile areas like upper reaches of Himalayas; one-third of India’s hydel potential is in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. This requires buildings of large dams, submergence of vast forest areas, biodiversity areas and transmitting that power over 2000 km. There is the problem of reservoir induced seismicity in addition. However, India cannot completely neglect the development of hydel resources. What we can do is ensure stricter environmental regulations & their enforcement, a cumulative assessment at ‘basin’ and not ‘project’ level and the minimum environmental flow in the river itself.” He was critical of the current dispensation’s move to dismantle all environmental regulations. The engineering approach of water resources development has ensured extraction of maximum water; the point is in ensuring maximum uninterrupted flows in the river. In Uttarakhand, the MoEF found out that minimum flow should be 4-5 times what was being provided by project authorities. Jairam Ramesh also raised the issue of encroachment of floodplains in the name of development or faith. There is a need to work on River Regulation Zone on the lines of Coastal Regulation Zone.  
 
Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh speaking at the India Rivers Week-2014
The Union Water Resources Ministry has been pitching for inter-linking of rivers saying the move can yield “rich dividend”. Jairam Ramesh, former Minister, MOEF however stated “We seem to be indulging in the romance of interlinking of rivers. We need to be more cautious in hurrying up the proposed interlinking of rivers project and understand their ecological and environmental consequences better”, he said. He urged for more debates on water agreement treaties, the need to look at water in the regional context and better cooperation within States and also with our neighbouring countries.