On the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5, the Odisha government launched its ambitious Green Mahanadi Mission in Sambalpur, a city on the bank of the Mahanadi river in the western part of the state.
Under the mission, the government proposes to create a green belt having a width of one kilometre on both sides of the Mahanadi starting from the point where the mighty river enters Odisha up to Paradip where it merges with the Bay of Bengal, with a view to rejuvenating it and its tributaries, and recharging their flow. The project involves planting of two crore saplings along the river on 75,760 hectare of government land and 47,470 hectare of private land by March 2019.
On the surface, it is a state government programme with all good intentions, but quite visible in it is the reflection of the ongoing water dispute between the governments of Odisha and Chhattisgarh, and at the same time political fight between the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on the issue.
Under the mission, the state government will engage thousands of volunteers called ‘ban doot’ (forest messengers) and ‘Mahanadi sevak’ (those serving Mahanadi). Drawn from hundreds of villages along the course of the Mahanadi, the volunteers are supposed to create awareness among people about the need for planting trees along river banks, recharge ground water and arrest soil erosion.
Interestingly, the launching of the mission by the state government follows the Jana Sachetanata Yatra (awareness march), organised by the BJD between May 16 and May 25. The political march started from Jharsuguda and Bargarh districts, the Mahanadi’s entry point to Odisha, and covered 11 other riparian districts before ending in Jagatsinghpur in a show of strength in the presence of chief minister Naveen Patnaik – a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Cuttack to celebrate the National Democratic Alliance’s four years in power.
“Whether government initiative or our political programme, we are determined to take our fight on Mahanadi to the grassroots and make people aware of how Chhattisgarh’s BJP government has been depriving water to our farmers,” a BJD leader said.
Since the Odisha government first raised objections in June 2016 to construction of six barrages upstream Mahanadi in Chhattisgarh, the BJD has come up with well-orchestrated campaigns using the party as well as the government to stump the BJP at regular intervals, throwing in the process a spanner in the wheels of the latter’s ambitious plans to capture power in the state by 2019.
The BJP had already put the plan into action since Modi government came to power at the Centre in 2014 as per its ‘Look East’ policy. Following frequent visits by almost all central ministers to Odisha, the party even notched up a major success in the zilla parishad elections in February 2017.
But then the BJD has successfully galvanised the water dispute between Odisha and Chhattisgarh into a big political movement and as a result, the BJP finds itself on the back foot. The BJD as well as the state government headed by Patnaik have successfully drawn national attention to Chhattisgarh’s alleged attempt to block the flow of Mahanadi water into Odisha, thereby affecting the livelihood of farmers and fishermen, through street protests on the one side, and having official correspondence with the Central government as well as knocking at legal options, on the other.
The BJP government in Chhattisgarh has responded to Odisha’s accusation by saying that the upper riparian state has every right to utilise the water of the Mahanadi for the benefit of its people considering that most of the river’s catchment area lie there. Chhattisgarh’s chief minister Raman Singh has all along said that the BJD is playing politics over the issue.
The BJP in Odisha too accuses the BJD of unnecessarily raking up the issue to cover up its failure in river management. On the other side, after the Supreme Court directed the Central government on January 23 to constitute a tribunal to look into the Mahanadi water dispute as demanded by it, the BJD has claimed moral victory and has accused the state BJP of going against Odisha’s interest by defending the Chhattisgarh government.
The BJP’s position has become more precarious with Odisha’s main opposition, Congress throwing its hat into the ring. Headed by recently appointed Odisha chief Niranjan Patnaik, the Congress has called for a state-wide agitation in protest against alleged obstruction of water of the Mahanadi by Chhattisgarh.
Things came to such a pass that recently the state BJP was forced to snub the Chhattisgarh chief minister to convey the message that it was not “anti-Odisha” on the issue of the Mahanadi water dispute. On May 29, Singh described the stand of the BJD government as just political posturing with the assembly election in mind. “We are using the water of Mahanadi and we will use more of it in future,” he asserted, while talking to the media at Raigarh.
Responding to it on June 2, Union petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that Singh’s statement should be condemned, adding that Odisha’s interests could not be compromised and the state BJP was clear about it.
This gave another chance to the BJD leaders to slam the BJP. “Singh has repeatedly issued statements against Odisha, while the BJP has never talked about stopping construction of barrages in Chhattisgarh. The party is against the people of our state,” BJD leader Pratap Deb said.
The political slugfest apart, the Mahanadi faces far bigger challenges to its existence besides the construction of barrages. Experts and environmentalists say that both the state governments and parties have skipped the issue of the real threats to the Mahanadi for obvious reasons. They accuse both the Odisha and Chhattisgarh governments of virtually handing the river over to big mineral-based companies.
Odisha’s largest river, the Mahanadi is the lifeline of people in the state. The 851-km-long river originates in the Sihawa hills in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district and flows through 20 of the total 30 districts of Odisha. Around 60% of the state’s population of more than four crore depends on it.
Asia’s longest earth dam, Hirakud Dam, was built across the Mahanadi in the 1950s in Odisha’s Sambalpur. Over 90% of the catchment area of the dam’s reservoir is in Chhattisgarh and Odisha does not have any control over it. Chhattisgarh, on the other side, has constructed a total of 179 dams and barrages in the Mahanadi and its tributaries in the recent years and is already using 13,500 million cubic feet of water a year, obstructing downstream flow to Odisha.
“Mahanadi is already a water-stressed river. The huge coal deposits along its basin across Odisha and Chhattisgarh are its real curse,” says water activist Ranjan Panda. “Both Odisha and Chhattisgarh governments claim to be fighting for farmers of their respective states. But the real cause seems to be the agreements they have signed for supplying water from the river to a large number of thermal power plants that would eventually come up in both the states.”
The basin of the Mahanadi has huge coal deposits – 24% of India’s coal reserves are on the Odisha side, while 16% are on the Chhattisgarh side. Both the states have signed agreements with power companies for setting up thermal power plants to generate around 200,000 megawatt of electricity. And the source of water for these water guzzlers is the Mahanadi and its tributaries.
Coal mining on the basin of the Mahanadi has already contributed to the pollution levels of the river and faster sedimentation process of the Hirakud dam. Now, a grave danger lurks over the river in the form of new thermal power plants in both the states.
The formation of a tribunal is no doubt a step in right direction, but experts feel that it may take its own sweet time to resolve the issue. The Cauvery water dispute is 200 years old and has not been solved yet. The tribunal on the river delivered a verdict after 17 years, but the issue is still deadlocked.
According to them, a serious dialogue between both the states is the need of the hour to save the Mahanadi. For a start, the states may take up an extensive study to ascertain how much water will remain in the Mahanadi if all the thermal power plants become operational in their respective parts of the Mahanadi basin.
Priya Ranjan Sahu is a senior journalist based in Bhubaneswar.