Government outlines Rs 25,000 crore plan to create national waterway grid

02 Jun 2014 Evaluate

The new Government has outlined an ambitious Rs 25,000 crore plan to create a national waterway grid linking Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Godavari and Ganga rivers. The eight-year project aims to ensure high water levels in rivers through the year by linking the Himalya Rivers with seasonal rivers, improving rivers role in crop irrigation and making them navigable.

Futher, the waterway grid will also help control floods as the excess water of rivers, which have strong seasonal flows, can be spread to other rivers. The proposed waterway grid will have road linkages to ports to facilitate faster movement of cargo. The transportation of goods through this network could save of about Rs 300 per tonne. The minister of roads and shipping has given an in-principle clearance to this eight-year project. Further, Inland Waterways Authority of the country has written to state governments to plan roads keeping in view waterways falling in their states.

Meanwhile, same move of inter-linking of rivers was also introduced by the NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee during 2002. It had set up a task force to look into inter-linking of rivers and in the same year, the Supreme Court ordered the constitution of a committee to take the idea forward. However, the plan did not implement due to some concerns.

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