Subina along with her family is battling water crisis. However, his concerns are not about the tap water, but a large, old reservoir filled to capacity. One day it will explode and wash away their lives, he fears.
Vandiperiyar village is a few kilometers downstream of the Mullaperiyar dam in Idukki. As a marriage expatriate, Subina raises these fears from her new family and neighbours, for whom to discuss the court-approved water level in the dam, its carrying capacity, the leakage in its structure, its complicated litigation and political implications for dinner- Table conversation. , Subina, who is also studying for her civil services entrance exam, is so incredibly smart and outspoken that she has spoken about the fears and demands of the locals here in Malayalam TV news debates.
Subina told Mint, “The water in our homes is not potable, but we are not worried about it. We don’t want Mullaperiyar’s water to be given to Kerala. We just want to be able to live here safely and have a good time.” The only solution is to build a new dam for it.”
disputed for decades
Kerala, where the dam is located, and Tamil Nadu, which controls the flow of water inside the reservoir, are locked in a decades-long bitter dispute over the safety of the 126-year-old structure.
Despite the fairly close social and economic ties between the border districts, local politicians on both sides keep sentiment high and create resentment, sometimes allowing it to boil down to protests and riots. Idukki hosts a large population of Tamil-speaking settlers who labor in its tea and spice plantations while Malayalees often migrate to Tamil Nadu for work and higher education.
Kerala is convinced that the dam presents a danger – if it bursts – not only to the population immediately downstream, but a domino effect on neighboring reservoirs that will wipe out millions in districts as far as Kottayam, Ernakulam and Alappuzha. Across state lines in Tamil Nadu, in the rain shadow of the Western Ghats, the waters of the Periyar River through this dam have been an irrigation lifeline for over a century for nearly three lakh hectares of drought-stricken agricultural land, which he forbade have make. gambling with.
This controversy over dam safety, which Tamil Nadu claims is a lie, has been argued for over 20 years in both the state’s high courts and the Supreme Court. While both the state governments face off in this political standoff, local residents, who depend on the dam for their livelihood as well as those who fear for their lives, remain wary of each other.
The districts of central Kerala have faced frequent flash floods, with widespread loss of life and damage to property, in the monsoon season from 2018 to 2021. While changes in long-term climate patterns have made adverse weather events more frequent, residents below the Mullaperiyar dam are angry with Tamil Nadu for what they experience as a sudden discharge of water from the dam without any prior warning. Huh. This makes the monsoon floods even worse. The fears of dam-related devastation in Kerala have once again reached its peak and the state government has once again sought a safety review in the Supreme Court.
Who benefits?
James Wilson is a dam safety expert and a member of a Special Advisory Group of the Kerala State Electricity Board, which owns and operates large hydroelectric projects in the state. Wilson was part of Kerala’s second trial on the dam, which led to the Supreme Court in 2014 appointing a supervisory committee to continuously monitor the dam’s resilience.
Wilson said that at the heart of the disagreement lies the disproportionate benefits to Tamil Nadu from the dam and the state’s refusal to accept the safety assumptions of those living downstream. “Tamil Nadu generates electricity from the dam as well as the entire water while Kerala bears all the risk. Therefore, a sustainable solution is to build a new dam with investment from both states and both share power from the hydroelectric plant. Till then this debate is not going to be resolved.”
“The committee, accompanied by representatives of two state governments and a senior Central Water Commission (CWC) official, visits the dam only twice a year,” Wilson said. “Instead, we need continuous monitoring of both the water levels. and the structural strength of the dam. Safety is a dynamic function here. Ideally, we should build a combined data collection and publication method that is transparent and does not allow for the below-mentioned.” Build confidence among residents that the dam is safe.”
“Buy Lifeboat”
The noise to close the dam peaked last year, when a Change.org petition by Kerala High Court lawyer Russell Joy garnered 840,000 online signatures, including from some of the biggest figures in Malayalam cinema.
Clearly, Joy is a vocal opponent of Dam’s continued working, a view she frequently airs as a guest on political programs and TV interviews. In 2018, he successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to set up a disaster management panel for the dam. In a recent video for a Malayalam news channel, Joy talks to his audience from a stationary speedboat, possibly from somewhere along the state’s famous backwaters. Joy reveals her 10-minute address as to why she is in the boat.
“The owner of this boat is no longer with me today, but I can tell you that he bought it in case the Mullaperiyar dam broke; the boat would let him quickly escape into the open sea,” Joy says in Malayalam. “It’s become our last resort now, hasn’t it?”
Joy gives advice to her audience who can and should buy speedboats soon, and lifejackets to everyone else. “Kerala has frequent earthquakes and who knows how many dams will break here,” Joy continues. “What we know is that our governments are not prioritizing our safety. So, buy a life raft. It’s worth it.” 35,000-40,000 and (when the dams break) you can save six-seven people like this.”
A writ petition by Joy is pending before the Supreme Court, asking him to appoint an international agency that can judge the remaining lifetime of the dam and fix a date for its closure. Their primary argument is that dams have an average lifespan of about 40 years and generally become inactive in other countries after this period. In such a situation, there is no hope of working on the 126-year-old dam.
conflicting position
It doesn’t necessarily have to be right. In fact, Mullaperiyar is not the only dam that is more than 100 years old in India. In the CWC’s National Register of Large Dams, there are many others that are more than a century old and are still operational.
“Based on our reviews, we have often recommended measures to strengthen the balance for the dam by the Tamil Nadu government,” said a senior CWC official, who requested anonymity, as he was authorized to speak to the media. No, told Mint. Some of these recommendations are pending since 2006 because even when Tamil Nadu agrees to do this work, the Kerala government refuses to allow them to do so on the ground.”
Contrary to its public stance on prioritizing safety, Kerala has often thwarted Tamil Nadu’s efforts to strengthen work on the dam. For example, last November, it refused permission to Tamil Nadu to cut down trees to strengthen the Baby Dam. (Bachha Dam is one of four dam structures, which also include a main dam, an earthen dam and a spillway). Kerala believes that any strong work on the dam will weaken its demand for a new dam; Tamil Nadu hopes that meeting the safety recommendations will allow it to argue in favor of raising the recommended reservoir level to its maximum capacity.
changing climate patterns
Roxy Cole, a senior climate scientist, has studied how monsoon patterns in India have changed since 1900. His team at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, found that the total annual rainfall from the southwest monsoon has decreased since 1950, while in shorter periods of heavy rainfall (from two-three hours to two-three days). developed. , putting India’s rainfed regions at high risk of drought as well as both cloudburst and rain-induced flash floods.
“We have observed that there has been an increase in short duration heavy rainfall events over Idukki, Kottayam, Pathanamthitta and Ernakulam districts, especially in central Kerala,” Koll said. “These have made flash floods and landslides more common. Heavy rains, changes in land use patterns, deforestation in favor of monocultures (such as Idukki tea, rubber and cardamom plantations) and additional quarrying. After 1900 From where the dam is now lost, more than half of its forest cover has been lost.”
In the short term, Cole recommends that governments can better manage potential disasters by integrating rain forecasts from the Indian Meteorological Department with better calibrated reservoir management and water discharge systems. This means that several departments at the Center and both states have to be prepared to respond jointly and rapidly to manage future adverse weather events.
unsafe behavior
The CWC official had earlier said that most of this information is already with Kerala. However, the state is often reluctant to share it with Tamil Nadu. “Kerala has installed some instruments to measure the flow of water at the confluence of Mullayar and Periyar rivers (dam is built at their confluence), flow in the dam, rainfall in the catchment area, etc. Kerala needs to make it available to Tamil Nadu on a real time basis so that (the latter) can better plan the discharge of water.”
With the two states at loggerheads and neither willing to compromise their position without losing the election, the CWC hopes the new Dam Safety Act, 2021, will force a synergy.
While the dams have so far been under the regulatory control of the respective state, the law mandates periodic safety audits and the task of strengthening the balance as recommended by the newly formed National Dam Safety Authority. “Earlier, we could only recommend safety guidelines to the states, and could not ensure compliance. With this act, non-compliance becomes a criminal offence,” the CWC official said.
On 8 April, the Supreme Court empowered the supervisory committee with interim functions and powers equivalent to a new body proposed under the National Dam Safety Authority, 2021 Act.
hostilities ended
In Vallakkadavu, a village four km downstream from the dam, lives 68-year-old Abu Bakr. He remembers fishing with his friends in the waters of the dam as a teenager, a time when locals could freely access this neighborhood reservoir. Today, the dam cannot be contacted on behalf of Kerala by local residents, government officials or even politicians.
In the 90s, Abu Bakr was hired by the Tamil Nadu Public Works Department as a laborer for dam repair and structural strengthening work. Of the many Idukki residents Mint interviewed in the villages below Mullaperiyar, Abu Bakr was one of only two who ever visited the dam (the other is a retired police constable).
I ask if he is afraid of the dam bursting one night. “Not really,” he replies. “I’ve seen the dam; I know it’s strong. But my kids are so scared; they haven’t seen it from inside and they imagine the worst.”
These days, Abu Bakr runs a small roadside shop carved out of a creek below, an insignificant branch of the mighty Periyar, for which the two southern kingdoms are battling. In March, as the summer heat hits Kerala, the stream is dry.
“In monsoon, when water is released from the dam, we are not warned in advance,” said Abu Bakr. “We only find out when the streets are flooded and the bridge is inundated, and of course, we’re all angry again. I wonder if you’re here in the summer. Politicians come during the rains.” . For the rest of the year, nobody cares.”