Life in the Himalaya by Maharaj K. Pandit

Author:Maharaj K. Pandit [Pandit, Maharaj K.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2017-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dam Rivers, Damn Rivers

A river has as much right to flow unrestricted as we humans have passing through a lane, a street or a highway.

A World of Dams

Dams are artificial structures or obstructions that regulate the flow of water in a river or canal and help divert that water to an area where it is needed most or to generate electricity. These human-made structures are also built to store water in reservoirs behind the dams and to control the water’s downstream flow and thus modify its natural movement. Humans have dammed rivers for thousands of years by diverting part of a river or a stream for constructing canals for irrigation, for running mills, or at a smaller scale for fishing. An early application of dams was to ameliorate the negative impact of floods on human life and property in the downstream regions. The damming of rivers has followed the trajectory of human enterprise and has advanced with changing human needs and developments in technology.

Dam making by humans has a history of nearly 5,000 years, during which time millions of dams were constructed around the world. However, most of these structures have been built in the last century (Poff and Hart 2002). The International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) maintains the World Register of Dams, and its current compilation lists more than 58,000 large dams all over the world (ICOLD 2016). Of these, 150 are very large or mega dams with a height of 150 m or more. William Graf once referred to the United States as a “dam nation” because of the nearly 75,000 dams that had been built, though most of these were small (Graf 1999). China is now the leading dam nation in the world, with nearly 24,000 dams, followed by the United States with 9,265 dams (ICOLD 2016). India is ranked at number three with 5,102 dams. Most of these dams are multipurpose, serving such uses as hydropower generation, domestic water supply, flood control, irrigation, navigation, recreation, and fish breeding. Over one-third (34 percent) of these dams provide irrigation, while 16 percent, 14 percent, 13 percent, and 7 percent are meant for hydropower, water supply, flood control, and recreation, respectively.

Dams were extolled by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, as the “temples” of modern India. However, after realizing the impact of these large engineering structures, Nehru seems to have changed his mind. In an address to India’s Central Board of Irrigation and Power in November 1958, the prime minister turned the paradigm of development on its head by calling the penchant for constructing these mega structures as the “disease of giganticism” (Guha 2005). According to Guha, Nehru soon concluded that there was “evidence of the suffering accumulated over a decade of commissioning and building big dams” and felt that his mentor, Mahatma Gandhi, would not have approved of a path of development that forsook the rights of the “last man” (Guha 2005).

Undoubtedly, dams have helped human communities, especially those living downstream in the floodplains, to live

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