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India to link rivers in drought fight
NEW DELHI, India (AP) --Across India's hinterland, so frequently parched by drought, the government wants to link massive rivers and pump in 100 billion rupees ($2.1 billion) to help farmers, whose livelihood has dried up.
"Every two or three years, the specter of drought knocks at our door, causing an acute scarcity of food, fodder and drinking water," Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said Wednesday in a Parliament speech. "We need to find a permanent solution."
Yet he offered no answer to the enduring irony for millions of Indians: the government's granaries are overflowing and grain is rotting, while thousands have little to eat because they are too poor to buy.
Vajpayee was answering strong criticism from opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, who said: "The central government has responded in a most lethargic and insensitive manner" to the drought.
Yet a series of Indian governments have been unable to solve the problems of a rising population dependent upon agriculture, but lashed by alternating floods, cyclones and droughts.
Monsoon rains are crucial to India's farm output. When the seasonal rains are late, or light, crops dry up and hunger follows, especially in areas where irrigation networks are not fully developed.
When it rains, much of the water drains away to the sea due to poor water management.
When there is a bumper crop, the gains do not filter down to the poor because of corruption and mismanagement in the subsidized Public Distribution System -- a nationwide network of grocery shops for the poor.
Massive project
Of the 100 billion rupees Vajpayee promised, half will be given in cash to provincial governments to run employment and food-for-work programs, and the rest in the form of grain and cereals. Corruption, including the siphoning off of money, is a practice at all levels of government in India.
Vajpayee named no specific sum to link rivers through a network of canals.
"Funds for such a massive project will not be a problem. What is needed is to spend it in a proper manner to provide a lasting solution to the drought problem," he said.
Last month, the central bank revised downward its forecast for India's economic growth, because of the drought in several parts of India.
The drought and reports of starvation in the western desert states follow a searing summer of heat waves and light monsoon rains that arrived weeks late, too late to nourish seedlings that crumpled in the ground.
The bank forecast 5 percent to 5.5 percent growth from the previously projected 6 percent to 6.5 percent for the current fiscal year ending in March 2003, because of the drought in several parts of India.
India's sprawling river system mainly comprises snow-fed rivers from the Himalayas and rain-fed rivers starting in the southern Deccan Plateau. The 2,500-kilometer (1,550-mile) Ganges, among the longest in the world, forms India's main river system.
These rivers are intricately tied to people's lives. Two-thirds of India's 1.02 billion people depend directly on agriculture for their livelihood, and farming contributes about 25 percent to gross domestic product.
Most rivers are also worshipped as deities by millions of Hindus, who believe bathing in them purifies the soul and ensures a place in heaven.