BHAKRA: MYTHS, NOTIONS AND REALITY

Some Important Findings of the Study of the Bhakra Nangal Project Conducted by Manthan Adhyayan Kendra

(Unravelling Bhakra: Assessing the Temple of Resurgent India ; Shripad Dharmadhikary, Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Badwani (M.P.) 451 551)

There is a widespread belief that the Bhakra project catalysed and indeed brought the green revolution to India . This myth has been carefully cultivated and nurtured by the engineering/irrigation bureaucracy, particularly in the Ministry of Water resources, which has constantly exerted to get as much money for itself from the budget and use the lions share for Bhakra-like centralized mega projects such as the Narmada Valley projects and now the Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) project.

It is implicit in this belief that the Bhakra project is mainly responsible for the increased irrigation and food production of Punjab and Haryana which has made these States the food baskets of the country. Indeed, the agricultural production of these two states is often used as a surrogate for the benefits of the Bhakra project. These beliefs have also found their way to school textbooks and are unquestioningly accepted, particularly by our elite, despite the fact that there is no official study which has even analysed the impact of Bhakra on irrigation and food production, let alone its financial, social and environmental impacts.

This report is an attempt to examine and analyse these issues, particularly the role that Bhakra has played in irrigation and food production. In the process, we have also examined the history and geography of the Bhakra project, and what would have been the likely scenario in its absence. The results of this examination are eye opening, and constitute a grave indictment of those in our establishment who have promoted this myth unmindful of the extremely serious consequences that this deception has had on the irrigation and agricultural policies of the country.

An analysis of the planning of the project reveals that the main motivation for the conception and enlargement of the Bhakra project initially was that the pre-partition province of Punjab wanted to improve its negotiating position with Sind in the sharing of the Sutlej and Beas waters. Instead of planning a project on the basis of the perceived need for the water in a particular area, and based on ascertaining the optimal solution for that area, planning of mega irrigation projects has often proceeded by first finding a good site, doing a feasibility of the largest possible project which can be built on the site, projecting a requirement of water on the basis of the project and then determining how and where the water can be used. We have found that this has often been the basis for planning mega irrigation projects, and Bhakra was no exception.

There is a widespread belief that before Bhakra, there was virtually no irrigation in Punjab . This myth has been encouraged by commentators such as B.G. Verghese who wrote in 1994:

“There is little doubt that the green revolution has transformed Punjab and Haryana and that this would not have been possible but for Bhakra-Pong. Deprived of their water, Punjab and Haryana would have remained semi arid tracts except for some modest and uncertain inundation irrigation…..”

In actuality, by 1953-54, when irrigation from Bhakra began, the irrigated area of Punjab and Haryana was already 7.47 Million acres, which was 3 times the irrigated area added by the Bhakra Project. Some of these irrigation systems had been in place since the mid 19 th Century. In fact much of the Bhakra Command area was already fairly well irrigated before Bhakra. Some of the districts in Bhakra command already had more than 50% of the areas under irrigation. Punjab 's agricultural production before Bhakra was also impressive and in 1953-54, it already produced 20% of the total wheat in the country.

Contrary to popular belief, the gross area commanded by the Bhakra project was only 30% of the total geographical area of Haryana and 18.6% of Punjab . Punjab and Haryana are much more than Bhakra . More significantly, if one sees the actual irrigation in Punjab, only 24.33% of the area being irrigated (in 2001-2) in Punjab is by canals, and much of this was already being irrigated prior to Bhakra by the Sirhind, UBDC and Harike and other canal systems. In the districts of Punjab receiving canal waters from Bhakra, the net area irrigated by canals ranges from 1.5% to 19%. This is also because though irrigation in Punjab has increased significantly since independence, the bulk of the increased irrigation has been due to groundwater irrigation from tubewells (even in the Bhakra command). Though the percentage of canal irrigation in Haryana is more than Punjab (about 50%), the picture there is not very different either. Already by the late 60s tubewell irrigation had surpassed canal irrigation in Punjab . Between 1990 and 2001-02, the net are irrigated by canals in Punjab decreased from 1.576 M Ha to 0.987 M Ha, while the net area irrigated by tubewells increased from 2.233 M Ha to 3.068 M Ha. The reason for this was also because the net productivity of land irrigated by tubewells was much more than land irrigated by canals. The main reason for this is the greater control of the farmers over the water with tubewell irrigation. It may be noted that the performance of the High Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds introduced in mid-60s - that initiated the green revolution - was very sensitive to the timing of watering. There is thus no basis for the popular belief that irrigation in Punjab is primarily because of Bhakra and even less for the myth that the dramatic increase in food production in Punjab is because of Bhakra.

It is often argued that much of the groundwater used by tubewells is recharged by canals. However, this groundwater recharge by canals does not require a storage dam. In fact much of the recharge is from canals existing much prior to Bhakra. What is far more important is that most of the groundwater being used is being mined unsustainably from underground accumulations existing for centuries. Our study shows that about 43% of the agricultural production of Punjab and 35% of the production of Haryana is based on this unsustainable mining of groundwater.

We also discovered the startling fact that the Bhakra project did not significantly increase the irrigated area from the Sutlej waters. Almost the entire water of the river (prior to partition) was already being used through various irrigation projects on the river, particularly the Sutlej Valley projects, (though much of the irrigated area was in Pakistan ) even without the dam. This is partly for the reason that the Sutlej is largely a snow fed river, having inflows from snowmelt in summer and from rainfall during monsoon. There is no great justification therefore for having a large storage dam on such a river. The reservoir was also over-designed as is also evident from the fact that it has not filled up in most of the years. What the Bhakra project achieved was to transfer the irrigation from areas earlier irrigated from the Sutlej downstream in Pakistan to the upstream command of Bhakra. It also resulted in almost the complete stoppage of the flow of the Sutlej downstream of the dam and thus deprived not only the areas being irrigated downstream, but almost the entire riverine community, including fisherfolk living downstream of their rights over the river waters.

Coming to foodgrain production, it may first be noted there was hardly any dramatic improvement in the foodgrains situation of the country and/or the contribution of Punjab and Haryana even many years into the operation of the Bhakra project. The dramatic increase in foodgrain production (which is called the green revolution) began in 1966, almost 12 years after the irrigation from Bhakra began. It coincides with the introduction of the High Yielding Variety (HYV) of seeds. Of course, these seeds required large quantities of water, at the right time, fertilizers and pesticides. But most of the increased irrigation requirement during that time was met from tubewells and groundwater, and a very small role was played by the waters of Bhakra.

Thus, while foodgrain production (mainly wheat and rice) did increase quite dramatically in Punjab and Haryana after 1966, the attribution of this to Bhakra would be a gross distortion. While foodgrain production in Punjab increased from 4.164 M tons in 1966-67 to 17.2 M tons in 1985-86, and in Haryana from 1.985 M tons to 8.146 M tons during this period, the increase was mainly due to wheat and rice. During the same period, the production of many other crops in Punjab and Haryana decreased! In fact, the production of pulses in Punjab decreased from 1.3 M tons in 1966-67 to 0.687 M tons in 1985-86 and has declined even thereafter. In Punjab , the cultivated area under wheat and rice went up from 46% in 1966 to 78% in 2002. In Haryana it went up from 23% in 1967 to 57% in 1999. During this period, not only did the area under other crops including oilseeds and pulses decline, even the productivity of those crops declined. For example, cotton yield declined from 570 kg lint /Ha in 1990 to 206 kg / Ha in 1999- a 65% decline in just 9 years. Agriculture in Punjab and Haryana has thus been reduced to a virtual wheat/ rice monoculture. One of the important reasons for this is the heavy use of water, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which have rendered the soil almost incapable of growing any other crops. Not only that, in recent years, Punjab and Haryana have seen stagnation in the productivity of wheat and rice. Maintaining the same level of productivity is requiring a continuously increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides.

The Johl committee appointed by the government of Punjab to study the crisis in Punjab agriculture, in its report of October 2002, paints a very grim picture of the state of Punjab 's agriculture. It points out that,

“On the other side, continuous production of wheat and rice in annual rotation in the irrigated areas of Punjab is having a deleterious effect on soil, water, environment and social fabric of the State. Soils of Punjab have become virtually a laboratory culture that requires higher and higher doses of fertilizers, micronutrients, insecticides and pesticides to produce same level of wheat and/or rice….The situation is becoming very serious day by day which can very soon prove to be economically disastrous, socially untenable and politically unsustainable, which can turn into a manmade national calamity if not dealt with judiciously.”

A similar finding was rendered by H.S. Shergill appointed by the Punjab government to study rural credit and indebtedness in Punjab . He has reported that,

“In the last about one decade, another dimension of the modernization process of agriculture has appeared in Punjab . It is the continuing stagnation of yields of main crops, despite increasing application of modern inputs and growing expenditure on these inputs…. It may be seen that in the last about 10 years (1985-86 to 1995-96), yield of wheat has grown at a very slow rate, yield of rice has remained stagnant and yield of cotton have actually declined. Similarly yields of sugarcane, maize and potato have remained stagnant. The information reveals clearly that net value of all crops per acre has remained stagnant over this 10-year period. During the same period, cash expenditure, on modern farm inputs incurred by Punjab farmers has been steadily growing and that has resulted in a continuous decline in the net surplus generated from the production of these crops. This has resulted in Punjab farmers increasing dependence on borrowed funds to finance the purchase of their growing use of modern farm inputs……

“In fact, in more recent years, the farmers have been even reporting a decline in the yield of main crops”.

Shergill's study of indebtedness of Punjab 's farmers found an alarming situation. It found that 82.9% of the farmers were found to be taking short-term loans from different credit agencies for their agricultural operations. Just the short-term loan borrowed per acre averaged to Rs. 3590/acre. 34.43% of the farmers and 70% of the small farmers borrowing short-term crop loans failed to repay the entire amount borrowed after harvesting and selling their crop. Since most of these loans were from moneylenders charging an exorbitant interest, one can imagine the dire financial situation of a majority of the small farmers of Punjab . The result has been a very serious crisis in Punjab agriculture which has led to a large number of farmers suicides which are shocking for a state regarded as the showcase of agriculture in India .

It is said that the major beneficiaries of the Bhakra project are the dry districts of the Hissar belt of Haryana. However these very areas are now afflicted with a very serious problem of waterlogging and salinity. Indeed this problem has become serious for large parts of canal irrigated areas in these two states. According to the Vice Chancellor of CCS Agricultural University, Hissar,

“In Central and south western regions of Haryana……… canal irrigation has led to the problems of water table rise, waterlogging, flooding, secondary soil salination. ……. A current estimate of saline and waterlogged areas in the State is around 4000 sq. Kms and if suitable measures are not taken, the areas with such problems is likely to increase to about 20,000 sq. Kms. within the next 2-3 decades.”

This means that about 14% of the irrigated area of Haryana is already affected and this could go up to 70%! A Working group set up by the government of India in 1991 to study waterlogging, has reported that,

“The State of Punjab is experiencing very serious problem of waterlogging in the south western districts namely Faridkot, Ferozpur and Bhatinda, over the past few years. The water table has been continuously rising ….. Vast areas of this tract have been waterlogged with the result that thousands of Hectares of land have gone out of cultivation, buildings have started crumbling down and roads have been badly damaged. It has been estimated that waterlogged areas …. is of the order of about 2 lakh Hectares.”

Our own field visits to many areas of Punjab and Haryana confirmed the alarming situation of waterlogging and salinity caused by Canal irrigation.

The fact that the “miracle” of the green revolution is already a thing of the past is clear from the per capita availability of foodgrains which has declined from 480 grams per day in 1965 to 416 grams in 2001 after peaking at 510 grams in 1990. The decline has been even sharper for foodgrains other than wheat and rice, such as pulses, which constitute an important source of protein. Even this per capita “availability” is not really available to the poor. This is happening because they do not have the purchasing power to buy foodgrains, or retain the foodgrains produced by them, which is why huge stocks have been rotting in FCI godowns in recent years, or have had to be exported at throwaway prices. This is how the Johl committee stated this paradox:

“ India has accumulated huge stocks of foodgrains that are not finding market and are proving to be a huge drain on the State exchequer and the government is obliged to purchase substantial new arrivals at higher and higher prices every season under the system of minimum support prices. Although as per the nutritional requirements of the Indian population, these stocks may not be considered in excess, yet due to the lack of purchasing power with the poor, supply exceeds demand…”

This was an inevitable consequence of the agricultural policies which have been pursued. These were designed to maximise “marketable surpluses”, rather than fulfilling the nutritional requirements of the vast majority of the people. Hence, the focus was to concentrate inputs in selected areas. Bhakra like projects put in place the infrastructure to drive intensive, centralized agriculture. The obsession of the agricultural policy makers who take pride in having brought about the “green revolution” with aggregate production, without bothering about purchasing power in the hands of the majority, is not unlike the obsession of the present economic policymakers with “GDP growth”, which is currently taking place simultaneously with the growth of unemployment and poverty.

Bhakra, like other similar large storage dams has also created a whole host of other problems such as the displacement and destruction of livelihoods of thousands of people (who are still not rehabilitated), all kinds of serious environmental impacts ranging from loss of forests, loss of wildlife, increase in diseases, destruction of fish, waterlogging of lands etc. Large dams represent a huge tampering with the natural ecology of large areas including the catchment, the command and the downstream area of the river. Moreover, we are already seeing a massive impact on health due to the large-scale use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers which are necessarily entailed by such agricultural policies. We are thus seeing and will continue to see huge increases in degenerative diseases such as cancer due to the contamination of food and water with pesticides. Also, food grown with chemical fertilizers is nutritionally inferior to food produced with organic manures, and is bound to lead to nutritional deficiencies in our people.

It is often argued that given our famines and food shortages earlier, we had no option but to go for these agricultural policies represented by Bhakra type projects. But it is not true that such projects and policies were the only way of increasing irrigation and food production. Apart from the fact that Bhakra made only limited contribution to these, the experience with micro watershed development (rainwater harvesting) has shown that it is a much more cost effective method of increasing irrigation. It is also much quicker to implement apart from being more decentralized and therefore more equitable. Since such policies would have spread the benefits wider and more equitably, we would not have had a situation where millions go hungry while millions of tons of foodgrains rot in godowns. They would also have allowed a better mix of foodgrains, rather than an increasing dependence on wheat/rice, with all its attendant economic and nutritional advantages. And of course, they would not have led to such large-scale degradation and waste of land.

It is said that the benefits of decentralized rainwater harvesting have become known only recently and therefore could not have been exercised as policy options in the 50s and 60s. Our study shows this to be totally untrue. Those options were well known and had also been advocated by many people at that time as clear policy alternatives. Significantly, the advantages of these options which had been pointed out included not only increased food production but also that it would place purchasing power in the hands of a much larger section of people. However, these didn't find favour with those who controlled the establishment who favoured large centralized projects.

Summary

Our examination of the Bhakra project has therefore inevitably led us to the examination of the agricultural policies of the “green revolution” which are credited to the Bhakra project. In particular however, we found that:

• Contrary to popular belief, Punjab was fairly well irrigated even before Bhakra. In fact Bhakra did not increase the irrigation from the Sutlej . What Bhakra did was to transfer some of the irrigation upstream from the original irrigation which was mostly in what became Pakistan .
• Also, contrary to the popular mythology built around Bhakra, most of the increase in irrigation in Punjab and Haryana is because of the mining of groundwater and not due to Bhakra.
• Much of the increase in foodgrain production in Punjab which occurred after 1965 (the so called green revolution), coincides and was due to the introduction of High Yielding Variety of seeds, and the concomitant heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This “green revolution” started a full 12 years after irrigation from Bhakra commenced. Bhakra had little to do with the green revolution.
• However, Bhakra did provide centralized intensive irrigation to some areas which was part of the package of a new agricultural policy which required, apart from HYV seeds, intensive irrigation, large doses of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. This policy was geared towards increasing production, especially for producing marketable surplus. This policy has led to the gradual dominance of the cropping pattern by wheat/rice. It has also led to the large scale waterlogging and salinization of lands and has rendered a significant percentage of the land uncultivable. It has also required ever-increasing doses of fertilizer and pesticide and therefore ever increasing cost of inputs. But after the initial spurt in productivity, yields have stagnated and have even been falling. The result is a dramatic impoverishment of farmers in recent years, resulting in hundreds of suicides by farmers even in Punjab . It has also led to a situation where despite record stocks of food, a large number of the poor are unable to buy food for their own requirement. The Punjab miracle is therefore rapidly turning into a nightmare.

Lessons for the future

Our analysis of Bhakra has therefore led to a comprehensive indictment of the agricultural policies associated with Bhakra, which are credited with the Green revolution. What is alarming however is that the policy makers who are in charge of the agricultural and irrigation policies of the country have been propagating several myths about Bhakra which have no basis in fact. They have done so over the last 40 years without undertaking a comprehensive examination of the facts regarding what Bhakra actually did in terms of irrigation or food production. What is even more shocking is the fact that now that there is more than adequate evidence -in government reports themselves-about declining productivity, waterlogging and salination, declining foodgrain consumption, lack of purchasing power in the hands of poor, increasing indebtedness of farmers and their increasing suicides, which are clear pointers towards the ongoing and impending collapse of the green revolution style agriculture, the policy makers are still choosing to bury their heads in the sand. Instead of confronting the enormous crisis looming large, they are busy promoting the gargantuan Interlinking of Rivers Projects which would involve literally scores of Bhakra type projects. While those who pushed the Bhakra project and agricultural policies that it represented, may have been doing it on an understanding, however mistaken, that this was the only way of achieving self sufficiency in food, such a benign explanation would be too charitable for the present planners who are pushing the ILR project and still wanting to pursue the same policies despite clear and compelling evidence of the collapse of these policies.

Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, April 18, 2005