Question

One of the key arguments in support of damming rivers across geographies has been the idea that useful water will otherwise ‘go waste into the sea’. Dam, dam, dam has been policy in India for the last many decades and coupled with changing land use, increased industrialization, and pollution, dams have changed the riverscape of the country in ways that cannot be imagined. Landscapes and riverscapes have been altered so dramatically that today’s India might be a different country from the one we inherited in 1947. Virtually no river today flows freely to the sea.

A There have been suggestions that salt pans could, in fact, become a major economic activity here in the years to come.

B For nearly 40 km from the river’s mouth backwards, the Narmada is less river and more sea.

C The sea is reaching out, even rushing in, as if to reaffirm that the bond of sweet and salt water can never be broken, that the river and the sea are linked in an eternal cycle that has a dynamic, complex reality we have no understanding of.

D Because the Narmada has been blocked by so many dams, big and small, and her waters taken away for ‘productive’ use to other places, and because the Narmada no longer reaches the sea, the sea has started a march inwards.

E I am not waste’, the sea seems to be screaming, and this is not merely a metaphor—it’s happening right now, in the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat’s Bharuch district, where the Narmada is supposed to meet the sea.

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