The BJP thread

[G_B_]

lol praying for the death of prithivraj chavan......

[ravishingravi]

http://youtu.be/pfl9ppGHr18 Not bad for 12 th pass

[Yoda-esque]

http://youtu.be/pfl9ppGHr18 Not bad for 12 th pass

Star

[G_B_]

http://youtu.be/pfl9ppGHr18 Not bad for 12 th pass

Super....

[Yoda-esque]

BJP has some terrific speakers in their ranks

[Sachin=GOD]

Obama will offer a $10 trillion carrot to Modi The PM will be invited to a private dinner at White House. He will be the only world leader attending the UNGA to get special US Presidential attention. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/obama-will-offer-a-10-trillion-carrot-to-modi

[Sachin=GOD]

Modi's river-linking plans extremely dangerous, says Maneka Gandhi

Terming the ambitious river-linking plans of BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi as 'extremely dangerous', party MP Maneka Gandhi has said it was she who had stopped former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee from going ahead with it. The idea of inter-linking of rivers was floated during the NDA government headed by Vajpayee. Replying to a question on linking river Gomti with Sharda at an event here last night, Gandhi, who is sitting MP from Aonla, said "I had stopped Atalji from this rubbish (Maine hi Atalji ko roka tha is bakwaas se). Such plans are nothing but rubbish." "There is no question of it (linking rivers). There can be no scheme in the world as bad as this. Every river has its own eco-system, own fish, own PH value. If you connect one river with another, it will kill both of them. Don't be in any misconception," she said. Gandhi said one can build canals and clean them regularly but connecting Ganga with Gomti would kill both the rivers and is "extremely dangerous". She also questioned from where the land for such project would come. "You will require 10-15 lakh acres of land which will be spoiled. Who will give that much land?," she said. Modi, in his speeches during election rallies, has been advocating linking of rivers to prevent drought and floods in the country.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/modis-riverlinking-plans-extremely-dangerous-says-maneka-gandhi/471817-3-242.html

[hhunaeh]

Why did USA get a special mention in pranab mukerjee's speech? Did he talk about china and japan too? If he did not and mentioned only usa then it is a departure from the signal the statements in the past few weeks were sending out. Why the change?

Govt will bring renewed vigour in its engagement with the Unites States of America: President Pranab Mukherjee

[G_B_]

agree with maneka on this....

[surajmal]

River interlinking is the need of the hour and why Commies/libtards must be ignored (and IMO should be thrown in jail for objection. Objection to interlinking should be akin to treason because this project is that important):

In the long run, quipped Keynes, we’re all dead. Nations, though, have to think of the long run. The hunt for oil, water, land, food, energy – for many it is a question of survival of their people. But not for India this long run bunkum. Best left to posterity, we say – let them think about their problems when the time comes. As Marx said: “Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?” By 2050, there will be 1.6 billion of us. That was the population of the whole world at the turn of the last century. What have we planned for these 1.6 billion Indians? Take the example of Bihar, India’s third most populous state with a rural population of 88% according to the 2011 Census. “By the year 2050”, says one government report, “all the river basins except the Kosi, Gandak, and the Sone-Kao-Gangi basin will fall in the category of severe water scarce basins. This means 55% of the population will face the situation in which water availability becomes a primary constraint to health. About 35% of the state population will have to survive in water scarcity condition. Only 10% of the state population will be in ease situation.” This is one Indian state, one government report. What of the rest of India and her people? What lies in store for them in their long run? One word: Disaster. By 2050, India would have become a middle-income economy but her people would still die of hunger and her land would still be ravaged by floods and famines. Why? Because here and now, in the comfort of 2014, we think 2050 lies decades into the future, and the future has always been difficult to envision for a people who are at heart reactive not proactive. This is a country where thinking big is considered small, where lifetimes are spent in keeping millions the way they are – impoverished in their medieval idylls with no access to modernity. Modernity – that Goddess of evil whose curse may blight the hypocritical lifestyles of those who think, work and act on behalf of the impoverished. And so, building dams is evil, raising their height on Supreme Court orders even more so; possessing an atom bomb when all the hard bargainers have one is evil; switching to safe, pesticide-free, high-yielding genetically modified food is evil, and so is harvesting nuclear energy, mining rare-earths, or testing new drugs on animals. But the most evil of the lot is linking rivers, and it is presently this evil that we shall focus on. It is important to realise that river linking as a project trumps most, if not all, engineering feats man has ever accomplished from the Great Wall to placing Armstrong on the moon. Not even the splitting of a continent in two – the Panama Canal – comes close to the sheer scale of this idea. At its heart, the river-linking project entails connecting rivers that criss-cross India, rivers that are the lifeblood of a people who revere and fear them in equal measure.The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) shows the river-linking proposal through two maps – the links have been divided into Himalayan and Peninsular. A better description is available at the Water Resources Hydrology and Information System for India website. The sheer scale of the project is astounding. Just one of the 30 odd links – The Yamuna-Rajasthan link – is 1835 kms in length, spanning from east to west with an ability to divert 17,906 million cubic metres (mcm) of river water. With such ground-breaking, geography-changing propositions, it was but inevitable that the Interlinking of Rivers Programme, or ILR, would not only become a political hot potato, it would also sap the energies of our environmentalists, intellectuals and opinion-makers. The divide is clear. The government wants the ILR; over our dead bodies, say the Eco Warriors. But what are the facts? In April 2008, the National Council of Applied Economic Research brought out a comprehensive report titled: Economic Impact of Interlinking of Rivers Programme. It is by all accounts the most thorough and objective report yet prepared on the economics of the project, proving yet again that we as Indians are genetically programmed to commission – and then obtain in due course – the most painstakingly detailed and wide-ranging executive and judicial reports ever to be tabled by man or beast. What happens to them is another matter. The ILR, begins the report, is aimed at linking different surplus rivers of country with the deficient rivers to increase irrigation intensity, to make water available for drinking and industrial purposes, to produce hydroelectricity, and to mitigate the effect of drought and floods. The report goes on to add that, “With an increase in population, the requirement for food is also growing. Faster growth in agriculture production cannot be achieved without increasing irrigation intensity. ILR is expected to provide additional irrigation to about 30 million hectares (mha) and net power generation capacity of about 20 to 25 GW. The envisaged additional area to be irrigated by the ILR is nearly 40 per cent of the current irrigated area.” The report also states that “additional benefits come in the form of prevention of floods and droughts. There are also other benefits that are of both short-term and long-term nature, like the investment taking place in the construction of ILR network. The total cost of ILR is estimated to be Rs 5,60,000 crore at 2002-03 prices.” With our annual rainfall – 4000 billion cubic metres (bcm) – distributed unevenly across the country, proponents of ILR say linking of rivers would help distribute the water and prevent flooding in one state and drought in another. To be sure, this inter-basin transfer of water is not an altogether new concept. The United States of America, for example, transfers 45 bcm in this manner, with plans to increase capacity to 376 bcm, while China is implementing a scheme that would transfer around 48 bcm. Another IWMI report highlights two specific examples, the Colorado-Big Thomson water transfer that, although minor compared to the ILR proposal, “diverts approximately 0.284 cubic km per annum of water from the upper reaches of the Colorado river eastward into the South Platte River Basin, part of the Mississippi-Missouri basin”. The second is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, managed by Lesotho and South Africa, Phase 1 of which diverts 750 million cm of water per annum. There are also examples from Canada, Sri Lanka, Mexico and many other countries. There is precedence, yes, but what good is precedence when faced with an almost psychological disregard for the long run? We are adept at repeating only failed experiments not successful ones, and it is of little concern to us that by 2050, our per capita water availability is expected to fall from the present 1170 cm to a terrifying 300 cm or even lower. The water scarcity threshold defined as “necessary for civilised living” is 1700 cm per person. So we are officially uncivilised at present; by 2050 we may turn barbaric. To add to our woes, the Ganga – Brahmaputra – Meghna basins, home to 44% of our population, drain more than 60% of the country’s water resources. Contrast this with the Krishna, Cauvery and Penner basins along with the easterly flowing rivers between Penner and Kanyakumari that drain only 6 % of India’s water. It is already being predicted that by 2050, with things the way they are, India will once again become a net-importer of wheat. Interlinking of rivers was given a serious look only in 1980, by the Indira Gandhi government when water development authorities were set up and the various links proposed. The Vajpayee-led NDA government, wanting to “free India from the curse of floods and droughts” decided to fast-track the proposal, helped in no small measure by the landmark 2002 Independence Day address by the scientist-turned-president APJ Abdul Kalam. At the time even the BBC jumped in, decrying that “Water for laundering clothes is a perennial problem” in India. But this being a country where Presidents and Prime Ministers routinely go unheeded, nothing happened for a good decade. Then, a giant awakened to the malaise. Networking Of Rivers Vs Unknown Court: The Supreme Court of India Date of Judgment: February 27, 2012 (http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/41857247/) Citation: Writ Petition (civil) no. 512 of 2002 Bench: Justices S.H. Kapadia, A.K. Patnaik, Swatanter Kumar The Supreme Court stated that even though “there had been a change in the Government…a decision had been taken, in principle, to continue with interlinking of rivers”. If the UPA also agreed with the NDA on ILR, what then was causing the inexplicable delay in implementing the project? “A high level Task Force was set up. Feasibility Reports were prepared for the intended links. Subsequently, this Court made it absolutely clear that the 2005 order of the Court in these respects have to be complied with in letter and spirit. The Committee constituted under this order shall be responsible for carrying out the inter-linking program. Its decisions shall take precedence over all administrative bodies created under the orders of this Court or otherwise.” The Supreme Court, in venting out its frustration at the earlier non-compliance of its orders, wasn’t quite done with the scolding. “We grant liberty to the learned Amicus Curiae”, it said, “to file contempt petition in this Court in the event of default or non-compliance of the directions contained in this order. We not only express a pious hope of speedy implementation but also do hereby issue a mandamus to the Central and the State Governments concerned to comply with the directions contained in this judgment effectively and expeditiously and without default. This is a matter of national benefit and progress. We see no reason why any State should lag behind in contributing its bit to bring the Inter-linking River Program to a success, thus saving the people living in drought-prone zones from hunger and people living in flood-prone areas from the destruction caused by floods.” Two years have passed and there has only been one development: a clear violation of the Court’s orders. The Ministry of Water Resources doesn’t even mention ILR on its website. The much-vaunted Committee, composed of ministers, scientists, environmentalists, social scientists, geologists, engineers, and the Amicus Curiae last met on September 12, 2011. There is no mention of whether they have reconvened after the 2012 Supreme Court judgment. While those handed down the task of implementing the ILR dilly-dally, the anti-ILR lobby has gained not only voice but also momentum, describing the project as “frighteningly grandiose”, “extravagantly stupid”, “annihilatingly wrong”, a “subcontinental fiasco”, “a flood of nonsense”, a “dangerous delusion”, and a case of “hydro-hubris”. Hydro-hubris! Ramaswamy R Iyer, a former Secretary, Water Resources, and the person who recently counselled us about “Developmental fundamentalism” thinks the ILR is “Prometheanism of the crassest kind” and that India “needs to be saved from this madness.”. At the forefront of this battle is “India’s best known environmentalist”, Dr Vandana Shiva – founder of the NGO Navdanya. She says the ILR project “is based on the false assumptions that water from surplus rivers can be diverted to deficit rivers. The truth is there are no surplus or deficit rivers. There are only living and dead rivers”. This is plain wrong. The Government of India has carried out a detailed hydro-geological, agro-economic, socioeconomic and environmental assessment of basin water transfers and in particular the Ken-Betwa link. It found “the Ken river basin, till Greater Gangau dam, to be water surplus” and proposed 1074 mcm of Ken water be delivered to Betwa through the ILR link, enabling irrigation of around 0.1 mha of land. Dr Shiva, however, thinks this is “violent” irrigation; the “non-violent” variety would entail construction of village tanks to be “replenished by women who carried water from the river” just like as in the ancient times. There we have it: a fitting riposte to a 5000 km long canal network: an endless Indian file of village women ferrying water on their heads. But what of the disaster facing India as far as food security is concerned – if not the ILR, what other alternate strategy? “There are many alternatives”, says Dr Shiva. “The first is to conserve water in the soil through organic farming.” Organic farming to feed 1.6 billion Indians by 2050? Granted, organic farming – despite it requiring 40% more land than conventional farming – has its benefits but to feed a billion hungry mouths one cannot go by rhetoric, one needs indisputable scientific facts and the facts prove otherwise. In a landmark paper in the journal Nature, a team of scientists showed conclusively that organic farming provides up to 34% lower yields than conventional farming. Sunita Narain, another environmentalist, has entered the ring, too. Her argument is that “when one river is in spate so is the next river”. Meanwhile Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have taken up ILR projects with gusto, with the former having already completed Phase I, the Narmada-Kshipra link. True: an assessment must be thorough and take heed of every possible grievance. Bihar has a thing or two to teach us in this regard. Its ILR report, detailed and compassionate, should stand as a beacon for protestors and advocates of ILR alike. Moreover, it is the only state that is providing timely updates on the ILR progress, the last being as recent as April 23, 2014. There is no denying that a project as gigantic as the ILR must, repeat must, take into account environmental and rehabilitation issues – after all, this is a nation whose father once said: Earth provides enough for our need, but not for our greed. But criticism of bipartisan government agencies, of a Supreme Court decision, of global precedence, of committees comprising noted geologists, scientists, environmentalists and engineers, must in the end be based on sound scientific and technical logic, not absolutist scare-mongering or conspiracy theory slugfests. A billion lives are at stake, a billion mouths are to be fed. There is a time for listening. But to think big, to think clearly and caringly, to think of 2050 and the long run, that time is gone. It is now a time to lead.

http://www.newslaundry.com/2014/06/09/a-bend-in-the-river/

[surajmal]

SC has already said to get on with the interlinking

Supreme Court directs Centre, states to expedite river interlinking project New Delhi: The Supreme Court today directed the Centre to implement the ambitious interlinking of rivers project in a time-bound manner and appointed a high-powered committee for its planning and implementation. Observing that the project has already been delayed resulting in an increase in its cost, a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia said the Centre and the concerned state governments should participate for its "effective" implementation "in a time bound manner". The bench, also comprising justices Swatanter Kumar and A K Patnaik, appointed a high-powered committee comprising of representatives of various government departments, ministries, experts and social activists to chart out and execute the project. The committee will be comprising of Union Minister of Water Resources, its secretary, Secretary of Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) and four expert members appointed by Water Resources Ministry, Finance Ministry, Planning Commission and MoEF. Representatives from state governments, two social activists and senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, who has been assisting the court in the case, will also be members of the committee. "We direct the Union of India to forthwith constitute a committee for interlinking of rivers," the bench said, adding "we direct the committee to implement the project". "The committee shall plan for implementation of the project," the bench said, adding the delay has already resulted in an increase in the cost of the project. The river interlinking project was the brainchild of the NDA government and in October, 2002, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had formed a task force to get the project going against the backdrop of the acute drought that year. A Centre-appointed task force had in a report recommended division of the project into two - the Peninsular component and the Himalayan component. The Peninsular component - involving the rivers in southern India - envisaged developing a 'Southern Water Grid' with 16 linkages. This component included diversion of the surplus waters of the Mahanadi and Godavari to the Pennar, Krishna, Vaigai and Cauvery. The task force had also mooted the diversion of the west-flowing rivers of Kerala and Karnataka to the east, the interlinking of small rivers that flow along the west coast, south of Tapi and north of Mumbai and interlinking of the southern tributaries of the river Yamuna. The Himalayan component envisaged building storage reservoirs on the Ganga and the Brahmaputra and their main tributaries both in India and Nepal in order to conserve the waters during the monsoon for irrigation and generation of hydro-power, besides checking floods. The task force had identified 14 links including Kosi-Ghagra, Kosi-Mech, Ghagra-Yamuna, Gandak-Ganga, Yamuna-Rajasthan, Rajasthan-Sabarmati, Sarda-Yamuna, Farakka-Sunderbans, Brahmaputra-Ganga, Subernarekha-Mahanadi, and Ganga-Damodar-Subernarekha. The task force had also concluded that the linking of rivers in the country would raise the irrigation potential to 160 million hectares for all types of crops by 2050, compared to a maximum of about 140 million hectares that could be generated through conventional sources of irrigation. The fate of the ambitious Rs. 5,00,000 crore project proposing linkages between major rivers by the year 2016 has remained a virtual non-starter and the detailed project report (DPR) is in cold storage.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/supreme-court-directs-centre-states-to-expedite-river-interlinking-project-180161?site=classic

[surajmal]

Maneka Gandhi is a dumb aunty and should be given a nice lecture to not talk out of turn and on topics she doesn't understand.

[hhunaeh]

The govt should talk to ecologists, geologists and people who know the science of rivers and oceans and not just engineers and economists before taking on a project of this scale.

[ravishingravi]

The govt should talk to ecologists' date=' geologists and people who know the science of rivers and oceans and not just engineers and economists before taking on a project of this scale.[/quote'] Agree with this. I am sure it will.

[surajmal]

Agree with this. I am sure it will.

There is no difference between feudal congressis and ecofectards. Both see average Indians as serfs/peasants. If these people have their way, every generation for eternity would have its own version of Mother India. Enough ink has been wasted on spelling out merits/demerits of interlinking. Conclusion is simple (because science is simple): If you don't want a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions in a couple of decades, start digging now.

[cowboysfan]

has there been an extensive ecological impact study done on the river linking project? any link would be appreciated.

[surajmal]

has there been an extensive ecological impact study done on the river linking project? any link would be appreciated.

No EIA has been done as of yet. But here is an economic impact study: http://nwda.gov.in/writereaddata/mainlinkfile/File277.pdf

[Sachin=GOD]

A BEND IN THE RIVER http://www.newslaundry.com/2014/06/09/a-bend-in-the-river/ Must read article on the matter of river linking.

[hhunaeh]

Here is one ecological impact, it seems straight forward but a lay person cannot gauge the worthiness of such articles and the issues they are trying bring out and that's why there is a need for a ecological impact study by neutral experts. Any economic panel should take the ecological impact into account before bringing out economic impact papers. The indian river linking project a geologic ecological and socio economic perspective

[rkt.india]

agree with maneka on this....

How linking two rivers will kill them both. Does she even have any idea? For e.g., Ganga is not a single river in itself. There are 6 rivers that merge and form Ganga, longest one of them is Alaknanda and remaining 5 rivers named Dhauliganga, Nandakini, Pinder, Mandakini which comes from Kedarnath where we had catastrophe last year ay the start of Monsoon, and last one Bhagirathi, all confluence with Alaknanda at 5 different points, those points are called Prayags. The source of Bhagirathi is Gangotri while alaknanda starts from the peaks of Nanda Devi, Trisul, and Kamet At Devprayag, the last of the prayags in Uttarkhand, Bhagirathi joins Alaknanda and from there on it becomes Ganga.