Scholar, Gitam University, India
Online published on 12 July, 2017.
National River Linking Project under the aegis of Ministry of Water Resources was designed to transfer surplus water in the rivers of North India to deficit region in the South. It touches 30 rivers and a length of 14,900 km of interlinking canals at an estimated cost of US $ 120 billion (1999) and would be the biggest ever infrastructure project in the world. This will harness water going as waste into the sea every year and arrest large scale inundation of towns and villages in the monsoon period (June to October). Apart from the advantages of interlinking of rivers by way of additional ayacut, power, navigation and fisheries as well as drinking water augmentation, there are some inherent disadvantages like water logging, effect on ecology, displacement of populations and national parks and exorbitant expense on the exchequer.
