Principle of command area balancing – A new method of river basin planning

This paper demonstrates how by a judicial placement of irrigation projects along the course of a river with predetermined scope for each project and at predetermined mileage for the site of the project; it is possible to cover the entire Commandable-Cultivable Area (CCA.) in the river basin with irrigation, provided that there is sufficient water potential in the river to do so. Such a method would ensure that the maximum possible CCA is covered by irrigation benefit with minimum possible wastage of water enroute. Obviously such an objective should form the cardinal idea of river basin planning for irrigation projects as that would present a clear deterministic skeletal picture of the shape and size of the development of the basin. Such an objective is feasible only when the net water potential available at a particular project site is just sufficient to the irrigation needs of the net CCA available at the project site. Such a plausible principle had become workable, through an ingenious method called the Principle of Command Area Balancing described in this paper. Other important considerations such as the suitability of the site for the projects located by this principle are dealt with in the latter part of this paper suitably. It has been explained in this paper how the formidable issue of settling interstate disputes on the sharing of water from interstate rivers can be resolved rationally by the application of this new principle. This principle necessitates that the planning should embrace the entire basin in one stretch, as such the several projects coming down in the plan need a programme for their execution in the time scale. This is most beneficially achieved by the application of Dynamic Programming to which a passing reference is made towards the end of this paper.