By Rajneesh De, Consulting Editor, APAC News Network
Jaipur: The Vice President of India, Jagdeep Dhankhar inaugurated the International Conference on Dam Safety (ICDS) 2023 with the theme “Safe & Secure Dams Ensure Nation’s Prosperity” on Thursday. This was organised by the Department of Water Resources, River Development, and Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti at the Rajasthan International Centre (RIC) in Jaipur.
According to him, the ICDS 2023 is a milestone achievement in India’s history towards lasting systemic resolution on dam safety. “Safe and secure dams ensuring nation’s prosperity has great contemporary relevance. With the world in recognition of India’s prowess today, I sincerely hope that ICDS2023 will scale Himalayan heights like the G20 Summit,” opined Dhankar.
India has 18% of global population. But the country has only 2% of world’s land and 4% of the world’s water. So it becomes our responsibility to use water optimally. Dam is one aspect of conservation of water. With only 4% of global water resources, it is commendable for India to be 3 in the number of dams, feels the Vice President. “The capacity of Bharat in big ticket performance is now earning kudos and our demographic diversity has helped do it,” Dhamkar proudly proclaimed.
The National Water Mission under the Ministry of Jal Shakti has collaborated with the Railways Ministry for the vinyl-wrapped Pani Ki Rail initiative. Under this initiative, Himsagar Express and Kamakhya Express were flagged off by the Jagdeep Dhankhar to travel across the length and breadth of the country. The two trains will be a moving billboard to evangelize the message of water conservation and management, river rejuvenation and the importance of potable water and improved sanitation.
Besides VP Jagdeep Dhankhar , the inauguration was attended by Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Minister, Jal Shajti Ministry, Government of India, Manik Saha, Chief Minister of Tripura DK Shivakumar, Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, Usha Sharma, Chief Secretart of Rajasthan and Pankaj Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India. The officials from Maharahstra, Tripura, Manipur, Rajasthan, UP, Karnataka, Goa, Uttarakhand are also participating in this two-day conference along with International experts.
The National Register of Large Dams (NRLD) booklet was launched by the dignitaries who also participated in the Jal Bharo Samaraho.
Gajendra Singh Shekhawat had an extremely pragmatic view on challenges faced in dam maintenance and operations and illustrated with both national and international examples. “We have 280 dams over 100 years old and in addition 80% of our dams are over 25 years old.” While that is the biggest challenge domestically, Shekhawat also highlighted the recent Derna town dam disaster in Libya that has impacted 5000 lives. “This is a lesson for us all. There are serious shortcomings in maintenance of dams in India and se we need Standard Operating Procedures and common protocols for dam maintenance in India.” He added that in some cases the challenge is that the dam is owned by one state while the dam location is in another state. With 92% of dams in India being owned by states, this poses a serious challenge.
Pankaj Kumar took the delegates through a chronological history of dam safety and maintenance in India. In 1947 there were 300 large dams in India. Today there are more than 6000 large dams. The world has 62,000 large dams and India ranks 3rd after US and China in the number of dams.
As per the Central Water Commission, India has so far faced 42 dam disasters, the largest being the Machchu dam in Gujarat in 1979. GoI has created the national dam safety authority with both center and acts as a regulatory authority for dam safety and operation performance of dams in all 31 states
Reflecting on the lessons learnt from Machchu Dam, Kumar also emphasised the formation of regulatory institutions like NDSA, NCDS, SDSO, and SCDS. Their primary objective is to maintain a uniform set of dam safety protocols.
The scope for building new reservoir capacity is limited. Cost of new projects has increased, ageing dams need maintenance, global climate changes need more monitoring. For these 4 reasons, dam safety has become imperative, according to Kumar.
Capacity building is another critical pillar and a Center of Excellence on dam safety and maintenance has been created in IIT Roorkee. Another CoE on earthquake mechanism has been created in MNIT Jaipur. PG courses on dam safety aspects has been launched at IIT Roorkee and IISC Bengaluru
A new era of dam safety has been ushered with the enactment of the Dam Safety Act 2021. Pre and post monsoon inspection of dams has increased from 1200 to 12,000 annually after the enactment of the Dam Safety Act 2021. DRIP phase 2 and 3 is looking after maintenance of 750 dams with a budgetary outlay of Rs 10,000 crore.
