The collapse of the 118-year-old Jaswant Sagar Dam in the Luni River basin in Jodhpur district, Rajasthan, on July 8 and the widespread destruction caused in the downstream area should serve as a wake up call for all concerned.
India’s aging dam population, absence of proper maintenance of dams and the absence of accountability mechanism would increase the frequency of dam disasters in the years to come. The increased frequency of high intensity rainfall due to global warming is added to this already heady mix. The consequences could be grave. We must note that Rajasthan was one of the few states, where the World Bank funded Dams Safety Project was implemented.
The 43.38m high Jaswant Sagar Dam is only one of the 100 large dams (of the total of over 4,600 large dams in India) that are already more than 100 years old. The largest number from this stock is in Rajasthan, 27 large dams. In addition, there are 381 large dams in India that are between 50 and 100 years old. And just to add a warning sign, not all dams built over the last 50 years are safe. According to the Madhya Pradesh government the state has 168 dams, which can be called distressed dams — out of which 63 dams are less than 50 years old.
India is supposed to have an elaborate dam safety mechanism in place, starting from the resolution adopted at the first conference of state ministers for irrigation held at New Delhi as far back as on July 17-18, 1975. The Union government constituted the Dam Safety Organisation in the Central Water Commission in June 1979 to assist state governments on dam safety issues.
In Rajasthan alone, to strengthen dam safety activities, a Rs 109.68 crore project “Dam Safety Assurance and Rehabilitation” was initiated in 1991 with a loan from the World Bank. Unfortunately, what the project has left behind is a legacy of debt, unused infrastructure and unsafe dams.
In November 1996, the State Dam Safety Committee suggested (when the World Bank funded project was still on) addressing of problems in the Jaswant Sagar Dam — viz erosion of downstream area, signs of abrasion and cavitations developed in the dam. The Comptroller and Auditor General report for Rajasthan in 2001 noted, “Instead of removing these defects, the department incurred expenditure of Rs 27.61 lakh on 6 works, viz, renovation of the existing bituminous road (Rs 9.88 lakh), construction of foot bridge on overflow (Rs 7.19 lakh), providing sodium lights (Rs 4.06 lakh), purchase of generating set and diesel engine (Rs 1.25 lakh), purchase of wooden planks (Rs 4.50 lakh) and other petty items (Rs 0.73 lakh) under basic safety facilities component of Dam Safety Project. These works did not increase the utility of the dam and resulted in avoidable expenditure out of interest bearing loan assistance funds of the World Bank”. The consequences are before us.
Rajasthan government also had the advantage of satellite based information system that showed that the catchment area of the 12 km long dam with storage capacity of 40.83 million cubic meters was getting heavy rains. Government officials and ministers also knew that for many years the dam had not been filled to the capacity, so when so much water was supposed to flow into the dam, there was every possibility of the dam giving way. Particularly, when the government had not implemented the measures required for the safety of the dam. The dam has had a history of cracking up in the past (in 1979 and earlier) when it experienced heavy inflows. But neither the Rajasthan government nor the Central Water Commission did anything to avert this avoidable disaster.
The Central Water Commission is supposed to be responsible for, among other things, guiding states on safety of major and medium projects of the country. Its tasks include, “To conduct studies on dam safety aspects for the existing and future dams and standardise the instruments for dam safety measures”. The past performance of the CWC, if we look at the implementation of the World Bank funded project and otherwise, is dismal.
The only way out, if we really want to avoid more of such disasters in future, is to have clearly defined, publicly known norms of institutional and individual accountability for such serious lapses.
(South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People)