Managing India's dams

The proposed national agency should get more teeth

After several vain bids since 2010 to enact Central legislation to ensure that dams are properly maintained, the government has finally managed to get the Dam Safety Bill, 2019, passed by the Lok Sabha. This Bill, yet to be approved by the Rajya Sabha, provides for an elaborate institutional and procedural mechanism for regular inspections, repairs, and other maintenance work to avert disasters related to dam breaches. However, it does not go beyond the structural security to also ensure operational efficiency and judiciously managing water discharges to minimise the threat to the survival of the dams.

The new law seeks to set up a National Dam Safety Authority with states’ representatives and specialists as members to prepare safety manuals and schedules for regular monitoring, emergency action plans, periodic safety reviews, and other related issues. This apex body would also serve as a regulator for this sector. The onus of the upkeep of the dams has been put on their owners.

Though India has the world’s third-largest tally of dams, next only to the US and China, it does not have any statutory framework to ensure their safety. The task has been left to the states, which lack the wherewithal to do full justice to the task. The physical health of most dams have been steadily deteriorating due to aging and poor care. Close to 300 of the 5,600-odd large dams are more than 100 years old and over 1,000 others are above 50 years old. Many of the aged dams are earthen structures, made chiefly of locally available material, and, therefore, are vulnerable. Besides, their designs and safety aspects fall woefully short of modern norms. There have already been 37 major dam failures, the latest being that of the Tiware dam in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. It caved in last month, sweeping away an entire village and killing 23 people, besides causing other damage.

However, regardless of their inability to provide protection to dams, many states have been opposing a legally mandated Central role in this field on the plea that water is a state subject and the Centre cannot be allowed to usurp their right to manage it. This contention, though technically sound, is not fully tenable in this case. Over 90 per cent of the dams are on inter-state rivers with multiple riparian states as stakeholders. In some cases, a dam located in one state is owned by another one. Tamil Nadu is a typical case in point. Four of the dams owned by it are located in Kerala and are mired in litigation over their upkeep and operation. The law on the anvil seeks to resolve this issue by making the proposed dam safety Authority responsible for protecting such dams. This Authority can be trusted to uphold the legitimate interests of all stake-holding states. 

Since this Bill is still in transition to becoming a law, there is an opportunity to amend it to give the Authority a say in the management and release of water from different dams located in the same river basins. This provision would be particularly helpful in coordinating water releases from different dams with an eye on moderating floods of the kind which devastated Kerala last year.