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CNN IBN News about Mullaperiyar Dam Issue

The Mullaperiyar dam has for decades remained a contentious issue between Tamil Nadu, which draws its water, and Kerala, where the dam is located.

Apprehensions that the ancient dam could collapse soon has resulted in fear psychosis gripping people in the downstream villages and towns. But Tamil Nadu says the concerns are unfounded and are being raised to prevent work on the project

The people of four districts in Kerala have been living in perpetual fear ever since the first tremor-and-time-induced cracks appeared in the Mullaperiyar dam in Idukki district several years ago. The ancient-technology Surkhi concrete dam on the inter-State border is in Kerala, but the entire water in the 8,000-acre reservoir is being drawn by Tamil Nadu whose five southwestern districts depend entirely on it for drinking and irrigation purposes. As per a lease agreement signed in 1886 and renewed in 1970, Tamil Nadu can continue drawing the water of the reservoir till 2885 AD by paying Kerala an annual fee of just Rs 40,000.

The dam, commissioned as back as in 1896, has been leaking through the cracks at many points for all these years, enhancing the people’s fear every monsoon. That fear has now reached panic levels, especially in the downstream reaches of the now-dry Mullaperiyar river in Idukki district, after two low-intensity tremors — quakes are normal in this region sitting on a fault-line — with new cracks developing in the dam, its plasters coming off like the dead fish scales and water seepage increasing all of a sudden after two low-intensity quakes that occurred on November 18. Kerala is quoting several scientific studies to support its argument that the dam is unsafe.

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The threat the dam poses is causing psychological and sociological disorders in the villages and towns in the downstream areas of Mullaperiyar. The situation has been complicated by the report of an underwater inspection conducted by the Union Government that there is a long and wide crack right in the base of the dam and that its very foundation could have been loosened. The Kerala Government, which has proposed the construction of a new dam further inside its territory, and the people of the State are convinced that the dam, whose maximum life-span is considered as 70 years, could break any moment, causing devastation in four districts, which could include the wipe out of nearly half a crore human lives.

The picture of this nightmare has unimaginable dimensions. The Mullaperiyar dam is situated right at the summit of a mountain system on the Western Ghats. The river flowing down ends in the giant Idukki reservoir with a live storage 1.5 billion cubic metres of water kept blocked by a three-dam system which includes the Idukki arch dam, the largest of its kind in Asia. If the Mullaperiyar dam breaks its entire water would rush in one mighty gush to the Idukki reservoir leading to a possible breach in that dam or collapse of the geologically young hills around that reservoir. The resultant catastrophe will be unimaginable. If that happens, the Kochi city, a minimum of a dozen large and medium-sized towns and hundreds of villages will be wiped off the Earth’s face.

For the moment, this fear does not seem unfounded. Geologists have warned that even a medium-magnitude tremor might trigger a dam burst. But Tamil Nadu refuses to agree with it and argues that Kerala is exaggerating negligible facts to support its plan to build a new dam so that it can end the old agreement, deny water to Tamil farmers and demand a new agreement in which the conditions may all be against the interests of the Tamil people. Kerala keeps on saying that its stand is, “Safety for us, water for you”, but Tamil Nadu is not prepared to believe this. “A new dam will need a new agreement. Promises have no meaning when the execution stage comes. We have seen this many times”, a senior DMK leader from Tamil Nadu’s Theni district bordering Kerala, remarked.

The proposal for a new dam was put forward by the former CPI(M)-led LDF Government in Kerala, but somehow, political differences have not been able to clip the strength of that proposal. The present Congress-led UDF Government in the State headed by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has gone several steps forward in this regard. This political unity — considered almost impossible — is worrying the Tamil Nadu Government. The UPA Government led by the Congress has already agreed to mediate on the dam issue which does not ring well in the ears of the Tamil people and parties.

But Tamil Nadu’s arguments are not without merit. It says that Kerala is keeping on shifting the goal post as far as the Mullaperiyar issue is concerned. Strangely, Kerala did not think of making efforts to scrap the Raj era agreement or rewriting its terms after Independence. But it renewed the pact by giving more sops to Tamil Nadu in 1970 thus allowing it to use the reservoir water for generating power. Thiruvananthapuram had taken up the issue of the dam’s safety seriously only after February, 2006 when the Supreme Court disagreed to its demand to keep the water level in the dam at 136 feet and allowed Tamil Nadu, which is in charge of security and maintenance of the dam, to raise it to 142 feet. Naturally, the Tamil Nadu Government, parties and people developed suspicions about Kerala’s interests.

Tamil Nadu’s parties like the DMK, the AIADMK and the MDMK and organisations that are alleged LTTE fronts have all been leading protests against Kerala on the Mullaperiyar issue for the past many years. Sometimes, the protests had assumed dangerous proportions sometimes as in the case of the MDMK’s blockade on Tamil Nadu trucks bringing vegetables and other commodities to Kerala, which if continued could create famine in the State.

Kerala alleges that the protests in Tamil Nadu have more to do with their State politics than the dam itself. There are also allegations that the stirs in Tamil Nadu over Mullaperiyar are part of a larger bid to legally attach a minimum of three talukas in Idukki district to that state.

Indeed, there are several flaws in Kerala’s approach to dams, in particular those in Idukki district. The Mullaperiyar dam has already outlived its expected life-span and a new dam in its place is necessary — from one perspective. But how many dams will it construct at Mullaperiyar to keep on avoiding the perennial threat from transforming into a tragedy till the lease period ends in 2885, considering the life-span of a reinforced concrete dam is less than a century? Had the then Kerala Governments not thought of the Mullaperiyar situation during the construction of the Idukki hydel power project, commissioned in 1975? Idukki, the second largest district in Kerala, has over a dozen giant, large and medium-sized dams keeping harnessed seas of freshwater surrounded by hills that are in geological childhood. How could the Governments afford to do this?

Mullaperiyar is more than an inter-State water dispute and its roots are in the history of colonialism when British arbitrariness based on greed and brute force decided everything. After signing the agreement on October 29, 1886 granting the then Madras (British) Government the right to draw the Mullaperiyar waters for 999 years, the Maharaja of Travancore had said that he had signed it with his own blood. That one statement revealed in what unavoidable situation and under what pressure he could have entered into that humiliating pact. The British, while leaving India in 1947, had left many complex problems for us to unsuccessfully try to solve through decades. Mullaperiyar is one of them.

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