Gagandeep Singh stands at the edge of a trench cutting through a sugarcane field in rural India. He looks down at a dozen or so men toiling in the mud in plastic flip flops and bellows: “Dig!”
There’s no time to stop, explains Singh, a district development officer, as the chop-chop-chop of small, crude shovels gouge the earth. It’s the sound of history being made.
The work gang is part of an ambitious project to recreate a mystical Hindu river about 200km north of New Delhi. They’re digging a canal in Haryana state that will, the thinking goes, eventually run hundreds of miles through three water-parched states to the Arabian Sea. The nascent waterway has been given the green light from Singh’s bosses, but is yet to get final environmental or planning approval. A detailed government report is being prepared and, Singh says, he expects clearance, and the deployment of heavy machinery, in 2016.
Photo: Prashanth Vishwanathan, Bloomberg
On one level, by eschewing red tape to speed a new water project, the enterprise reflects a kind of can-do pragmatism espoused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that’s spurring foreign investment in India. On another, it speaks to a nationalistic fervor that’s alienating minorities, which includes the country’s 172 million Muslims, and some critics say represents a desire for a conservative Hindu agenda.
The speed at which the project has taken off in Haryana is exceptional for India and reflects political backing that extends to the highest levels of power. The state’s chief minister, chosen by Modi’s ruling party, announced in February the creation of a research initiative targeting the lost river, the Saraswati. In May, a worker on the project dug a hole in the ground and found water. The hole became a pilgrimage site, and newspaper headlines in India asked whether the Saraswati had been rediscovered.
WATER PROBLEMS
Photo: Prashanth Vishwanathan, Bloomberg
While India is traditionally a land of holy waters, such as the Ganges river, the modern state has done little to preserve them. A report in late-2011 by the nation’s Comptroller and Auditor General, a government watchdog, found that despite more than 26 years of government programs to control pollution, river water in India “remains critically polluted.”
India’s Central Water Commission reported last May that of 387 river water-quality monitoring stations across the country, 100 showed levels of two or more toxic metals beyond permissible limits. Commission Chairman A.B. Pandya said in a recent interview that the nation’s total water storage is currently less than half what it should be. A project to interlink India’s rivers and divert water from surplus areas to those wracked by drought, discussed for decades, is still not completed, he said.
Scientists tracking raw depletion rates of the world’s 37 major aquifers have found the giant subterranean lake feeding northwest India, where Haryana is located, is usually the worst on the globe, said Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist with a NASA laboratory in Pasadena, California.
That’s not hampering the pursuit of the Saraswati. Last August, Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, informed the lower house of parliament that her government “is committed to the revival of the ancient Saraswati river.”
Experts outside the ministry are reticent to speak about the science underpinning the politically-charged subject. One researcher who helped shape the nation’s agricultural policies said he wasn’t aware of the plans, although they have been widely publicized. Another, who played a pivotal role in water conservation, said he’d rather not discuss anything to do with the Saraswati.
‘A GOOD DREAM’
Ashok Gulati, an agricultural economist at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations think tank in New Delhi, called the enterprise, “a good wish and a good dream.” He suggested, though, “if we can protect our current rivers, that’s a better strategy than looking for a lost river.”
The Saraswati has been revered for as long as there has been Hinduism. It’s named dozens of times in the religion’s first sacred text, the Rig Veda, as both water source and deity.
For Hindu nationalist groups, it carries a second significance: to prove the Saraswati’s existence as described in the Rig Veda could buttress claims that the text is more factual than mythical. And demonstrating a continuity between archaeological findings of settlements along that river’s former banks, wherever they may be, would underpin a narrative that Hindus are direct descendants of India’s original civilization.
To Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu national volunteer organization that trained and nurtured him for much of his adult life, it’s a crucial step toward establishing a rationale for a nation by-and-for Hindus, said Aditya Mukherjee, a history professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “So, therefore, they mess with history, and with geography,” said Mukherjee, a critic of Modi.
Mukherjee cited Modi’s remarks at the dedication of a hospital last October, when he said depictions of the Hindu god Ganesha with an elephant head demonstrated scientific feats in ancient India. “There must have been some plastic surgeon in those days who put the head of an elephant on a man’s body,” Modi said, according to a transcript on his website. “And that was how plastic surgery began.”
Modi’s office didn’t respond to phone calls or a text message seeking clarification on whether he was serious, and for him to comment on the Saraswati project’s implementation and its backing from the RSS.
Asked about the initiative, RSS spokesman Manmohan Vaidya said, “Saraswati is not mythological. She was a real river.” Going forward, he said, “the central and state governments are looking into this — so funding will not be a problem.”
ECONOMIC REASON
Satellite images show dry river beds that some view as relics of the Saraswati of the Rig Veda. Interpretations of these and other geological and archaeological findings gathered over decades — which yield conflicting suggestions for the age, course and size of the river — are hotly debated.
Gagandeep Singh doesn’t have time for doubts. The development officer in Haryana’s Yamuna Nagar district has already overseen construction of 15km of a canal that so far runs roughly 2.5m deep and more than 3.5m wide. The plan is to dam a seasonal river, funnel its water to a 160-hectare reservoir and then release the flow into a canal system along the purported ancient route of the Saraswati.
Its benefits include irrigation and flood control, Singh said, but the bottom line is “the government wants to show that this is the oldest civilization in the world.” While Singh, 37, is a Sikh, not a Hindu, he said he is a patriot and considers his religion an offshoot of Hinduism anyway.
About 45km from the district where Singh’s gang is digging, Rakesh Yadav says he’s struggling to get enough water from the ground to irrigate crops on his family’s 32-hectare farm. Fifteen years ago, he could drill about 18m and reach water for wheat in the winter and rice in the monsoon season. Today, his wells need to be at least twice as deep, and some have been drilled to 60 meters just to be safe.
Identifying the Saraswati’s course would reveal “the best locations to track groundwater,” said Shashi Shekhar, the water ministry’s top bureaucrat, in an interview in New Delhi. “This is the economic reason — more than historical or mythological.”
Modi announced in a speech this year that his government will spend NT$240 billion through 2020 on irrigation and other water-related projects. The plans cover everything from rainwater-harvesting to reusing treated waste water.
Still, there’s currently nothing close to a national solution for water supply, said Pandya, of the Central Water Commission. “We are worried,” he said, sitting at a horseshoe-shaped desk at the end of a long office in New Delhi, as night fell outside. “We don’t have a short-term time frame where we know that we will be able to make a dent.”
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