The Supreme Court on March 15th expressed exasperation at the fact that while the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam had proceeded, the rehabilitation orders of October 2000 had been violated and decreed that no further construction could take place until the tens of thousands of displaced families had been rehabilitated. The full story can be found at the Times of India.

On March 15, 2005, an exasperated Supreme Court observed that while construction had proceeded on the Sardar Sarovar dam, its rehabilitation orders of October 2000 had been violated.

Putting its foot down, it directed that no further construction could take place without rehabilitation of tens of thousands of affected families. As a result the dam is halted at 110.6 m.

Even at this height, monsoon floods overflowing the dam can surge up to 127-128 m. This affects thousands more families than what the governments account for at 110.6 m height.

Classifying these as temporarily affected, states such as Madhya Pradesh did not rehabilitate them. Therefore, the Supreme Court ordered all families, including those affected temporarily, to be rehabilitated before dam construction can proceed.

At this juncture there are two strategies to complete the Sardar Sarovar dam. The faster and smarter one is to install gates at the current height of 110.6 m, making the total height 127-128 m.

Since gates can be opened during floods to let the waters pass, no additional displacement will happen. No additional rehabilitation will be required beyond what is anyway stipulated by the Supreme Court even at the current 110.6 m height.

The other strategy is to take the dam's crest higher, causing much more submergence as the flood waters will climb up to 138.6 m.

This will displace a whopping 50,000 families, who would first need to be rehabilitated before the dam's crest can be completed.

This is clearly impractical, considering that in the past 25 years the governments have only managed to rehabilitate 10-15,000 families, and agricultural lands required for rehabilitation are much harder to come by.

Unfortunately, the governments are opting for the second strategy. With the government plans at odds with the people's wishes and SC orders, we are likely to be stuck with an incomplete, disputed project for decades.

The governments of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra should follow the smarter strategy. Inspired by the SC judgments that cared for affected people, they must compromise on a Full Reservoir Level (FRL) and Maximum Water Level (MWL) of 127-128 m that causes no further displacement, while it takes the dam to a viable height.

How does the reduced height affect benefits of the dam? In terms of electricity, this approach is, in fact, better in the short run because completing a 128 m dam quickly will generate much more electricity than a dam that is stuck at 110.6 m. In the long run, the lower FRL will produce 10-20 per cent less electricity than the originally planned FRL 138.6 m.

As per the Narmada Control Authority figures for the long-term firm power from SSP, this loss would amount to 88 MU (or Rs 8.8 crore) annually, barely sufficient to power 5,000 air-conditioners.

On the other hand, since 25,000 fewer families are submerged, the savings in the financial cost of rehabilitation alone is thousands of crores of rupees, mainly benefiting Gujarat's exchequer.

In terms of irrigation, the reduced height does not compromise Gujarat's share of Narmada waters, 9 million acre feet (MAF), and Rajasthan's share of 0.5 MAF. Of their total 9.5 MAF water, 8.12 MAF is to be uniformly released by the upstream Indira Sagar dam (ISP). The SSP itself has been designed to have a live storage capacity of 4.73 MAF.

Thus, the total volume of water whose flow is regulated, as per the current design of the projects, is 12.85 MAF instead of the 9.5 MAF needed by Gujarat and Rajasthan.

This is an overkill; the current design provides for storing the same water twice, once in ISP and then again in SSP, and this doesn't make engineering, economic or environmental sense.

A lower dam, rather than an over-designed one, saves 10,000 hectares of land in MP, including fertile agricultural plains of Nimad and large village communities with schools, shops, markets, government offices, temples and mosques, from submergence by the SSP reservoir.

The landmark SC judgments have to be followed up by improving the SSP dam's design to make it less destructive and more productive sooner. A lower, faster, better SSP is knocking at our doors and is beneficial for everyone.

Ravi Kuchimanchi

(The writer is co-founder, Association for India Development)