Asia Times: Flood-prone Calcutta sees wisdom of old canals



	November 30, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Flood-prone Calcutta sees wisdom of old canals
By Ranjita Biswas

CALCUTTA - On September 24, India's second largest city went under water. Built on the banks of the Hooghly, Calcutta is prone to waterlogging, but the extent of the damage indicated that no lessons had been learnt since the disastrous 1978 floods.

This time the water did not recede for up to 10 days in many areas. Anger against apathetic officials ran high. Residents put up barricades in protest, triggering tension with the police who resorted to firing in one instance to control the crowd.

Even Salt Lake, the much admired, planned suburb of Calcutta, where the state Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, and a host of other VIPs live, was not spared.

Says Paromita Kar, a busy city executive who had to wade through ankle-deep water: ''Admittedly, rainfall has been heavier this year. But it doesn't justify the extent of flooding.''

Now city officials are dusting old city maps to revive Calcutta's old 'khal' or canal system, which acted as an effective drainage system for some three centuries. The Calcutta Municipal Corporation admits the choked canals were a major cause of the prolonged waterlogging. During the British colonial period when three tiny settlements became Calcutta, the canals served as a means of transport and also drainage.

When the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass was being built (in the 1970s) environmentalists had warned that the road would block the natural drainage of the city which slants towards the east. Today, the catchment area around the Bypass is also the hub of numerous housing colonies, built at the cost of much of the wetlands, and adding to the drainage problem.

The canals are in serious disrepair, according to a recent survey. The Bagjola canal, which drains Calcutta's north-east, and the Krishnapur canal, which drains the north, are 50 to 70 percent choked, while Tolly's Nullah, to the south, is 40 percent blocked.

Past attempts to clear the canals have run up against hundreds of thousands of encroachers - squatters - on the banks. Irrigation department engineers claim that though they have submitted proposals to revive the canals, which means the squatters have to be evicted, they have been stonewalled due to political interference.

Now suddenly, the state government seems keen to take up the operation. West Bengal state is ruled by the Left Front of communist parties which have been in power for more than two decades.

A report prepared after the 1978 flood, which recommended the de-silting of canals to safeguard the city of some 13 million now, against flooding during the monsoon rains, has been waiting for government approval. So are two reports prepared two years ago by the state Environment Department for the improvement of Calcutta's wetlands and canal system.

Reviving the canals for navigability would be a solution to Calcutta's chaotic traffic. The Central Inland Water Transport Corporation (which was known as the River Stream Navigation Company Ltd under the British) has put forward a proposal to the state's Transport Department.

As far back as 1937 it had explored the potential of making the Calcutta canal system a viable transport network. The corporation now suggests a new look at the possibilities.

The proposal envisages cleaning up the entire canal network, which stretches from Calcutta to the Sunderban forests, in the estuary. If the plan works out the distance to the southern parts of the state would be drastically reduced, and it also would be environmently friendly.

A K Sinharay, chief manager of the River Service Division at the corporation is regretful that ''the waterway is not regarded a viable way of transportation here as it is in Europe.''

In 1997, a multi-disciplinary seminar was held in the city and de-silting and revival of the waterways were highly recommended. Health experts also pointed out that the choked canals in the heart of the city were breeding grounds of malaria, a major health problem in Calcutta, and other contagious diseases.

The corporation has received an offer from the government-owned British Waterways, which manages 2,000 miles of canals in the country, to restore the navigability of the canals. It will ''alleviate Calcutta's chronic transport problems while providing substantial opportunity for boosting economic activity in West Bengal'', they say.

But first the so-called encroachers, most of whom have lived on the canal banks all their lives, have to be dealt with. Ashis Ghosh, director of the Centre for Environment and Development, an NGO and former director of the Zoological Survey of India, insists they be ''resettled in a humane manner.'' Or else the project will never take off.

(Inter Press Service)