River interlinking projects: Rational course

The Union Cabinet’s decision to defer a decision on interlinking the Ken and Betwa rivers, the first of 30 such projects, reflects a lack of clarity and purpose when it comes to creating a river link network. The idea of interlinking rivers is far from new. In 1972, a ‘garland canal’ with the Ganga-Cauvery as its central component was proposed. A decade later, the National Water Development Agency was set up to carry out technical studies to examine the feasibility of 30 links — 14 Himalayan and 16 peninsular. 

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