By Jay Shankar May 4 (Bloomberg) — Avimukteshwaranand Saraswati stands on the banks of the Ganges, India’s holiest river , urging his fellow Hindu priests to oppose hydropower dams the nation needs to curb blackouts and drive economic growth. “Without electricity, you can survive. One can’t survive without water,” Saraswati tells a gathering of holy men in the Himalayan foothills where the Kumbha Mela , a Hindu festival that draws more than 50 million devotees, is entering its final days. “You cannot shackle the Ganges and call it development.” Opposition from Hindu groups helped halt two dams on tributaries of the Ganges in March and the government this month is set to decide whether to complete a barrage that’s part of a plan to add 15,600 megawatts of hydropower by 2012. The energy shortfall forces manufacturers including Tata Motors Ltd. and Bajaj Auto Ltd. , Nissan Motor Co. ’s Indian partner, to rely on back-up generators to build cars and bikes. “The power situation in India is a disaster,” said Pradeep Shrivastava , president of engineering at Pune-based Bajaj, which operates a motorbike factory in northern Uttarakhand state where the Ganges flows onto the Indian plains. “We are dependent on our internal generation.” The river also helps irrigate India’s largest wheat and second-biggest sugar producing state, Uttar Pradesh, while West Bengal, the last province before the Ganges flows into its delta in Bangladesh, is the nation’s No. 1 rice grower. The World Bank forecasts that demand for water in India will exceed available sources by 2050. ‘Faith and Culture’ Tata Motors, builder of the world’s cheapest car, maintains reserve power facilities at its factory in the state that has the capacity to build 250,000 Ace trucks and Nano cars annually, according to an e-mailed statement from the Mumbai-based company. The two dams in Uttarakhand, 125 miles from New Delhi, were scrapped on March 25 out of what Jairam Ramesh , the environment minister, said was “respect for sentiments of faith and culture” and possible ecological damage as the river level falls. There’s a new sensitivity in government to dams’ “environmental impact, and displacement and rehabilitation of people,” said Ashok Jaitly, director of the water resources division at New Delhi-based The Energy Resources Institute , which researches issues of sustainable development. SJVN Ltd., the state-owned operator of India’s largest hydropower plant, cited possible domestic and international disputes over water as a risk factor in its initial share sale. Nations that abut the Himalayas, the world’s highest mountain range and the source of 10 rivers providing water for 1.3 billion people, plan to build several hundred dams over 20 years, Samir Mehta, South Asia director of the Berkeley, California-based International Rivers pressure group, said. Add Capacity Projects in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan would add more than 50,000 megawatts to generating capacity, Mehta said, or half India’s projected 2017 power demand. Much of the electricity produced in Nepal and Bhutan will be exported south to fuel India’s economy, the world’s fastest-growing after China. “If you want to have a manufacturing base you need surplus power,” said V. Balakrishnan , chief financial officer of Infosys Technologies Ltd., India’s second-largest software exporter. “That is the main difference between India and China. India always has a deficit and tries to catch up.” India fell 42 percent short of its target to add 12,240 megawatts of generating capacity in 2009. Orders from the Power Ministry stopped work on the Loharinag-Pala dam across the Bhagirathi River in February last year. A panel appointed by minister Ramesh will report this month whether NTPC Ltd. , India’s biggest power producer, should be allowed to press on. “NTPC has said that the project will be closed for power generation for five months in a year,” Ramesh, who was the power minister from April 2008 to February 2009, told reporters in New Delhi on March 31. Summer Hiatus The panel will ask whether that summer hiatus — agreed earlier to ensure water levels didn’t dip so low that religious feelings were hurt — made the entire plant expendable, Ramesh said. Emails sent to Ramesh’s office seeking comment were not returned. NTPC declined to comment. A study of 208 large dams in India last year by New Delhi’s South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People , an organization that supports local communities, found that 89 percent were operating below capacity and half generated less than 50 percent of their planned power output, Himanshu Thakkar, the group’s founder, said in a phone interview. Reduced water flows, failed monsoons and siltation cause the shortfall, Thakkar said. Weak monsoons in 2009 reduced water levels in north Indian reservoirs and rivers, said U.N. Panjiar, secretary in the Ministry of Water Resources , a factor in lower power output. ‘Dying Slowly’ About 30 cities, 70 large towns and thousands of villages spew 1.3 billion liters of sewage into the Ganges every day, according to the WWF . About 260 million liters of industrial wastewater are discharged each year in the river’s basin, the group said in a report. That abuse riles Hindu worshipers, who revere the 1,565 mile-long (2,525 kilometer) Ganges, believing that bathing in its waters will wash off worldly sins. “The river is dying slowly and instead of water only stones and garbage remain,” said Geeta Gharola, 40, after emerging from the river, or Ganga Ma to the devout. “First Hindus had Ganga water to drink, then they started to have a bath,” saffron-robed priest Saraswati said in the town of Haridwar. “In the future they will say their prayers” while conjuring the river from memory. To contact the reporter on this story: Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net
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Priests’ Protests Over Dams Curtail Hydropower for Tata Motors, Bajaj Auto
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