Yes, you read it right. The Government of India is looking forward to ‘create’ world’s longest river, twice the length of Nile.

The project, a brainchild of Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government, was officially declared in 2002. The plan is to link 37 major Indian rivers by 30 link canals, of which 14 are Himalayan and 16 are peninsular. The total length of the project is roughly estimated to be around 14,900-km. It was, however, estimated in 2014, to cost exchequer an extravagant Rs.11,20,000 crore (or $163.5 billion), doubling up from estimated Rs.5,60,000 crores (or $81.6 billion) in 2002.

Moreover, the project is not just limited to inter linking of rivers by the use of canals. It extends to creation of larger dams and high capacity canals to transfer large volume of waters from one river basin to another, to connect the high-discharge perennial Himalayan Rivers with the seasonal rivers of the Indian peninsula.

This is being widely considered as India’s answer to its water problems. India’s rainfall comes over a 4-month period – from June to September, and is roughly around 4,000 billion cubic meters. But the rain across the nation is not uniform. The eastern and northern parts of the country receive most of the rain, while the west and south get the least. Not surprisingly, the rivers of the nation are subject to disturbances, leading to heavy floods in some parts of the country and droughts in another. This is one of the objectives of the river interlinking project, which is firmly backed by the Naredra Modi-led BJP government. The idea is to reduce droughts and floods and create 35 million hectares of arable land in the process, as well as the means to generate 34,000 megawatts of hydro power.

But the opposition is terming the project as an ‘environmental disaster’. Concerns regarding Ecological miscalculations, displacement of people and climate change have been raised.

The opposition points out that there is a lack of policy on operations of the project and when and how much water will be made to shift from the basins. There is a fear of displacement of people due to these reservoirs too. The opposition has been sceptical about the displacement of tens of thousands of people and its impact on economy due to people relying on professions such as fishery. Some argue that artificially manipulating the natural system could disrupt the monsoon rainfall in the region, and storing large volumes of water in dams would increase the water pressure in the cracks and push on crust below, possibly increasing the already quake-prone Himalayas.

But the government claims to answer all the questions. While the allies of the government in south, claim that inter-linking is the only permanent solution to the water scarcity problem in the county, the government is weighting high on aftermaths of the project. The plan claims to manage the water scarcity in central and southern parts of the nation and lead to a more arable land which would make it possible as a means of assured and better irrigation for farmers of the country, thus promising better food security for a growing population. And producing 34,000 megawatts of electricity to address another problem of the country – providing electricity to each and every household.

Economically, the government believes, that this will prove helpful in another ambitious plan that the Government of India of India is perusing – developing 101 rivers into an integrated Inland Water Transport system. It believes that the waterways are underdeveloped with the share of overall cargo transport just 0.4% as compared to 8.7% in China, even when the cost is just 50 paisa (0.74 cent US) a kilometer. The government believes that the river-linking project will lay groundwork for this ambitious plan, since the movement of cargo can only happen once all the routes are in place.

Net benefits in long run coming from it far outweigh the concerns involved. The successes of inter linking of many similar projects in the United States, France and the on-going one in China have been substantiating this.