The Damodar Dilemma
Every monsoon, as floodwaters submerge the southern districts of West Bengal, a familiar blame game resurfaces between the state government and the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC). This year, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the central PSU of “unilaterally and wilfully” releasing water during the Durga Puja festival, triggering inundation across several districts. The DVC, in response, maintained that all discharge information is regularly shared with the state’s irrigation department, which often fails to respond. The exchange, though politically charged, reveals a deeper malaise in India’s river basin management — where ageing infrastructure, bureaucratic inertia, and environmental neglect have together turned a pioneering flood-control project into a recurring source of distress. The Damodar Valley Project, once hailed as “India’s Tennessee Valley,” was envisioned as a model of multipurpose river regulation — balancing power generation, irrigation, and flood moderation. Today, that balance has all but collapsed. The DVC’s four major reservoirs — Maithon, Panchet, Tilaiya, and Konar — are under increasing strain from erratic rainfall and silt accumulation. With rising inflows, dam authorities are compelled to release water to preserve structural safety, while the downstream system in southern Bengal, choked with silt and encroachments, can no longer absorb the surge. What was once a controlled release has now become an annual disaster.
At the core of the problem lies the siltation stalemate. Decades of sediment buildup have not only reduced the storage capacity of upstream reservoirs but also raised the beds of downstream rivers such as the Damodar, Rupnarayan, and Kapaleswari, sharply diminishing their carrying capacity. Each year, as inflows increase, the DVC faces an impossible arithmetic: hold back too much and risk dam integrity, or release and flood downstream habitations. Efforts to address this have been piecemeal and bureaucratically paralysed. A 2012 proposal to de-silt the Panchet reservoir was abandoned as “non-viable and costly.” In 2022, when a Trinamool Congress MP sought clarification in Parliament on whether a ₹130-crore grant had been sanctioned for desiltation, the Union government’s reply was unequivocal — no such funding had been approved. The Damodar Valley Reservoir Regulation Committee, tasked with coordinating dam operations, has stated that increasing reservoir capacity falls outside its purview. Consequently, no agency — central or state — holds a clear mandate or financial responsibility for tackling siltation, leaving a critical environmental challenge unaddressed. As a result, flood-prone zones such as Ghatal in Paschim Medinipur have faced six rounds of inundation this year alone. Similar patterns have emerged in Purba Medinipur, Hooghly, Howrah, and North 24 Parganas, where smaller tributaries overflow even when main gauge stations like Jamalpur and Rondia remain below danger levels. The system’s fragility is not the DVC’s alone — it is a reflection of decades of neglect in maintaining Bengal’s river network.
The way forward demands both coordination and courage. The DVC cannot operate as an isolated engineering body, nor can the state absolve itself by assigning blame. What Bengal needs is a basin-wide master plan jointly executed by the Centre, West Bengal, and Jharkhand — one that integrates flood forecasting, desiltation, and real-time reservoir management. Modern technology, including satellite-based silt monitoring and predictive hydrology models, must be leveraged to anticipate high inflows and plan staggered discharges. A major dredging and channel restoration programme, coupled with strict anti-encroachment enforcement, is essential to restore the natural drainage of rivers. Equally, a transparent early warning protocol and joint control room between the DVC and the state irrigation department can prevent administrative deadlock during emergencies. The politics of confrontation must give way to a culture of shared accountability, for floods recognise no jurisdiction. The Damodar Valley was conceived as a symbol of cooperative federalism in India’s early years of nation-building. Restoring that spirit is the only way to prevent the Damodar from becoming a valley of despair. Sustainable river management, not political sparring, must define the next chapter of India’s oldest multipurpose project.
