MULTI-PURPOSE PLAN FOR DEVELOPMENT OF ORISSA’S RIVERS 305
“If conservation of water is mandatory from the point of view of public good, then obviously the plan of embankments is a wrong plan. It is a mean which does not subserve the end, namely conservation of water, and must, therefore, be abandoned. Orissa delta is not the only area where there is so much amount of water and there is so much amount of evil proceeding from that water. The United States of America had the same problem to face. Some of these rivers—Missouri, Miami and Tennessee—have given rise to the same problem in the U.S.A.
“Orissa must, therefore, adopt the method which the U.S.A. adopted in dealing with the problem of its rivers. That method is to dam rivers at various points to conserve water permanently in reservoirs. There arc many purposes which such reservoirs can serve besides irrigation. I am told that if it were possible to store the entire run off of the Mahanadi it will be enough to irrigate thereby a million acres, provided that much area was available. Water stored in the reservoirs can be used for generating electric power.
“If in the midst of its natural resources, Orissa has remained an industrially undeveloped area, it is due to want of cheap power to run its factories. Here there will be abundance of electric power, more than Orissa can hope to consume for a long time to come. Another use to which this water could be put to is navigation.
“Navigation in India has had a very chequered history. During the rule of the East India Company, provision for internal navigation occupied a very prominent part in the public works budget of the Company’s Government. Many of the navigation canals we have in India today—and you have one in Orissa itself—are remnants of that policy. Railways came in later, and for a time the policy was to have both railways and canal navigation. By 1875, there arose a great controversy in which the issue was railways versus canals. The battle for canals was fought bravely by the late Sir Arthur Cotton—one of the few engineers with big ideas. Unfortunately supporters of Railways won.
“I am not quite happy about this victory of railways over canals. Much more annoying is the ignorant opinion of supporters of railways that canals must go because they do not pay, without knowing that if the canals do not pay it is not because they cannot pay but because