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FLOOD-CONTROL USE OF ATOMIC POWER
By Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Recently we have heard and read a great deal about floods in India and the methods of flood control. As a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, I happened to be in charge of Irrigation. I then established a Department called the Irrigation and Navigation Commission, which I believe has been renamed River Control Board, Central Water Power Commission and so on.
These organisations have made proposals for flood control which appear in the press from time to time. It was expected that some sure remedy would be found by these organisations. But we now find that whatever the proposals their implementation has failed completely to control the floods. It has also been reported from Shillong that it is difficult, almost impossible, even for engineers to say what steps can successfully control the Brahamaputra floods, and that an experimental bund was constructed at a cost of Rs.
14,00,000 and that it has been washed away in the floods.
Embankments
We also hear that Government has given up the new idea of controlling floods by damming the rivers, and has gone back to the antiquated idea of embankments and of invoking therewith mass help for the job.
In this connection I would like to draw the attention of the Government of India and of the engineers concerned in the matter to a proposal which has been put forth by an eminent engineer and which has been published in a Bombay contemporary September 10, 1954, under the heading Atomic Science to the rescue written by ‘Observer.’
The proposal to which I wish to draw attention is a simple one, namely using atomic power for flood control. On reading the statement in the paper, “Observer”, I was greatly attracted to it and made enquiry as to who the author of this proposal was, I learnt that he is one Mr. C.S. Pillai. I discovered that he has been in the