GUWAHATI, June 5? Monsoon has hit the eastern region on June 5 at 22 degree north and 920 east, said D. Sinha, Director meteorological centre, Guwahati. Talking to this correspondent the Director informed that the delayed monsoon has hit Silchar, Tezpur and has advanced upto Manipur, Nagaland and at eastern parts of Mizoram, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, he said. The delay in the onset of monsoon was due to the cyclonic winds in the month of May. The cyclonic wind has disturbed the normal pattern of monsoon, but with monsoon on rainfall is likely to occur in many places, in the North East, he further said. The sky will remain generally cloudly or partly cloudly in the next few days, which means that the percentage of relative humidity will be much higher. People of the region can expect respite from the heat, the Director added.
He also referred, in this connection, to a suggestion made by some participants of the above workshop, that the NE States should plead for 90:10 or even 100:0 pattern of funding for Centrally-sponsored schemes in the region as another option to make speedy implementation of such schemes possible.
In reply to a question on the special concessions to the NE water resources sector, Sri Sekhar said that the NE States had been receiving funds at 3:1 ratio from the Central Government under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP), against the funding pattern of 2:1 for the States of other regions.
Moreover, the funds from the Non-lapsable Pool of Resources are also made available for the NE States for development of infrastructure in the sector, said the Planning Commission Advisor.
On the factors responsible for the gap between the available water resources potentials of the region and their utilisation, he said that unless large dams were constructed in the region, maximum and quick utilisation of the available resources was not possible. But, large dams involve many inter-State issues of submersion and rehabilitation, while a huge financial involvement is also needed for constructing large dams.
With few hundred crores of rupees in annual budgets, funding of such large projects is not possible. Moreover, the NE States do not have the required expertise for such projects, while the geological condition in the region is also difficult. The region cannot consume the entire amount of hydel power that will be generated in these projects nor the issue of flood control connected with these projects can be ignored.
For flood control, flood cushioning is a must. But the moment flood cushioning is provided to the projects, their power generation capacity goes down. And thus the generation cost of power in these/ such projects shoots up making power costly.
On the other hand, said Sri Sekhar, so much of land for irrigation in large chunk is also not available in the region. On the funding pattern of the Centrally-sponsored schemes in the water resources sector of the region, the Planning Commission Advisor said that the pattern was not uniform. While in the Command Area Development in it 50:50 or so, it is 3:1 in AIBP. Hence, some of the NE States are now feeling that they should plead either for 90:10 or even 100:0 pattern for the Centrally-sponsored schemes in the sector, he said.
For, he said, the States of the region were not able to put their matching share, specially in the drinking water sector, and they were surrendering funds for the last several years, he said.
Moreover, there has been inordinate delay in passing on the Central funds by the State Governments of the region to the user departments. This also needs to be rectified, Sri Sekhar said. When asked for his suggestions on improving the performance of the water resources organisations of the region, Sri Sekhar, himself a top technocrat in the country?s water resources sector, said that the region needed more engineering colleges, specially in Nagaland, Arunachal and Mizoram. Local graduates will improve the situation, he observed.
Elaborating, he said, experiences would come with the projects and training courses. But, the NE people usually donot attend the training courses elsewhere.
Moreover, they find it difficult to work in irrigation projects. Rongai Valley Project in Meghalaya is a case in point. Nobody wants to be posted in this medium project.
Originally, the project cost of Rongai Valley was estimated at Rs 15 crore. Now it has shot up to Rs 60 crore and already an amount of Rs 20 crore has been spent for implementing the project. Now a talk of abandoning the project by the Meghalaya Government is there, even as the State Government has not paid its share of the matching grant.
Similarly, in the case of the Assam Government also the same thing can be said. Projects like the Dhansiri and the Kolong are lingering, because, the State Government has not been paying the matching share. And the State?s investment is less than the escalation price, said Sri Sekhar.