The Government of India’s Rs 5.50 lakh crore plan, to undertake the interlinking of 30 rivers is being wrongly touted as a new and novel idea. It is anything but that.
Around 1977, Captain D. J. Dastur (no relative of mine), had suggested this very idea (a garland canal) but the government found the project unfeasible.
According to a paper "National River Linking Project of India” by noted water resource engineer Naveen Joshi in Hydro Nepal, January 2013 (nepjol.info), "In the 19th century, Sir Arthur Cotton had made a navigational plan for India from Assam to Bombay primarily for the transportation of goods. Later in 1977, Dastur had submitted a proposal to construct a high level canal to collect water from the rivers like Ravi, Sutlej, Yamuna, Ganga and Brahmaputra known as the Himalayan canal for transferring the harnessed waters down through the southern garland canals. The Himalayan canal would be about 2,400 km long and aligned along the southern slopes of the Himalayas and extend beyond the Brahmaputra towards the south by another canal 1,770 km long. The central and southern garland canal would be around 9,332 km. Dastur’s proposal would cost Rs 120 trillion.”
Dastur believed the following advantages would accrue from the project: full employment; generation of hydro-power which would make India a nation with surplus power and a granary to the world; elimination of food imports; a tremendous increase in production leading to industrial prosperity and a great source of revenue to the government of India; elimination of poverty and privation among the farmers. BEHRAM DASTUR