The Hindu Business Line : First water train rolls into dry Saurashtra

THE drought-hit villagers of some 72 villages in Saurashtra heaved a sigh of relief as the first `water train' — 70 rakes each carrying 25,000 litres of water — set off from here on Monday morning.

And if the summer of 2003 continues to be as scorching as it has already set out to be, the Gujarat Government expects to keep this water train service going till June 20 at the very least, the cut-off date set out by the meteorologist for the Saurashtra region to receive rains this year.

By that time some 200 such train journeys would have been completed between the Hapa terminus here and Bhatia, which can be called the gateway into the interior Saurashtra belt covering places such as Mithapur and Dwarka. But old timers are convinced that the train service would continue beyond June 20 as there was no way that the south-west monsoons would arrive in these parts before mid-July, if at all.

Meanwhile, the train service, in its present form, is merely a curtain raiser as it is set to increase its frequency to four trips a day before this week is out. At 17.5 lakh litres per trip, the quantum of water that will be transported in this manner right through this summer would be at the rate of 70 lakh litres per day. In other words, the Gujarat Government is faced with the prospect of carrying a minimum of 350 million litres by way of these water trains over the next 50 days.

Talking to Business Line, Mr K. Kailasnathan, Secretary, Water Supply, said the 72 villages and two towns in and around Bhatia had their main source of water, the Shani Dam, completely dry up in the last few weeks. They had been going virtually left without water for the past 10 days, he said. The cost to the Gujarat exchequer on account of this arrangement was not too steep as the Railways had made available the train service free of cost, he added.

"The cost of carrying water to the interiors of Saurashtra had also been scaled down significantly on account of the Narmada water being made already available at Khijadiya on the Jamnagar line. Thereafter, it has been carried by way of a 3.5-km transmission pipeline up to the Hapa railway terminus. The ultimate goal is to carry water up to Okha, which is another 80 km away from Bhatia, so as to feed water to the Mithapur-Dwarka region," Mr Kailasnathan said.

The first water train, which was flagged off by the Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, unloaded some 1.4 lakh litres at Khambaliya which is enroute. By late evening, the remaining 16.1 lakh litres would have been unloaded at the Bhatia sump which has a 20-lakh litre capacity.

Meanwhile, it is the ardent hope of the Gujarat government that is would be the last summer that it will be forced to mount such fire-fighting exercises. Because, it is going ahead with the plan of laying an intra-State water grid, by taking a leaf out of the State's gas transmission and distribution network. The plan, with a capital cost of Rs 4,500 crore, is scheduled to be completed by 2004.

The first step in taking water without the aid of trains or other modes of transportation to the Saurashtra-Kutch region would in August come by way of the inter-basin transfer of Narmada waters from one river bed to the next. With the Narmada water grid already in position till Jamnagar in Saurashtra and up to Maliya at the mouth of the Gulf of Kutch, Gujarat is now ready for the final push to take the Narmada water to far-flung regions both in Saurashtra and Kutch.

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