ADR and others have spent decades in “voter education”. Some believe that more voter education will help.

I believe this is both unnecessary and deals with the wrong problem.

While it may be the case that some voters do not make a thorough analysis of options, they almost always select the best candidate on offer. That is what explains the constantly shifting voting patterns across the country.

The real problem in India on the supply side. Candidates with poor ethics are selected by parties deliberately since all parties must necessarily be corrupt in order to succeed (as explained in BFN). The few candidates with good intentions who do enter generally do not have the time or money to campaign and reach out to voters. But there is virtually none who is both honest and competent – and willing to spend time and money to campaign.

The incentives built into the system force corrupt and even criminal candidates to be selected (they must spend crores of rupees – and only the corrupt have such money).

Voter education won’t work to even remotely address the problem. Voters are much smarter than we think. They don’t need to be told how to vote. They will always pick the best they can, given the information available to them.

Those who believe in voter education are likely to achieve genuine results by actually contesting elections. Give the voters a real choice.

But, from what I know about India for the past many decades, such persons will not contest (and even if they do, they will not campaign vigorously for 2 years, and they will not have the resources to campaign vigorously).

Unless 300 good people enter the parliament and change its incentives, the people of India must be prepared to live with what they have – a truly sub-optimal situation.

Following on from my post here. I’d like to thank Pankaj Das for managing to collect a few articles from the late Indrajit Barua’s home.

I’ve OCRd two of them. I’m publishing the scanned image for all three + text (for two of them). These are specialist technical articles, not the ones that demonstrate his liberal credentials. I do recall many of his articles criticising the public sector and the waste created by socialism.

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Measures to protect Majuli, Indrajit Barua, Thursday, September 8, 2016

The world’s largest riverine island, Majuli, the seat of Assamese culture and a piece of real estate that occupies a very important position in our hearts and minds, which also happens to be the constituency of our present Chief Minister, and under serious threat of extinction due to soil erosion by the Brahmaputra, is hosting a Cabinet meeting of the Sarbananda Sonowal-led Government on September 8. 2016.

At care time, the Brahmaputra and the Dihing flowed close to each other in parallel courses. A flood that occurred around 1750 AD is said to have diverted a part of the flow of the Brahmaputra through the channel of the Dihing about 190 km upstream of its confluence. When the two rivers joined, the intervening land area became what is now called the Majuli island. In the later part of the 18th century, Mejuli was a duster of 15 large and numerous small islands.

In 1901 the island covered an area of 1255 sq km. By 1917. the island’s area had been reduced to 751 sq km; it gradually shrank to 564 sq km during 1966-19T2. to 454 sq km in 1996 and to 422 sq km in 2001; its present area would be around 400 sq km. From 1917 to 1972. the average annual rate of erosion was 1.77 sq km, 1.84 sq km per year from 1972 to 1996. and 6.42 sq km per year from 1996 to 2001. These figures clearly indicate a gradual increase in the rate of erosion progressively despite the very expensive efforts of the State and Central governments to control erosion.

The island is under the threat of extinction due to the extensive soil erosion of its banks, The reason for it is the large embankments built in the nearby towns upstream to pre vent erosion during the rainy season when the river overtops its banks. When the flood recedes, it carries away substantial chunks of Assam’s land mass. Because Majuli sits directly in the course of the flow of a turbulent Brahmaputra, the river vents its fury on the island, eroding whatever comes in its path whenever its waters develop “silt hunger”.

We therefore need to take a fresh look at our erosion control measures with the view to adopting technically viable schemes that will actually arrest erosion, because, clearly, the schemes undertaken by the State Water Resources Department and the Brahmaputra Board Wile have failed to protect Majuli from erosion despite hundreds of crores of public money having been expended in the name of erosion control.

Much of the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra and the entire island of Majuli consist of fine grained sand (technically, silt), which lacks cohesion (adhesive quality) and it is in such kind of soils that river bank erosion occurs easily. What is therefore needed is to change the soil properties to make the non-cohesive or sandy soils more resistant to erosion. This can be done by injection of a slurry of cement and water into the soil from the ground surface deep into the ground below the “low water lever” (LWL) wider pressure though a perforated steel pipe. The procedure is known as high pressure cement grouting and has been used elsewhere in the world to combat such problems.

A study at the Teheran University showed that non-cohesive soils grouted with cement slurry resisted erosion when exposed directly to a water jet with a velocity of three metres per second in a testing flume. There is no reason why such grouting should not work in Majuli or elsewhere in Assam wherever the riverbank consists of sandy soil lacking in cohesion.

After grouting, the steel pipe should be left undisturbed to act as a reinforcing bar to further strengthen the soil. Addition of ironite powder to cernent-water slurry may also be done. This will result in increased resistance to erosion. The grouting operation can be done in a number of rows around the periphery of the island to create an erosion resistant river bank 10-15 metres wide. No agricultural operation or any other activity involving disturbance of the treated soil should be permitted in this strip of land. Amarlata (Tinosporia cordfolia) can be planted in the erosion-prone riverbanks to increase their resistance to erosion. This plant thrives in water; its roots and leaves will prevent disturbance of the soil by water currents.

A river’s natural tendency is to scour its bed during high floods and to deposit silt during low water periods when the velocity reduces. It is when the velocity of the stream reduces and the water level ebbs that bank erosion occurs because the hydraulic gradient aids such erosion. At the same time, due to reduction of velocity, the water mass In energy and deposits solids carried by it on the riverbed further downstream. Such deposit of silt at selected locations can be encouraged by human intervention. This writer’s personal experience is that wherever an immovable obstruction is placed close to a riverbank, it causes silt deposit around the obstruction during the low water period. The site for water intake (on the Brahmaputra) of the Guwahati Refinery was chosen as it had never been silted till that time (1961-62). A barge was constructed and placed as near to the bank as practicable to act as a floating pumping station for the Refinery’s 130 million litres per day water treatment plant. It surprised everyone that right during the next low water season (winter), the river started silting up around the barge and such silting has continued ever since then, requiring dredging of the riverbed every year during the low water period to maintain the water supply to the refinery.

Therefore, to encourage silt deposit on the bed around the banks of the island suitable obstructions may have to be placed to impede the flow and to encourage silting during the periods of low water flow. Stone spurs placed in the bed of a turbulent river like the Brahrroputra may not work as such spurs tend to get moved around and dislodged during high flood periods as they are not firmly anchored into the riverbed. What needs to be done is to construct spurs or obstructions that will not get dislodged by the forte of water current during high flood conditions. This can be achieved by constructing rectangular or circular concrete wells (similar to bridge foundations) by sinking to the required depth into the riverbed to ensure their stability during high flood conditions, plugging the bottoms, providing sand fill inside, and finally sealing the tops with concrete well caps. However, as already noticed in Majuli, such river control exercises may have unpleasant side effects on the island’s environs and even further downstream. To gauge what may happen if such impediments to encourage silting around the island are constructed, the Central Water and Power Research Station at Pune may be requested to carry out a model study.

The model study may take some time, but the danger of erosion will continue unabated to further reduce the island in the meanwhile. Therefore, to control and arrest erosion and save the island from extinction, operations to inject cement-water-ironite powder slurry into the ground beyond the low water level and the planting of Arnarlata on the banks shoued be undertaken without any further loss of time.

Water-logging in Guwahati, Indrajit Barua

The citizens of Guwahati would not have had to suffer the miseries and woes caused by water  logging of their lands, homes and streets if the State Government had Implemented a proper storm water drainage scheme when the State’s capital was shifted from Shillong to Guwaliati in 1972. It is not that the Government was unaware of the problem of storm water drainage for Guwahati city in the past. As early as in 1969-70, even before Assam’s capital was shifted from Shillong to Guwahati, the Government of Assam had engaged the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Organization {later known as Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA)} to prepare a master plan for Guwahati. That master plan, inter alia, included the preparation of a comprehensive plan to provide solutions for the problems of water supply, sanitary sewerage and storm water drainage of Greater Guwahati, taking into account its future development, increase of population and other relevant parameters, The CMDA made a detailed physical survey of the city covering these aspects, and submitted a detailed master plan to the State Government in 1970. That master plan was approved by the Assam Legislative Assembly in 1971.

For the scheme of storm water drainage, the CMDA had furnished comprehensive details and data, including a topographical survey map of Greater Guwahati including the Deepor Beel, storm water (rainfall) run-off calculations, permanent benchmarks with supporting records for the purpose of establishing the correct bed levels and slopes of the storm water drainage system that was to be constructed in phases in the future and monograms (charts/graphs) for designing individual schemes.

Consequent to the shifting of the State’s capital from Shillong to Guwahati in 1972, the city witnessed mushroom growth of population and buildings without any control, and without the construction of the requisite, essential and supporting infrastructure. Thus, 43 years after the approval of the master plan for Greater Guwahati by the Assam Legislative assembly in 1971, the means to discharge the storm water into the natural outfalls remain more or less where they were back in 1971. This is the root cause of misery of the inhabitants of Guwahati city today.

The solution is to adopt the CMDA report of 1971 as the basic document for designing the storm water drainage scheme for Guwahati, with the following steps-in-aid thereof:

1) Update the storm water runoff calculation to account for increase due to urbanization. The storm water run-off – the quantity of water that reaches the drains after a storm – increases as the density of buildings, roads and other impermeable surfaces increases in a given area. The storm water run-off in 1971 would have been much less than what it is today. Therefore, in any urban habitat, in planning drainage systems, the planners have to take into account the increased run-off caused by increased urbanization. The mathematical models used for computing storm water run-offs have built in provisions for the needed adjustments in this respect.

2) Design and construct a storm water drainage network to cope with the run-off at any given time with margins for increased run-off over the years due to increased urbanization with the aid of established scientific and rational mathematical models of hydrology and hydraulics, taking into account the recommendations and the database provided by the CMDA.

3) Earmark or acquire land along the Bharalu (the only drainage channel for the Bharalu basin) for re-sectioning it to increase its holding capacity; also earmark or acquire land for accommodating reservoirs for storm water drainage in the future, so that nothing else can be constructed in such locations.

4) Design and construct a proper pumping station at Bharalumukh with a stand-by DG set to provide power to the pumps when the electricity grid is switched off. The duly ratings of the pumps, that are actually required from a consideration of appropriate hydrological factors need to be determined to ensure that the system performs property when pumping out of water from the Bharalu into the Brahmaputra when needed.

And this: