A seminar organised was jointly by the National Waterways Development Technology and All People Welfare Trust to create awareness about Ganga-Kanyakumari waterways project, here on May 4, 2019. Dr G Viswanathan, VIT Chancellor said that States can take as much water as they want and provide the remaining water to their nieghbouring states by interlinking their rivers. Everybody will accept interlinking of rivers as it will help all people and nobody will oppose it. “The MLAs and MPs need to accord highest priority to interlink rivers and save water and the new Government which will assume charge at the centre soon should accord highest priority to interlink rivers in the country so that the country’s people and farmers will benefit by this,” he said.

Water is important to all countries, especially to India. India has about 18 per cent of world’s population but we have only 4 per cent of fresh water and 2.4 per cent of land area, so we need to preserve our water and land else we will face issues.

Recalling his interaction as Parliamentarian with then Minister for water resources KL Rao during 1967, Dr Viswanathan said that Rao felt that even though all rivers in the country could be interlinked with Ganges, it would be easy to link Godavari to Cauvery and South will not face any problem for water. The project can be done at an inexpensive cost and no State would oppose it.

“India’s Budget is about Rs 28 lakh crore and if we allocate Rs 1 lakh crore to interlink rivers the scheme can be implemented in one year. The Centre has spent Rs 5 lakh crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, if the centre had spent this amount for interlinking of rivers, a lot of farmers would  benefit,” he said.

He said that water should be stored in reservoirs, dams and water bodies when it rains, as people have been facing water shortage issue in the country. “We need to use drip irrigation for farming as we can save about 30 to 40 per cent of water and it is being followed in several places in the world,” Viswanathan said.

Justice T Raja released a book Towards The Second Freedom written by Professor A C Kamaraj and Dr Viswanathan received the first copy of the book.