Only a Barrage Can Save! - The Ganga: Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent - page 77

The problems of the Bhagirathi-Hooghly arose out of this diversion of the main
flow of the Ganga in the 16th century toward the Padma. Previously, the Ganga
threw its major flow through the Bhagirathi-Hooghly and Bhairab-Jalangi, together
called Nadia rivers, which built the central Bengal between them. Not only water-
level went low in these two rivers, branch rivers - Yamuna and Saraswati - also
shrank and ultimately died. The Bhagirathi had link with the Ganga only in monsoon
months; rest of the year it was detached, leading to silting up of its bed and mouth,
which in turn further reduced the discharge. As Captain Sherwill warned:
The process of silting up is rapidly proceeding in the beds of the Bhagirathi and Jalangi and
of necessity must continue to do so the further the Sandheads advance into the sea.
Geographically, the general inclination of India toward south-east, or toward the
centre of the deltaic basin, also affected the Bhagirathi, as the water of the Ganga
is more inclined to proceed straight in its south-eastward course rather than turn
into the Bhagirathi and flow in a due easterly/southward direction. Vast quantities
of dry soil flow down from the higher land in summer months from February to June
and the soil that is washed down in the rainy season, i.e., from June to September,
together filled up the bed of the Bhagirathi.
Information on Nadia rivers is meagre but their existence is a fact. Not much
is known, why are they so shallow. Levels from Rampore Bauleah on the Ganga,
at the apex of the delta to the Sandheads, cross-levels from Chittagong to Tamluk
and from Dhaka to Murshidabad should be carried out with mathematical precision.
The north and south levels may prove that the beds of the Bhagirathi and Jalangi are
much higher than that of the Ganga when its water-level goes down from the mouth
of the Bhagirathi to Rampore Bauleah and that all attempts to set right these rivers
will go in vain and serve no purpose.
In the natural course, these rivers have filled up, never to open again, as they
were in ages gone by. Rajmahal once stood on the shore of the ocean but it is now
far-off. Fleets once sailed up the Bhagirathi; they can no longer do that. Issuripore-
Jessore was, not many hundred years ago, on the edge of the south water but all
its neighbouring jheel s or lakes are now filled with brackish water. Nadia, from its
name, was once a new island with salt water around; it is now 208 km from the sea
and the site of a city up to whose garden walls, 80 years ago, the tidal wave, the bore
rolled but now it no longer approaches the town - the tide rising and falling about
two vertical inches only.
View of W. A. Lee
W. A. Lee of Calcutta Steam Navigation Company in a letter to the Secretary of
Port Facilities Enquiry Committee in 1914 reported that the Ganga which spills into
the channel of the Bhagirathi in rainy season, was unable to carry (away) as much
silt as it brought (from the Ganga) and therefore, deposited it in the Bhagirathi and
the Hooghly. The bed of the former is apparently rising and there is less water on
the shoals in the dry season than there was 25 years ago. From Nadia to Kolkata, he