“Opening up of the Brahmaputra waterways for trade will lead to a reduction in the cost of transportation of goods and will ultimately result in Assam becoming an export hub for the South East Asian countries,” Assam Industries and Commerce Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said on Friday while addressing the day-long North East Tea Conclave.

The minister’s misplaced optimism comes in the wake of World Bank’s sanctioning of Rs 980 crore for dredging Brahmaputra to develop waterways on the river to Bangladesh and other South east Asian countries in a bid to boost trade.

Most major publications relied upon the wire copy supplied by the Press Trust of India (PTI):

Indian Express: World Bank sanctions Rs 980 cr for Brahmaputra dredging: Assam minister

Business Standard: World Bank sanctions Rs 980 crore for Brahmaputra dredging: Chandra

Mohan Patowary

India Today: World Bank sanctions Rs 980 cr for Brahmaputra dredging: Min

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except it isn’t.

Dredging involves scooping mud, gravel, sediments etc from the riverbed, to increase its water carrying capacity. However, it has a serious side-effect. As water flow is increased, the riverbank erodes more than it would have had the river remained in its natural state. This in turn increases the chances of floods downstream areas. Britain’s Environment Agency, in a presentation titled ‘To Dredge or Not to Dredge?’ put it this way:

“The concept of dredging to prevent extreme flooding is equivalent to trying to squeeze the volume of water held by a floodplain within the volume of water held in the river channel. Since the floodplain volume is usually many times larger than the channel volume, the concept becomes a major engineering project and a major environmental change.”

United Kingdom realised the terrible effects of dredging in the 2014 floods which cost the country a massive 2.2 billion pounds.

Manoj Mishra, of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, an NGO working on the conservation of the river Yamuna, compared dredging a river to disembowelling a human being. “Dredging disturbs the entire riverbed of a river,” said Mishra. “And in the case of Brahmaputra, as it brings a lot of silt, this kind of exercise is not even going to be cost effective.” He also said that dredging could increase the chances of a “normal flood turning into a disaster”.