Bihar Irrigation and Power Projects: Canals and Dams

Bihar is a state of two water problems at once. North of the Ganga the Himalayan rivers, the Kosi, the Gandak, the Bagmati, the Burhi Gandak and the Kamla, bring more water than the plain can carry and flood it almost every year. South of the Ganga the rivers rise on the Chhotanagpur edge, run dry after the monsoon and leave Gaya, Nawada and Jamui short of water. Irrigation policy in the state has therefore meant barrages and canals in the north to use the flood water and reservoirs and canals in the south to store what little there is. Power has a separate history: the bifurcation of 2000 left the coalfields and the big stations in Jharkhand, and Bihar has had to build again.

The Sone canal system

The Sone system is the oldest and the largest canal network of the state. An anicut was thrown across the Sone at Dehri in Rohtas district in the colonial period, and the Indrapuri barrage replaced it at the same place in 1968. From the barrage the Eastern Sone Canal waters Aurangabad, Arwal, Jehanabad, Gaya and Patna, and the Western Sone Canal waters Rohtas, Bhojpur and Buxar. These canals made the Sone plain the rice bowl of south Bihar. The same river carries the Bansagar dam in Madhya Pradesh, whose water is shared under an agreement between Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The Gandak and Kosi projects

Both of the great northern projects were built with Nepal. The Gandak project rests on a barrage at Valmiki Nagar in West Champaran. Its main western canal, the Saran canal, irrigates Saran, Siwan and Gopalganj and carries water into eastern Uttar Pradesh, while its main eastern canal, the Tirhut canal, irrigates Champaran, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Sitamarhi and Samastipur. A small hydel station at Valmiki Nagar uses the fall at the barrage.

The Kosi project was taken up after the agreement with Nepal of 1954 to tame the river long called the Sorrow of Bihar, which used to shift its channel westward across the plain. The Kosi barrage stands at Bhimnagar in Supaul district on the border. Long embankments hold the river, the Eastern Kosi Main Canal irrigates Saharsa, Madhepura, Purnia, Araria and Katihar, and the Western Kosi Canal serves Madhubani and Darbhanga. The hydel station at Kataiya, built across the border, supplies power under the same agreement.

Reservoirs, lift schemes and tube wells

Beside the canals, tube wells have spread fast across the plain because the water table is shallow, and they now water a large share of the irrigated land, especially where a canal tail runs dry. Lift schemes raise Ganga water where gravity cannot reach, the Bateshwar Sthan scheme at Kahalgaon being the best known.

Power stations of Bihar

Bihar generates most of its own power from coal brought from the Jharkhand and Bengal fields. The oldest large station is the Barauni thermal station in Begusarai. NTPC runs the Kahalgaon super thermal station in Bhagalpur, the Barh super thermal station in Patna district, the Muzaffarpur station through Kanti Bijlee Utpadan Nigam and the Nabinagar stations in Aurangabad district. One of the Nabinagar plants, run by Bhartiya Rail Bijlee Company, is a joint venture of NTPC with Indian Railways and was built to feed the railway system. A new thermal plant is coming up at Chausa in Buxar district.

Hydel generation is small because the plain has no fall. The units at Valmiki Nagar on the Gandak, at Kataiya on the Kosi canal system and the drops on the Sone canals near Dehri make up most of it, and the state has no atomic station. Solar parks and floating solar panels on reservoirs are the newest addition. On the institutional side the old electricity board was unbundled in 2012 into a holding company with separate generation, transmission and distribution companies, and the Har Ghar Bijli programme under the Saat Nischay plan carried connections to households across the state.