CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 41 of 120

Correct — B, Satluj. Bhakra is a concrete gravity dam on the Satluj at Bhakra village, where the river leaves the Shivaliks near Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh, and the whole project takes its name from Bhakra plus Nangal, the barrage about ten kilometres downstream. The canal system is fed from Nangal: water released there enters the Nangal Hydel Channel, which generates power at Ganguwal and Kotla and then feeds the Bhakra Main Line and its distributaries. The Bhakra canals irrigate about ten million acres in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, and the power generated is shared among Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chandigarh and Delhi. The Satluj is also the right answer on treaty grounds: it is one of the three eastern rivers whose waters were allocated to India under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which is what made a project on this scale possible.

• (a)Chenab — A western river under the Indus Waters Treaty, allocated to Pakistan. Its Indian projects — Salal, Baglihar, Ratle — are run-of-the-river hydel schemes in Jammu and Kashmir, not the source of the Bhakra canals.
• (c)Ravi — An eastern river like the Satluj, and dammed at Ranjit Sagar (Thein) near Pathankot — but a different river with a different command area. Bhakra stands on the Satluj.
• (d)Jhelum — Another western river allocated to Pakistan, flowing through the Kashmir Valley and Wular lake. It is nowhere near the Bhakra command.

The Indus system has five great left-bank tributaries in the Punjab. Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, brokered by the World Bank, the eastern rivers — the Ravi, the Beas and the Satluj — were allocated to India, and the western rivers — the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab — to Pakistan, with limited non-consumptive use allowed to India. Bhakra Nangal, along with the Beas project and the Indira Gandhi Canal, is how India put its share of the eastern rivers to work.

Two independent routes lead to the same answer, which is what makes this question a good one to reason through rather than recall. The treaty route: the Bhakra canals irrigate Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, so the river must be one India can dam and divert, which rules out the Chenab and the Jhelum immediately and leaves the Ravi and the Satluj. The geography route: the Beas is diverted into the Satluj at Pandoh and joins it at Harike, so the Satluj carries the largest usable flow of the eastern group by the time it reaches the plains — the natural place to build the biggest canal command. Nehru's description of such dams as the temples of modern India was made at Bhakra, and the project's headworks are the standard image of first-generation Indian planning.

• Bhakra is a concrete gravity dam on the Satluj at Bhakra village, and Nangal is a barrage about ten kilometres downstream of it.
• Water released from Nangal enters the Nangal Hydel Channel, from which the Bhakra canal system is fed.
• The Bhakra canals irrigate about ten million acres in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
• Power from Bhakra is shared among Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Chandigarh and Delhi.
• Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, the eastern rivers are the Satluj, the Beas and the Ravi, and the western rivers are the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab.

• Choosing a western river; the Chenab and Jhelum are allocated to Pakistan and could not support an Indian canal command of this size.
• Confusing Bhakra with Pong, which is on the Beas, or with Ranjit Sagar, which is on the Ravi.
• Treating Bhakra and Nangal as one structure; Nangal is a separate downstream barrage and it is Nangal that feeds the canals.

Asked as a project-to-river match, and in the harder version as a match-the-following pairing four dams with four rivers or four States.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, the 'Eastern Rivers' allocated to India are

  • (a)the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab
  • (b)the Satluj, the Beas and the Ravi
  • (c)the Chenab, the Ravi and the Beas
  • (d)the Jhelum, the Satluj and the Ravi

  Answer(b) the Satluj, the Beas and the Ravi — the western rivers, allocated to Pakistan, are the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Pong Dam, part of the Beas Project, is built across which river?

  • (a)Satluj
  • (b)Beas
  • (c)Ravi
  • (d)Ghaggar

  Answer(b) Beas — Pong stands on the Beas in Himachal Pradesh, while Bhakra stands on the Satluj and Ranjit Sagar on the Ravi.