It envisages diverting water from surplus river basins to water deficient areas.

Floods and drought have become a recurring problem in India and the project is aimed at improving the situation.

Last year a severe drought hit several Indian states, while floods destroyed people's harvests in many other areas.

The sharing of river waters has also led to tensions among some states, the most outstanding example being Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

These two southern states have been fighting for over a century over the Cauvery river.

India's Bharatiya Janata Party-led government sees the inter-linking of rivers as a long-term solution to many of these problems.

Water for laundering clothes is a perennial problem

The party now plans to involve its grass-roots activists in the project.

"We plan to disseminate the idea and educate the masses through our party workers," the president of the BJP's youth wing, G Kishan Reddy, told the BBC.

Mr Reddy, who is heading the awareness drive, said workers of the youth wing would take the concept to state capitals from where they would spread into the districts and villages.

The BJP says the river-linking project would boost the annual average income of farmers from the present $40 per acre of land to over $500.

It says once the rivers are linked, India's food production will increase from about 200m tonnes a year to 500m.

But neither the party nor the government led by it offers a specific answer to concerns raised by several environmental bodies.

They argue that the project would alter the basic character of many rivers and leave several hundred thousand people displaced.

They are also silent about how India would gather the resources to convert the grand idea into a reality.

The BJP and its leaders in the government have also ignored, for the time being, the international implications of the project.

India has river treaties with several neighbouring countries which prohibit Delhi from unilaterally altering river courses.

For the moment the party is backing the prime minister - who is keen on the project - in the hope that even if water does not reach dry areas, the project would win it votes in key elections this year.

The National Waterway 1 is located in India and runs from Haldia (Sagar) to Allahabad . It was declared as a waterway during October 1986.

The West Coast Canal or National Waterway No 3 is located in Kerala, India and runs from Kollam to Kottapuram and was declared a National Waterway in 1993.The dredging of this canal has been finished. The National waterway 3 is one of the most navigable and tourism potential area in India and has much to offer to the potential tourist. This is the first National Waterway in the country having 24 hours navigation facilities in the entire stretch.

Totallengh is 205 km.

Kakinada - Puducherry stretch of Canals and the Kaluvelly Tank, Bhadrachalam – Rajahmundry stretch of River Godavari and Wazirabad – Vijayawada stretch of River Krishna.

Estd = November 2008

Length = 1095 km

National Waterways 6 is a proposed waterway between Lakhipur and Bhanga of river Barak. Length = 121 km

National Waterway 5 (NW-5) consists of the Talcher - Dhamra stretch of the Brahmani River, the Geonkhali - Charbatia stretch of the East Coast Canal, the Charbatia - Dhamra stretch of Matai river and the Mangalgadi - Paradip stretch of the Mahanadi River Delta. It was declared a National Waterway in November 2008.

Satyavathi Camp is a village in Sindanur Taluka, Karnataka, India. It is located beside a canal that provides water to three ponds. One stores drinking water for the villagers, and the other two provide water for lands for Paddy and Wheat Cultivation.The two ponds belongs to MullapudiKumarRaju.He is very found of his village Satyavathicamp.Satyavathi is the name of his grandmother.

Canoly canal is the part of the West coast canal network of Kerala and runs through the Kozhikode city. It was constructed in the year 1848 under the orders of then collector of Malabar, R. Canolly.[1] The Canoli Canal is 11.4 km (7 mi) long and connects the Korapuzha river in the north and the Kallai River in the south. The width of the canal varies between 6 to 20 metres (20 to 65 ft), and the water depth during the monsoon ranges between 0.5 and 2 metres (1.5 to 6 ft). The sides of most of the canal are lined with dimension stone, but at some locations the lining has collapsed. In a number of places along the canal, trees and bushes and water plants have grown, causing the water flow in the middle stretch of the canal to become weaker.[2]

The Canoly Canal Development Samithi in Calicut has recently decided to start speedboat service on the canal from Karaparamba to the Sarovaram park site in September 2009.[3]

The Buckingham Canal is a 420 kilometres (261.0 mi) long fresh water navigation canal, running parallel to the Coromandel Coast of South India from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh to Villupuram District in Tamil Nadu. The canal connects most of the natural backwaters along the coast to the port of Chennai (Madras). It was constructed by the British Rule, and was an important waterway during the late nineteenth and the twentieth century.

It was first known simply as the North River by the British and was believed to be partly responsible for reducing tsunami and cyclone damage to much of the Chennai-southern Andhra coastline

The Indira Gandhi Canal is one of the biggest canal projects in India.

It starts from the Harike Barrage at Sultanpur, a few kilometers below the confluence of the Sutlej and Beas rivers in Punjab state.

a view of Rajasthan canal near Fakarsar village(Punjab)

It runs south-southwest in Punjab and Haryana but mainly in Rajasthan for a total of 650 kilometers and ends near at Ramgarh, near Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan. Kanwar Sain the Chief engineer of Bikaner state was the first to come up the idea of the canal.

Its construction started on the 31st March,1958, inaugurated by then Home Minister Govind Ballabh Pant. It was built with the aim of converting part of the Thar desert from wasteland to agriculturally productive land. It was earlier known as the Rajasthan Canal. The name was changed on the 2nd Nov,1984.

It uses water released from the Pong dam and provides irrigation facilities to the north-western region of Rajasthan, a part of the Thar Desert. It consists of the Rajasthan feeder canal (with the first 167 km in Punjab and Haryana and the remaining 37 km in Rajasthan) and 445 km of the Rajasthan main canal which is entirely within Rajasthan. The IGNP traverses seven districts of Rajasthan: Barmer, Bikaner, Churu, Hanumangarh, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, and Sriganganagar

The Sethu Canal, also known as the Sethu Samudram Ship Canal Project, was inaugurated on 2 July 2005, by Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India. This proposed navagational canal through a 19-mile (30 km) stretch of shallow sea in the Palk Strait would bypass passage around Sri Lanka. It would reduce the travel distance by some 470 nautical miles (870 km) and transit time by some 36 hours, but is beset by a number of financial and ecological questions.

The canal was first proposed in the late 19th century during the British Raj, and finally on 13 March 2003, the Central Government of India, headed by then Prime Minister Vajpayee, gave the go ahead

Assuming that international vessels would prefer to go through this canal as against the Colombo port route, an estimated 2,000 vessels or more may use the canal annually. In the 19th year, cumulative annual earnings from the project are expected to be over Rs 5,000 crore. The project is estimated to cost about Rs 2,000 crore and debt-equity ratio is estimated to be 7:5. The Central Government is planning to go in for a mix of equity and debt for the project and for the first time. These estimates must receive public scrutiny.

Recently the canal has marred by controversy. NASA released satellite image showing possible man made under sea bridge in the Gulf of Mannar. Hindus in India have regarded this bridge as the remains of the bridge built by Vanar Sena to cross Sri Lanka, as mentioned in Ramayana. Against a PIL submitted in supreme court in India, the India government filed an affidavat claiming that the undersea bridge is a natural formation. The government had to withdraw the affidavat due to increased pressure from the Indian public.

NASA official Mark Hess had then stated: “Remote sensing images or photographs from orbit cannot provide direct information about the origin or age of a chain of islands, and certainly cannot determine whether humans were involved in producing any of the patterns seen.” Hess further stated that NASA had been taking pictures of these sandbars for years. Its images had never resulted in any scientific discovery in that area. “The images reproduced on websites may well be ours but their interpretation is certainly not ours.”

Sutlej Yamuna link Canal or SYL as it is popularly known, is a 214-kilometre (133 mi) long heavy freight canal in India to connect the Sutlej and Yamuna rivers.[1] However, the proposal met obstacles [2] and was referred to the Supreme Court.[1]

SYL is being built westwards from near its headwaters through the Punjab region near an ancient caravan route and highlands pass to the navigable parts of the Sutlej-Indus watershed. This will connect the entire Ganges, which flows to the east coast of the subcontinent, with points west (via Pakistan). When completed, the SYL will allow shipping from India's east coast to the west coast and the Arabian sea, drastically shortening shipping distances and creating important commercial links for north-central India's large population. The canal starts near Palla village near Delhi, and was to transfer Haryana's share of 3.5 million acre-feet from Indus Basin, though state of Haryana has completed its portion, Punjab is against its construction, and the state legislature passed the "Punjab Termination of Agreement Act 2004", which declared earlier agreements null and void.[3] A public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the Punjab Termination of Agreements Bill 2004 has been filed in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Act annuls the 1981 Indira Gandhi award and subsequent agreements relating to the distribution of Ravi- Beas waters among Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

In his petition C.W.P No. 11091 of 2004, Mr Naresh Kumar Kadyan of Rohtak in Haryana has questioned the validity of Act, passed recently by the Punjab Assembly. He has sought quashing of the Act.

He has also prayed that the recent judgement of the Supreme Court regarding the completion of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal be immediately ordered to be complied with.

Today, the case could not be taken up and will be listed for tomorrow before the Division Bench of Chief Justice Mr Justice B.K. Roy and Mr Justice Surya Kant.

Tajewala Barrage is a barrage across the Yamuna River, located in Yamuna Nagar District, in the state of Haryana, India. Completed in 1873, it regulates the flow of the Yamuna for irrigation in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana through two canals originating at this place namely Western Yamuna Canal and Eastern Yamuna Canal,[1] as well as the municipal water supply to Delhi. In 2000, it was augmented with Hathni Kund barrage for manipulating the flow of river waters. 

Trivandrum - Shoranur canal popularly known as T S canal was commissioned in stages under the three erstwhile states of Madras, Cochin and Travancore between 18th and 19th century. the portion between Channankara and Trivandrum was first done to effect through-traffic from Varkala to Trivandrum. Then, Paravoor canal was constructed to link backwaters of Paravur Kayal and Edava Kayal. Quilon canal came next connecting Paravur and Ashtamudi Kayal. Thus, the waterway route in this region was completed by 1880 to have through movement of goods and passenger-traffic between southern parts of Travancore parts of the state.