India and the Netherlands signed two agreements in New Delhi on September 24 that bring Dutch engineers into the planning of Kalpasar, Gujarat’s proposed freshwater lake in the Gulf of Khambhat. The Central Water Commission and the state’s Kalpasar Department signed one tripartite MoU with Deltares, a Dutch water research institute, and a second with TU Delft, the Dutch technical university, PTI reported. Jal Shakti Minister C R Patil and Dutch Vice Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management Jaap Slootmaker chaired the meeting at Bharat Mandapam, on the sidelines of the ninth India International Water Week.
What the Dutch side will do
The Deltares agreement covers a technical review of the project, hydraulic and hydrological modelling, coastal and structural engineering, climate resilience, training and digital tools, according to DeshGujarat and ANI. Both MoUs formalise a Letter of Intent the two countries signed on May 16, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Netherlands. An Indian team went to the Netherlands in July to study Dutch flood-protection and hydraulic works.
The Dutch built the Afsluitdijk in the early 1930s to shut an arm of the North Sea and turn it into a freshwater lake, the IJsselmeer. Gujarat wants to do something similar at Khambhat. DeshGujarat reported that Dutch officials raised that parallel themselves, including on smaller questions such as how fish would move past the barrier.
Decades on the drawing board
Gujarat has studied a Khambhat barrier for decades, first as a tidal-power idea and later as a water-storage scheme. The current design, set out in the environmental clearance application the state filed in May and reported by DeshGujarat, is a 60.13-km dyke from Kardej near Bhavnagar to Paniyadra in Bharuch district, 26.7 km of it across open sea. Behind that wall, runoff from the Sabarmati, Mahi and Dhadhar rivers, topped up with Narmada water, would gradually push out the seawater. The same application put the cost at about Rs 1.33 lakh crore, up from roughly Rs 1 lakh crore in a 2022 pre-feasibility report.
What it means for Bhavnagar and Saurashtra
For Bhavnagar, the most visible promise is the road on top of the dyke. Today a trip to Bharuch, Surat or Mumbai runs around the head of the gulf through Ahmedabad district or Vadodara; a direct crossing would cut that journey to a fraction and bring south Gujarat’s industrial belt within easy reach of the port city.
For Saurashtra farmers the stakes run higher. The region leans on an erratic monsoon and on Narmada canal water that reaches its far districts last. This year the monsoon withdrew with Saurashtra and Kutch still short of rain, even as the Sardar Sarovar dam neared full capacity. A freshwater lake at the region’s doorstep would give the state a second large source for irrigation and drinking water.
The dyke also carries environmental risk. A barrier across a tidal gulf alters silt movement, salinity and fish habitats along both shores, and fishing communities in Bhavnagar and Bharuch depend on those waters. The Gulf of Khambhat also has some of the highest tides on India’s coast, which makes the engineering harder. The Deltares modelling and the pending environmental studies will have to answer those questions with numbers.
What to watch
- The detailed project report, which the Kalpasar Department has had in finalisation for months.
- The environment ministry’s response to Gujarat’s May request to begin detailed environmental studies.
- Whether the Dutch review changes the dyke alignment, the phasing or the Rs 1.33 lakh crore estimate.
Construction cannot begin until the environmental studies and the project report clear review, so any start date the state names before then should be read as a target.
Sources: PTI via ThePrint, DeshGujarat, ANI, DeshGujarat (dyke route), DeshGujarat (environmental clearance)
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.