Also: Damodar river, Damodar Valley Corporation, DVC
Definition
The Damodar is a river of eastern India, about 590 km long, that rises in the Chota Nagpur plateau in Jharkhand and flows east into West Bengal, joining the Hooghly south of Kolkata. Once called the "Sorrow of Bengal" for its floods, it was harnessed by the Damodar Valley Corporation, India's first multipurpose river valley project.
The DVC was unusual because it brought the Centre and two states together in a single corporation with powers across the basin. Over time, however, its focus shifted mainly to power generation, and irrigation and flood control functions were partly taken back by the states. Critics argue that the original vision of integrated basin management was diluted, while defenders note that DVC's power plants helped build industry in eastern India.
For centuries the lower Damodar flooded the plains of Bardhaman, Hooghly and Howrah, earning it the name "Sorrow of Bengal". Heavy monsoon rain on the steep, deforested plateau ran off quickly into a river with a shallow, silted channel in the plains. After a severe flood in 1943, the government appointed a committee, and engineers looked to the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States as a model for unified development of an entire river basin.
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