Chennai: Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh, who won the award for his pioneering work in water conservation in Rajastan, on May 2 came down heavily on the project on inter-linking of rivers and described it as "political stunt in an election year".

He told reporters that any water project, devoid of community participation, would be an "economic plunder".

He said if the rivers were interlinked as envisaged in the Rs 5,60,000 crore project, it would disrupt the hydrological cycle, which would lead to ecological problems.

The project was based on a "fallacious assumption" that 70 per cent of the river flows was going waste, he said.

He said the gigantic project was not in the interest of the people as it wrongly assumed that some river basins had surplus water and some as scarce.

He said the national water policy announced by the Centre last year defined water as a property, which amounted to treating the water as tradable commodity and would lead to privatisation of water sector. The policy was due to pressure from multinational companies, who wanted to conduct business in the water front also, he alleged.

PTI