India's
Giant River-link Project
Will
Bangladesh Dry Up?
SHAMIM
AHSAN
In
the backdrop of great concern regarding India's giant
river-link project the recently held minister-level
talks in Delhi could not have come at a more opportune
time. The meeting survived quite a few near-deadlock
situations as the Bangladeshi side kept insisting on
raising the issue of the controversial project and India
kept refusing to discuss it. The meeting extended upto
8 hours more than the stipulated time before the talks
finally ended amicably with both the ministers smiling
as they signed the joint statement. But what have we
to actually smile about?
After
a lot of bargaining and wrangling the only thing Bangladesh
seems to have achieved is to include the project issue
in the meeting minutes. Experts believe it would be
naïve to consider it a great achievement. The task
in our hand is to keep up the pressure and make India
go by its promise that it would consult Bangladesh if
and when it goes for materialising this controversial
project.
Before
venturing into the details of the proposed river-link
project it is necessary to get an idea about the physical
positioning of our rivers. Three major rivers of the
region, namely the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna/Barak
(GBM) have a common terminus into the Bay of Bengal
and thus form a river system. This river system falls
in a number of countries in the South Asia region, including
China, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Of these, China
contributes solely to the flow of the Brahmaputra, and
Nepal to the flow of the Ganges. Both China and Nepal
are upper riparian countries and the tributaries originating
in these countries contributing to the GBM system are
not yet fully utilised. As a result, these countries
do not face any contentious water issue with their lower
riparian neighbours. The remaining two countries, India
and Bangladesh, depend heavily on the waters from the
GBM system. Due to the rapidly growing population and
consequent increase in demand for agricultural, domestic
and industrial water, these two neighbours face a growing
list of water-related contentions. Although, the region
as a whole receives many times more water than is necessary
over the year, the spatial and temporal distribution
of water availability is very uneven. Thus, the dwindling
supply of water in the dry season has become one of
the key issues between India and Bangladesh. The situation
is particularly critical for Bangladesh, as about 80%
of its annual fresh water supply comes as transboundary
inflows through 54 common rivers with India.
Now
what is this river-link project all about and how does
it concern us? These are the two most important questions
that need to be answered right at the beginning. Termed
as “the national water perspective” Water Recourses
Ministry in India undertook this project way back in
1980. After two years the Indian government set up the
National Water Development Agency (NWDA), which after
working for 20 years came up with a plan to take waters
from one basin of a river to another and thus solving
the water crisis in the draught-affected regions in
India. For this they identified 30 connecting points
in different rivers which would be connected by digging
canals.
They
have almost completed the task of examining the feasibility
of 6 points out of those 30. Towards the middle of 2002
the Indian government formed a task force under an MP
who would work to build consensus among different states
regarding this project. By 2005 the task force hopes
to complete the feasibility test of all the remaining
24 points and by 2016 it aims to complete the entire
project.
The
purpose of this $200 billion mega-project that India
looks all set to undertake, is to solve the water scarcity
of its different states including Horiana, Gujrat, Rajsthan.
The plan is to connect the Ganges in the north and the
Brahmaputra in the east and then to add it to the Kaberi
and Mahanadi in the south, and from Mahanadi to the
Biash in the west. This will allow channeling the surplus
water of the Brahmaputra during the monsoon to the draughty
areas and also keep the tributaries and other big and
small water bodies flowing.
Again
the Brahmaputra and the Teesta would be connected to
take waters from the former to the latter and from the
latter to the Farakka Barrage. For this purpose they
need some 30 connecting canals which (if joined) together
would be around 10,000 km in length. Besides nine big
and 24 small dams--four of them in collaboration with
Bhutan and Nepal--would also be built as required in
the master plan.
This
huge project, if implemented, will allow India to bring
in 34 million more hectares of land under the irrigation
system with the surface water and 8 lakh hectares more
with subterranean water.
India
also plans to produce 34 million KW (kilowatt) waterpower
under the same project. The policymakers, moreover,
in India believe this river-link project is worth the
huge expenditure as they take the multi-faceted benefits
from this project into consideration. Though the Indian
Resource Minister Arjun Charan assured his Bangladeshi
counterpart that the project is still in its conceptual
stage, the fact remains that efforts are already on
to procure this sum. A committee was formed under the
former minister for power Suresh Prabhu for this very
purpose and a few months ago Prabhu had gone to the
US and sought the assistance of the US through the US
Congress and the US President as well as of the World
Bank. One success of Prabhu's visit to the US was he
could mobilise the Indian-born Americans who showed
interest in and promised investment in the project.
Another
thing that added motion to the Indian government's initiatives
in materialising the project is a verdict of the Indian
Supreme Court. The court verdict, which came after a
public interest case was filed with it, ordered the
government to realise the project by December 31, 2016.
Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam has spoken in favour
of this project recently while the BJP govt. has been
calling it “Indian's dream project” and promising to
materialise it for quite some time now.
In
fact, political analysts in India are of the view that
“Ram Mandir” and the 'River-link project' issues are
going to be used as trump cards in the upcoming national
election by the rightist fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata
Party. Now, if India goes ahead with this project --
it now appears to be a strong possibility -- the fallout
will be devastating for Bangladesh. The proposed river-link
project is worked out depending on the two major rivers
of the region -- the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. As
for India these two rivers are also of equal significance
to us, whose flow provide and determine to a large extent
the flow of other small rivers and tributaries. Now,
when the river-link project comes into Operation, India
will start withdrawing water from both the Ganges and
the Brahmaputra and instantly water flow of the rivers
in our north-west, north-middle, south-west and south-middle
areas will fall sharply. Consequently different types
of water bodies like beels, canals, wet lands of those
area will go dry. The deadliest effect however will
be the increase of salinity to a dangerous level. The
combined flow of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the
Meghna goes through the lower Meghna and finally falls
into the Bay of Bengal. In the dry season at present
90 percent waters of this combined flow is contributed
by the Brahmaputra. For this, the salty water cannot
get inside the country through the lower Meghna basin.
But if the waters coming from the Brahmaputra decrease
because of withdrawal of water in the upstream, waterflow
will also fall in the lower Meghna and consequently
saline water will get inside and spread up to the mid-point
of the country. That is exactly what happened to our
south-western part of the country because of Farakka.
In that case it was the Gorai river which suffered from
low flow of water.
According
to a Washington Times report on September 20, the Indian
plan would cause severe flooding during the monsoon
rains and worse drought during the dry season in Bangladesh.
The report cites Jayanta Bandopadhyaya of the
Centre
for Development and Environment Policy at the Indian
Institute of Management in Kolkata as saying that once
the Indian plan is implemented, the world could lose
the richest fisheries in south Asia. Bandhopadhyaya
points out that salinity would also make inroads into
the region, affecting thousands of hectares of arable
land [and] affecting the lives of millions of people
living on agriculture in Bangladesh. Mangrove forests
too, he says, will be
disastrously
affected as they depend on the steady rise and fall
of tides for their roots to breathe. Arresting the natural
flow of rivers could be a death knell for the world's
largest remaining coastal forest a World Heritage site
shared by the delta regions of Bangladesh and India.
Many
Indian states with surplus water fear that New Delhi's
plans could adversely affect the existing systems of
irrigation and power generation both in India and Bangladesh.
The wisdom of linking up rivers is not beyond question
because more than 70 percent of Indian river water is
polluted by linking them and then allowing them to enter
into Bangladesh will poison all our water bodies, human
beings and wildlife.
As
the river-link project will connect rivers that flow
through both India and Bangladesh and in some cases
Nepal they are international rivers and without consulting
Bangladesh about the project India has flouted all international
treaties and conducts that prohibit unilaterally altering
the natural course of international rivers.
Bangladesh
is a riverine country and we are so greatly dependent
on our rivers that our very existence will come under
threat if our rivers are affected. Our agriculture,
river traffic, trade and commerce, fisheries, wet lands,
biodiversity, ecology and almost every part of our life
will incur irreparable destruction.
Now
what can we do to stop this project from being implemented?
Water resources expert Professor Ainun Nishat, a former
teacher of BUET and presently the Country Representative
of IUCN, Bangladesh, is indignant at this question:
“We must have been sleeping for the last one year. It
has been more than a year since the Supreme Court of
India ordered the Indian government to realise this
project. The Indian government on its part formed a
task force, and already some feasibility work has been
done. But here we have been sitting idle. “It took us
months to convey our concern regarding this project
to the Indian government.”
One
also wonders what The Joint Rivers Commission (JRC)
has been doing. It should have cautioned the government
long before. Clearly the seriousness of the issue was
not felt though warning did come from some particular
quarters. Nishat himself is one of those who raised
it quite some time ago, but failed to make the concerned
authority care.
Nishat,
however, praises the role of the media, which, though
started late, eventually brought the issue to the public
notice. At the moment our main job is to create public
awareness by regular dissemination of information about
the magnitude of the crisis the project poses for us.
Different professional groups and civil society will
have to work alongside different government agencies
to create strong public opinion against this controversial
project.
The
JRC has a major role to play here. One area in which
the JRC is lacking is public participation. People know
very little about the workings of the JRC, although
recommendations made by the JRC may have profound implications
for them. Like many other international commissions,
it should have a channel of information dissemination
geared towards raising public awareness and getting
constructive feedback. This will make the JRC more accountable
and credible to the peoples of both India and Bangladesh.
One
major problem is that Bangladesh doesn't have any precise
information and data about this project, such as from
which specific part of the rivers’ waters will be withdrawn,
the exact amount of the withdrawn water and exactly
when and for how long that will be done. Thus Nishat
gives great emphasis on gathering of information without
which we cannot determine “the quantitative affect”
and unless we know that we cannot even forcefully formulate
our allegations and convey our grievances. And here,
he says, we should make use of the JRC to its full potential.
Nishat
in his paper titled “International Negotiation”, published
in a journal called Kluwer Law International discusses
in detail the drawbacks and the scope of JRC's work
area. He writes that JRC should engage in regular collection
and sharing of data on the quantity and quality of common
waters. This is very important for two reasons, he explains.
One, it will help develop collaboration and friendship
between experts and technicians from both sides. Two,
information Collected can be used to set the baseline
or existing conditions. Existing conditions help monitor
performances of ongoing treaties and to draft new ones
for the future.
Nishat,
who had been a member of JRC for 18 years, then focuses
on some of the pertinent problems JRC has been facing
since its formation in 1972 and suggests some remedial
measures to make it a more productive organisation.
He feels that JRC doesn't have adequate authority to
work effectively. Although the JRC and various committees
appointed by it had met many times on common water issues,
so far, few of the recommendations made by it have been
implemented. Suggestions put forward by the JRC are
not automatically accepted as its status as “a recommending
body” doesn't give its recommendations enough force
to be considered quickly and seriously. Its constitution
and scope should be reviewed with the aim to making
it functional and efficient.
The
functionality of the JRC is significantly dictated by
the prevailing political mood. The JRC could not meet
even once in three consecutive years during the late
80s because there was no political interest on the Indian
side (the JRC is supposed to meet four or more times
a year). When Awami League (AL) came into power in mid
1996, the JRC met several times and a 30-year Ganges
Treaty could be drafted and signed within a few months
of AL's coming into power. This clearly shows to what
extent the activities of JRC are influenced by political
willingness. Nishat believes, all the political parties,
ruling and opposition included, should have a consensus
in this issue and should talk in the same voice to create
optimum pressure on India.
It
is required in the statutes of the JRC that two of the
four members of the JRC team from each country be engineers.
This may lead to technical bias in the proposed solutions
in addition to the political bias that have already
complicated the process. If the technicians are not
trained in formal international negotiations, they may
fail to guide the politicians accordingly. If special
technical advice is needed, a subcommittee can be formed.
Again, composition of other similar bodies can be looked
into. The 'Joint Water Committee' under the Israel-Jordan
peace accord is comprised of three members from each
country who can come from any appropriate background.
This Joint Committee may form, 'as it deems necessary,
a number of specialised sub-committees and assign them
technical tasks.'
Nishat
also writes of Multi-Track Diplomacy that often comes
handy in complex negotiations between countries. Diplomatic
efforts made by the concerned governments are called
Track 1 diplomacy, in other words formal diplomacy.
With the increasing complexity of contemporary issues
and time and resource constraints faced by the governments,
today's diplomatic efforts are pursued through multiple
channels. “Track 2 diplomacy”, a term coined by Joseph
Montville, refers “to a broad range of unofficial contacts
and interaction aimed at resolving conflicts, both internationally
and within states” which is being used to great effects
these days.
In
our country the finest example of Track 2 diplomacy
is the signing of water treaty in 1996. Center for Policy
Dialogue (CPD) of Bangladesh and Center for Policy Research
(CPR) of India arranged meetings on the Indo-Bangladesh
relation where various issues, including trade and water
sharing, were discussed. These meetings were attended
by senior and influential politicians and technocrats
who had a certain degree of authority in conveying the
messages to the respective government. This initiative
had helped bring the two sides closer to each other,
particularly the (then) opposition leaders of India
and Bangladesh. As a result, when the governments changed
shortly after the meetings, the prevailing political
mood was positive and a quick follow--up and signing
of the agreement became possible.
Until
very recently we had been in the dark about an impending
danger that has the potential to destroy our existence.
The $200 billion worth river--link project undertaken
by India will devastate our water resources and consequently
our ecology and economy. The rivers will dry up, draught
will reign all the year round and salinity will make
our once fertile land impotent. Though the concerned
government agencies are guilty of pressing the alarm
button unforgivably late all is not over yet. Gearing
up public pressure by means of creating mass-awareness,
a uniformity opinion among the political parties in
this issue and voicing our realistic concern in the
international forums are immediate necessities to make
India forsake this destructive project or at least to
make sure that the project doesn't harm Bangladesh.
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