India's thirst leaves neighbors
gulping By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Mahatma Gandhi, the
universally-acclaimed personality in which India can
genuinely take pride, left behind many gems of wisdom
for posterity. One of his thoughts reads as follows:
"One who serves his neighbors serves all the world."
Unfortunately, it appears that present-day leaders in
India care not to be guided by such counsel.
Apart from long-standing rival Pakistan, India's
relations with its other neighbors are also not free of
conflict. Bangladesh does not have cooperative ties, and
the relationship with Nepal, which shares a porous land
border of over 1,800 kilometers together with some of
the cultural values based on the Hindu religion, remains
trouble-prone. Sri Lanka has its own bag of problems,
including the Tamil issue, keeping it suspicious about
New Delhi's motives in the island nation across the Palk
Straits. Bhutan's worries are several, but a 1949
friendship pact prevents it from publicly airing its
grievances against New Delhi. The Maldives' position is
not strikingly different from that of Bhutan, except
from the fact that Bhutan is a landlocked country and
the other is a nation surrounded by water from all
sides.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise
that New Delhi's latest initiative to interlink some of
the major river systems running through its territory
has set off a regional controversy, raising the level of
concerns in both Nepal and Bangladesh. Once implemented,
this Indian mega project could deprive both of its
neighbors of their natural resource: water. Nepal would
be prevented from making consumptive use of river water
as it would affect the flow downstream in Indian
territory, and Bangladesh would find a itself dry if New
Delhi went ahead with its plan to dig deep canals on the
upper reaches for diverting rivers which have
traditionally been the main source of water for
Bangladesh. India, meanwhile, wants to enjoy the best of
both worlds - from Nepal as a lower riparian country and
from Bangladesh as an upper riparian country.
Why should the smaller neighbors grumble if
India is geographically well placed to make these gains?
Ostensibly, this is a valid contention. But experts as
well as members of civil society in Nepal and Bangladesh
refuse to be convinced by such an argument. They do not
think India alone can take a decision on natural
resources, river waters in this case, which belong to a
region comprising more than three countries. "This is an
example of blatant unilateralism," says Upendra Gautam
,a Nepali independent policy analyst on water resources,
citing Indian media reports on this gigantic project New
Delhi plans to launch once ongoing feasibility studies
are completed by 2005.
Kathmandu and Dhaka,
meanwhile, are officially saying that New Delhi has not
consulted them thus far about this mega scheme.
The project, estimated to cost over US$118
billion, is primarily expected to provide internal water
security to the Indian people living in areas known for
water scarcity and water-induced disasters. Besides
this, Indian authorities envisage to bring 35-37 million
hectares of farmland under irrigation, generate 34
billion kilowatts of electricity, control floods in
flood-prone states and also enhance the country's
navigational efficiency. India appears to have been
inspired by China's south-north water diversion project
which is being carried out at the expenditure of $60
billion.
According to Indian newspapers,
chairman Suresh Prabhu of the government-appointed task
force entrusted with feasibility studies has already
been confronting native environmentalists who are
opposed to the construction of large dams and
embankments. Since Indian laws have made water a subject
to be dealt with by individual states, the process of
consultations on this federal initiative is visibly
slow.
"On the eve of elections, this is an issue
no state government is ready to take up," said The Hindu
, a prominent Indian newspaper, recently.
Anyhow, if the Indian parliamentary elections in
April and May return the incumbent coalition led by the
Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the task force
on the interlinking of rivers may expedite work for the
project which was first mooted in 1982.
The
project in question has two components; the first one
includes 14 Himalayan river links in India's north. The
second component is to have 16 peninsular river links in
India's south. The Himalayan river links are the Ganga
and Brahmaputra-fed component in which Nepal, the upper
riparian country in the Ganga basin, is the major
contributor. This ground reality does not permit India
to ignore or bypass a neighbor which provides a
perennial source of water from its snow-fed rivers.
"Nepal ... hence [is] a necessary partner in any
large-scale water management plans," Indian diplomat
Salman Haidar, former foreign secretary, admitted in an
article published by The Statesman newspaper.
Bangladesh faces a worse scenario. If the mighty
Brahmaputra river, which originates in Tibet and is
known there as Yarlung Zangbo, is diverted to a
west-bound canal before it reaches Bangladesh, the
ecology of the entire area including that of the
Sunderbans would be adversely affected and
desertification would ensue.
"It is going to
bring a calamity of unthinkable proportions," says
Bangladeshi minister for water resources, Hafiz Uddin
Ahmad, who visited Nepal in January. Water management is
a question of life and death for this country, the
economy of which is dependent on 54 major rivers flowing
through it. There is a bilateral agreement with India
only on one river, the Ganges. Responding to
Bangladesh's concerns on the river-linking project, says
Ahmad, New Delhi has told Dhaka that only a preliminary
study was being conducted and that no decision was being
taken in a hurry. But anxiety persists in Dhaka, and it
wants Kathmandu to play its crucial role prudently so
that the joint efforts of India, Bangladesh and Nepal
can control floods and utilize river waters for the
benefits of all three countries and the secretariat of
the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation,
located in Kathmandu, could act as a facilitator.
Bangladesh also wants Nepal to simultaneously look into
the possibility of constructing storage dams within its
territory to help a regulated flow of water to
downstream areas.
But India's commitment to -
and interest in - regional cooperation has usually been
less than encouraging. New Delhi's priority has usually
remained on agreements at the bilateral level, proven by
the number of pacts it has concluded in recent years.
Experiences have shown that Indians find it easier to
exert pressure on individual neighbors when the deal is
on a one-on-one basis - be that with Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Nepal or Sri Lanka.
The other
striking Indian trend is characterized by its
persistence to enter into crucial negotiations whenever
a neighbor is politically weak and unstable. Nepal's
current situation is a case in point. King Gyanendra,
though he usurped power by sacking an elected government
in October 2002, is not in an enviable position as his
regime continues to face Maoist insurgency as well as a
pro-democracy movement - jointly launched by five
political parties. Intriguingly, New Delhi has found it
expedient to push through its pending proposals on water
resources, including the one on the Karnali river, when
Nepal's parliament stands dissolved. The kingdom's
democratic constitution, drawn up in 1990, stipulates
that agreements which entail the sharing of natural
resources with other countries need to be ratified by
the parliament with a two-thirds majority. (Parliament
was prematurely dissolved in May 2002 though its
five-year term would have ended only in mid-April this
year.)
The latest Indian activities, contends
analyst Gautam, aim at circumventing Nepal's rights over
its own water resources. Several of the country's
newspapers have already printed editorial comments
critical of Indian moves.
Available reports and
trends suggest that India wants Nepal to follow the
model Bhutan offers. This essentially means Nepal should
recognize India as the one and only developer which
takes part in activities right from the planning stage
to the distribution phase. In other words, if Nepal
adopts the Bhutan model, then it would effectively
deprive itself from the chances of entering into
partnership with, and receiving assistance from,
friendly countries other than India. Water experts in
Kathmandu are confident that Nepal can develop several
small and medium-sized hydro-power projects on its own.
But, in India's view, Nepal needs only electricity (for
domestic consumption and for export) which does not
require the consumptive use of water.
The amount
of farmland which Nepal possesses is limited, hence does
not, so goes the Indian argument, need water for
irrigation. Indian diplomat Salman Haider, who
previously served as his country's ambassador to Bhutan,
contends that it is only India which needs water for
consumptive purposes. Nepali experts see in this
assertion a linkage between the Bhutan model and India's
river-linking project.
In its bid to establish
assured access to river water for India's vast
agricultural land in both its northern and southern
provinces, New Delhi is said to apparently be ignoring
its commitments made through international forums as
well as its responsibility to the South Asian region. It
also has left questions related to climate, environment
and earthquakes in this vast area unanswered.
"We still do not fully understand the ecosystem
and river systems of the region," Jayanta
Bandhopadhyaya, a professor with expertise on water at
the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata, told a
newspaper recently. In his perception, the floods in the
Himalayan foothills and adjoining plains are the result
of a complex ecological process, and much of it is not
yet fully understood. Indians who take interest in water
issues but are not in favor of the interlinking project
include 91-year-old Dinshaw J Dastur, who is known for
his "garland canal scheme".
"The interlinking of
rivers is purely a scheme made to benefit various
bureaucrats and politicians," Dastur told an Indian
journal, Business World, recently. Nepali geologist,
Tanka Ojha, concurs with assessments based on science.
"Tempering with the natural river systems can pose a
danger to the region," the Kathmandu Post daily has
quoted him as saying.
The Himalayan region
stretches across 2,500 kilometers with a width of
between 150 and 200 kilometers. And in the center of the
Himalayans lies in Nepal.
"Humanity needs water
for a hundred reasons," emphasizes Indian writer V R
Krishna Iyer, "so civilized progress is inconceivable
without potable water." The message in this statement is
pithy, especially in the context of Bangladesh, which is
already suffering from arsenic content in its ground
water.
Will Dhaka remain a silent spectator in
the event of New Delhi implementing its scheme? "No, not
at all," is the answer of minister Ahmad, a member of
the Bangladesh Nationalist Party government. Whether
India will listen, however, is an entirely different
matter.
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