Water talks' aftermath

Conflicts or disputes as understood by the politicians and the professionals over sharing of waters between Bangladesh and India had its genesis with the partition of the British India when the latter's plan to dam the Ganga appeared for the first time in national and international media in 1951; thus germinated the monologue. Following extreme floods back in 1954 and 1955 in the eastern region of Indian sub-continent dialogue between the two sides first held in September, 1955. The next meeting in 1960 at the expert level over the waters of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Teesta and other rivers, after nine years of persuasion since 1951, remained limited to exchange of hydrological information. Consultation continued and, results conceded and compared to water flowing from source to sea was not wasteful.

Many world rivers have been used as the tools of political gains. The number of large dams world wide as such has risen from over 500 in 1950 to 38,000 to-day and the number of water course altered for navigation has grown from fewer than 9000 in 1900 to almost 500,000 now. India's rivers are already in grave condition after onslaught of over such 4000 large dams and diversions completed in the last 55 years and 400 under construction. Its latest RLP would connect 37 rivers transferring water from "surplus" to "deficit" basins. Under this gigantic linking project the Indian states of Uttar Prodesh and Madhya Prodesh have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding only recently on 25 August, 2005 for connecting the Ken and Betwa rivers to enhance irrigation and water supply of the states by dam-diverting water from abundance to stress followed immediately by another three rivers namely Parvati, Kalisindh and Chambal.

One of the Indian journals observe on diversion of the Ganges that, "from being a river which supported inland trade and passenger traffic 150 years ago, the Ganges has become a silt-choked shadow of its former self. The British used it to ship their troops from Bengal to Kanpur and Delhi during 1857 War of Independence. Today, the Calcutta port is so silted up that crores of rupees have been invested to build another port at Haldia. It was to overcome the silting of the Calcutta port that the Farakka barrage was constructed to divert more water to the Indian stream. While Farakka has led to drastically reduced flows to Bangladesh and resulted in constant diplomatic attrition with that country, it has not been able to save the Calcutta port. Where has this water gone?" The Farakka diversion has been put to question.

Of the 54 trans-boundary rivers (3 more with Myanmar), Bangladesh has only one agreement for water sharing on the Ganges. Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Smt. Veena Sikri at the concluding session of the international conference on regional cooperation on trans-boundary rivers held earlier in Dhaka on December 2004 referring to ADB statistics argued that India's per capita water resources are 2,200 cubic meters per annum only marginally above the water stress level. Bangladesh on the other hand with 19,600 cubic meters is much more favourably placed. The problem with Bangladesh is more the management of water, not the quantity. Indeed water resources management in Bangladesh, as the lower riparian country, is closely interlinked with and largely dependent on trans-boundary rivers having shared basins with India.

THD as a power generation structure has made its headway towards construction across the river Barak in India on the arguments that it will not divert flow and, therefore may not have any impact on the lower reach in Bangladesh. Same arguments may apply in case of the Brahmaputra and the others. Acceptability of these arguments shall better be judged by the water experts but can be invalidated by giving cognisance to the simple hydrological relationship between surface water and groundwater. Huge trans-boundary groundwater resources has already been diverted by such intervention upstream un-noticed and untold. THD will now add to it.

Thomas E. Sowers II of Florida State University in a research on management of international river basins found that the manner in which the bordering countries mange international rivers greatly impact the international political relations. The countries that plan to maximise the basin-wide development, rather than the development within itself are more likely to have positive political interactions regarding other issues. On the contrary, the countries that attempt to focus solely on its own demands are more likely to become involved in more conflictual interaction with its fellow riparian. The study included Colorado, Danube, Niles, and Ganges. International river experts are therefore of the single opinion that bulk-volume water transfers in any case worsen social, economic and environmental problems instead of solving them.

JRC has all the way been mined and grown in an enclave with extreme privacy sans institutional linkage with the national think tanks; rather performing, allegedly, as the politician's billfold. The common people simply bruise their foreheads at its opaque role with a very low profile feeling that water sharing is a sensitive issue and that the upstream diversion shall have impacts. The institutional weakness of the commission impedes its performance to the satisfaction of the people and therefore, needs to be reformed so as to open avenues for participation by different stakes.

Md. Saeedur Rahman, is a retired Chief Engineer of BWDB