India-Bangladesh Agree to Discuss Water Woes
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DHAKA, October 1 (OneWorld) - Marking a significant breakthrough, Joint River Commission (JRC) talks between India and Bangladesh ended Tuesday with India agreeing to involve its neighbor in future discussions on a US $200 billion controversial river-linking project, which Bangladesh calls a potential weapon of mass destruction.
The ministerial-level meeting was held after nearly three years. The next meeting of the JRC will be held early next year. The talks on common water sharing held in India's capital, New Delhi, focused mainly on India's refusal to recognize that the project formed the main agenda for bilateral talks, holding that it was still at the conceptual stage. "India has told us it was at a very early stage and we must allow them time," said Bangladesh Water Resources Minister Hafizuddin Ahmed, who led a 12-member delegation for the talks. Under the mammoth scheme, India plans to connect 37 rivers, including the major rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra, by digging canals to divert major common river waters to its drought-prone states. Bangladesh's Water Resources ministry says the scheme will severely hit Bangladesh, which depends on the two major rivers for 85 per cent of its surface water supplies during the dry season. Apart from the river inter-linking issue, Dhaka wanted breakthroughs in talks over water-sharing arrangements on seven trans-boundary rivers in the region, along the lines of the Ganges Water Sharing Treaty signed by the two countries in 1996. India said such treaties require expert-level investigations, but it agreed to inform Bangladesh in advance about the diversion of water flow of common rivers from northeastern India to water-deficient areas in the southwest. For a long time, Bangladesh has expressed a desire to be involved in every phase of the inter-linking project, so that it is not lumped with the consequences. The Bangladesh government, leading water experts and members of civil society claim the project will severely hit its water-flow, environment and agriculture. Bangladesh insists India should refrain from undertaking this project without mutual discussion between the two countries. Assuring Bangladesh it had nothing to worry about, Indian Water Resources Minister, Arjun Charan Sethi told Ahmed Tuesday that the Indian government had not discussed the project even with its constituent states. Sethi said a taskforce headed by former Indian Energy minister Suresh Prabhu will examine the project in detail, adding that, "When that stage comes, we will certainly look into how much interests are affected within and outside India." Reacting to the positive development in the hitherto strained relations between the two countries, leading water expert and chief of the Dhaka unit of the World Conservation Union, Ainun Nishat suggests three follow-up measures. He stresses that Bangladesh should begin a quantitative analysis of the probable adverse effects of the river-linking project, thereafter formulating a long-term strategy on the issue, after discussions with civil society and experts. "Negotiations are a continuous process and we must maintain them with India," he says. The central Indian government recently approved the budget for the Tipaimukh Hydro Electric Multipurpose High Dam, proposed to be constructed at the confluence of the Barak and Tuivai rivers in the north-eastern Indian province of Manipur, opposite Bangladesh's northeastern border region of Sylhet. Bangladeshi experts fear water diversion for power generation from Barak will affect the water-flow pattern in two rivers in greater Sylhet, which carry water to the Meghna river in the central-Bangladesh region. The project has attracted considerable flak even in India. The Committee Against Tipaimukh Dam (CATD) in Manipur has already submitted a memorandum to the Indian Prime Minister protesting the dam's construction, which they feared would permanently submerge a 275.5 square kilometer area. "The project will make traditional agriculture impossible, cause saline intrusion in water and soil, and destroy environment and bio-diversity, hamper navigation and cause river erosion," notes Bangladesh Water Development Board Chief Engineer Akhtar Hossain. India's National Water Development Agency (NWDA) plans to build hundreds of reservoirs and dig more than 600 miles of canals for the ten-year project. On September 10, representatives of Bangladesh's civil society sent a letter to the Chief Justice of India, Justice VN Khare, demanding a judicial review of the Indian Supreme Court on allowing the networking of rivers for diversion of vast quantities of water. They claimed this would have an adverse impact on millions of people in Bangladesh. The letter says the project will block the flow of the Bangladesh's two major riverine networks -- the Jamuna-Brahmaputra and the Ganges-Padma. "Since Bangladesh is mostly dependent on the river Brahmaputra for supplying two-thirds of the country's dry season water, withdrawal of water from the said river will adversely impact atleast 100 million people," it said. Termed a "weapon of mass destruction in the offing", the Indian project has been triggering innumerable protest rallies and seminars in Dhaka since August. |
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