Troubled waters

Beyond classic riparian issues lies the more worrying destruction of the hydrological regimes touching both Bangladesh and India. Will diplomacy work to mutual interest?

Ashis Biswas Kolkata

Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s trip to India is well-timed for the wrong reasons. India-Bangladesh relations are in their seasonal low at this time of the year over the sharing of the Ganga waters downstream of the Farakka barrage. Tempers are frayed as the mercury is rising, especially because the subcontinent did not get much winter rainfall in 2005 affecting the flow of the Ganga. The rumble of discontent is reflected in politics and in the media over the sharp fall in Farakka releases, with supply being as low as 10,000/11,000 cusecs on some days. The last Indo-Bangla Farakka Water Sharing Agreement was signed in December 1996, after tough negotiations. With elections due in Bangladesh shortly, a fresh agreement is not around the corner.

                                  
This discontent provided Bangladesh with a major talking point with India. Conscious that India would almost certainly bring up infiltration, the growth of religious fundamentalism and the shelter provided to Indian insurgents in official talks, Bangladesh officials were certain that it would be bound to make concessions on the water issue.

But there’s more than simple water sharing issues. A survey by the United Nations reports an alarming depletion of fresh-water resources, caused due to human intervention such as dam constructions and global warming. On the Ganga, experts report that the construction of 45,000 big and small dams had caused ecological damage, with 16 per cent of the fresh water not being allowed to flow naturally to the oceans. The adverse impact will be felt on the fragile ecology of the lower riparian Bangladesh, posing additional challenge to Indian diplomacy.

To add to Bangladesh’s bad experience of the reduced water flow in the Ganga is the reckless diversion of water in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar for industry and irrigation. Affecting marine life is toxic pollution upstream, and India’s efforts to clean up the Ganga have been woeful.  

The Engineers Association of Bangladesh in a recent report outlined the disastrous impact of the Farakka barrage on environment, ecology, economy, and public health.
Salinity along the river stretch, by early 1998, had stretched to 280 kilometres upstream of the Ganga (Padma) and its tributaries flowing into the Bay of Bengal. Salinity affected crop productivity and laid the cultivable into a waste.

The Association says that the livelihood of some 30 million people living over 30,000 square kilometres of coastal area, representing 20 per cent of Bangladesh’s total land area, has been affected. In the Sundarbans, crocodiles were perishing and their eggs could not be hatched. Between 1990 and 1994, the commercial production of honey dropped
from 211.1 tonnes annually to only 21 tonnes. Marine life was dying out and fishermen suffered, with a drop in earnings from 1,100 crore taka earned in 1995. Many of the 475 types of fish and 24 kinds of shrimp had become extinct. Out of an estimated 4.5 crore trees in the mangrove forest of the Sundarbans, some 2.5 crore had been attacked by the deadly taproot disease and were dying out.

It is incumbent upon the two nations to launch immediate action to save the Ganga and the other shared 150 rivers and streams. Even from a crude realist perspective, the fall out of an ecological tragedy in Bangladesh lives itself out politically in neighbouring north-east India and West Bengal. Fresh water sources have to be preserved, and there is need for water recycling, afforestation and other programmes in both countries. This is the test of bilateral diplomacy.

A sign of hope is that the joint statement struck in Delhi, after some hard bargaining, mentions that both countries will work together to ensure better security, trade and water-sharing in the region. Prime Minister Zia, visiting her nearest neighbour after seven years, invited Dr Manmohan Singh, Indian Prime Minister, to visit Bangladesh. Ecological survival now depends on the strengthening of tenuous diplomacy beyond the mathematics of water volumes.