A recent statement by India's Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti is highly alarming. She told BBC that her government has decided to launch the inter-linking of rivers project in December this year. The project will change the course of a few rivers and divert their waters from one place to another to tackle drought situation. These rivers include the common rivers like the Ganges and Brahmaputra.
It goes without saying Bangladesh will be in deep trouble once India implements the project unilaterally. Bangladesh will be deprived of adequate water for its rivers and will be in danger of desertification. Already rivers in the Padma basin are drying as an impact of the Farakka barrage and water flow in Jamuna has gone down to nearly half ever since India started to divert waters from Teesta.
Teesta Irrigation project in Bangladesh is affected due to lack of water flow in the Teesta river. The underground water level of Barendra in Teesta basin has been sinking from February and Boro cultivation,which is dependent on it, is being affected. Most of our rivers now suffer from water crisis in dry season due to India's withdrawing of water from Padma through Farakka and diverting water through Gazaldoba barrage. The river-based economy of the country is threatened with extinction.
Furthermore, salinity will intrude deeper into the coastal districts if water level of these rivers is below par. Rice cultivation will be hampered and many species of sweet water fish will be extinct. Most of the tube wells are already unable to lift water from the underground due to Farakka barrage. If the level of underground water goes down below eight metres, it will not be possible for shallow tube wells to lift any water. As the demand for the country's irrigation and drinking water is met by 5.0 million shallow tube wells, arsenic contamination will be higher and will inflict serious damages on the health sector. Water for irrigation and navigability of rivers will diminish.
On paper we have 310 rivers of which about a hundred do not have water for most of the year. About 22,000 kilometres of riverways have already disappeared and if situation continues like this, riverways will hardly exist in the country by 2050.
Ganges and Teesta are international rivers and there are specific laws on sharing water of common rivers and if India unilaterally withdraws or diverts water from these rivers it will be a flagrant violation of international law on rivers. It is clearly mentioned in clauses 4 and 5 of 1966 Helsinki Rules that each country included in a basin shall consider the economic and social needs of other countries of the basin while using water of the common rivers. Moreover, every country in the world is committed to protect world environment and bio-diversity according to 1992 convention of the UN. World Wetlands Convention 1971 of UNESCO, also known as Ramsar Convention, emphasizes biodiversity of wet lands. According to Helsinki Agreement 1992, all parties will have to ensure that use of cross-border water resources will not have any cross-border impact. According to World Dam Commission report of 1998, if a large dam is to be built on a river, it has to be accepted by the people of the basin.
The Indian government plans to go ahead with the implementation of its river-linking project in spite of stiff opposition at home. Environmentalists and scientists have warned against the project, stressing that rivers cannot be treated like water pipelines, and diverting flow may destroy the ecology of the river, and the river itself. According to Ashish Kothari, an environment expert in India, the project will cause, apart from the ecological costs, a great human cost in terms of those displaced by it. If rivers are linked, water from one river will mix with another and thus water from a less polluted river will mix with that of a more polluted one and pollute all the water. Most environmentalists observe that the Indian government has formulated such a huge project while ignoring the cost-effective alternatives such as decentralized watershed development, rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge, reviving the existing local systems of water harvesting and irrigation. South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) has questioned the validity of such a project that will cause deforestation, displacement of people and heighten the impact of climate change.
The project could also give rise to water conflicts at the state level in India like the Ravi-Beas Water Dispute between Punjab-Haryana-Rajasthan and the Cauvery Water Dispute between Kerala-Karnataka-Tamil Nadu-Puduchery, to name a couple..
Even considering the pros and cons from India's viewpoint, it is only fair that the Indian government drops the idea and chooses any or all the alternatives suggested by the Indian experts themselves.
From the Bangladesh perspective, waters of the common rivers should be equitably shared. Bangladesh should intensify its diplomatic efforts to refrain India from launching its river-linking project. It should take up the issue at all international forums in the manner as it did to realise its legitimate share of marine resources from Myanmar and India.
