| |
For
today's Panel discussion, we have chosen the all-important subject of
'Water: The Biggest Challenge'. It is because in another 20 years 'water
wars' are being predicted, not only between states but also between nations.
Water is the most precious resource without which life on earth cannot
exist. It has become an issue of major concern for today's governments
and tomorrow's planners. It is a valuable resource like energy which is
too frequently squandered. Fresh and clean water is getting scarcer day
by day.
Most
of the water on earth is not fresh water that can be easily accessed.
Even this minor amount of accessible fresh water is getting polluted and
contaminated. Most government water utilities are making the same mistakes
with water that they made with energy by depleting non-renewable supplies,
using the highest quality water for all uses, supplying more instead of
making more productive use of what they have, building big water infrastructure
systems without considering what is the best size for the job and failing
to protect and take advantage of the services ecosystems provide. These
approaches are getting to be increasingly unaffordable and harmful to
the environment. It has been forecast that some countries including South
Africa and India, risk running out of water in the next twenty five years
and that this century will see 'water wars' being fought.
Unsustainable
use of water in agriculture is one of the greatest challenges facing India's
economic development. More than one billion people currently lack access
to safe drinking water and three billion people lack access to basic sewage
systems all over the world. Over the next 25 years, one third of the world's
population will face severe water scarcity. According to projections made
by Population Action International, a non-profit policy advocacy group
that is working to strengthen public awareness, more than 2.8 billion
people in 48 countries will be facing water stress or scarcity by the
year 2025. By 2050, the water-short-countries will go up to 54, affecting
nearly 4 billion or 40 percent of the projected global population at that
time.
Things look no better
for India. The per capita annual availability of water in 1951 was 5177
cubic meters but it has now come down to 1061 cubic meters and could further
fall. The minimum per capita requirement is assessed as 1700 cubic meters
per annum. It could get worse simply because water in India is considered
everybody's right but nobody's responsibility. The supply network is crumbling
with many of the water lines getting contaminated by sewage lines, slum
lords controlling the distribution of water in many places and large parts
of the population being unwilling to pay enough to pay even for the operating
cost.
India's complex bureaucratic
structure does not help matters either. While providing drinking water
to villages is the responsibility of the Ministry of Rural Development,
drinking water for cities and towns comes under the purview of the Ministry
for Housing and Urban Development, while the Ministry of Water Resources
is responsible for surface and groundwater and also supra projects such
as linking of rivers. So there is hardly any coordination between various
departments. If India does not get its act together, according to experts,
its next civil war could be fought over water. Even the World Bank has
asked India to wake up on the water front, by warning of a severe crisis
in the next two decades in this regard.
The
objective of this panel discussion, line many other conferences on this
subject is to help policymakers at all levels in addressing their water
challenges in areas such as sustainable groundwater management, water
scarcity, irrigation, poverty elimination, surface water resource management,
industrial waste management, water quality management etc.
Managing
water scarcity effectively is one of the great imperatives of governance
today. Even In more prosperous countries, water scarcity curtails economic
growth and diminishes quality of life. In poorer countries it breeds sickness,
blocks development, deepens inequalities and undermines the survival of
an entire society. How to regulate the informal water sector, how to improve
the productivity of rain water, how to manage running water? In short,
how to improve the quality and deal with the scarcity of water. The heart
of the problem in most of the water-scarce-countries is too many people
living off a limited natural resource base. More efficient usage is part
of the answer, while the other is generating livelihoods not directly
dependant on water. On this subject we chose some eminent personalities
to come and talk to us, to share their experiences and what they think
are the solutions.
Professor
Ramswamy Iyer has served the Government of India in many capacities. He
was Secretary Water Resources, member Public Enterprises Selection Board,
Research Professor in Centre for Policy Research, member of India's National
Commission on Integrated Water Resource Planning, consultant to the World
Bank, as member of two World Bank Missions to the Government of Thailand,
for the World Commission on Dams for a study on India's experience with
large dams, with the World Bank in its review of the water sector strategy,
International Water Management Institute, Colombo. He is also the author
of many books and over a hundred articles on the subject.
Mr.
Chari, is very well known for establishing the Institute of Peace and
Conflict Studies and is a former member of the Indian Administrative Service.
Chief Executive of the Narmada Development Authority was his last position
in the Government. He has worked as a Visiting Fellow in the University
of Illinois and is now the director and Research Professor at the Institute
of Peace and Conflict Studies. He has worked extensively on nuclear disarmament,
non-proliferation and Indian defence issues. He has published over 1,200
articles and has published several books. He is also a member of the international
consortium to study bio-defence against the threat of biological weapons.
Shri
R.K. Pachauri, Chairman TERI and Chairman India Habitat World had to suddenly
go Abroad on an urgent mission and hence has conveyed his regrets for
his inability to be with us this evening. However, he had requested Prof.
Subash Chander to be with us this evening. He was happy for my organising
the panel discussion on this most vital subject.
Professor
Subhash Chander is a teacher, researcher, consultant and administrator.
He has handled 15 doctoral projects and 20 consultancy projects in hydrology
and water resources. Published nearly hundred papers in all major journals
in hydrology and water resources. Life member of the Indian association
of hydrologists, Deputy Director of I.I.T. Delhi, advisor Delhi School
of Advanced Studies, advisor Inter-State Water Sources, member expert
group on Interlinking of Rivers Project.
Mr.
Umesh Agarwal has been producing and directing more than thousand hours
of television programming. Currently producing a film for the National
Geographic. He directs a daily show called 'Kiran: A Ray of Hope' for
the national broadcaster of India. He will be screening a short documentary
film titled 'The Whistle Blowers' for us.
Mr
Ramsawamy Iyer
I would like to make two preliminary observations to put matters into
perspective. The first is that we have grossly mismanaged our water resources,
whether in agriculture, industry or domestic use or municipal use. The
second proposition is that water is a very complex phenomenon. People
regard water in various ways, as an economic good or a commodity or as
a life support resource or as a basic right, human right or as a national
resource, namely the property of governments or as a sacred resource,
as a part of culture, as a part of history. From these divergent perceptions
you get divergent recommendations. 
During the last decade and a half, water has become a very important subject.
There are a huge number of international conferences regarding water,
a very large number of academic institutions all over the world are conducting
seminars on this issue and the general consensus is that there is a looming
crisis on the horizon. With the pressure of growing population and with
the processes of economic development and so on, the pressure on the water
resources is going to be enormous because the water resources are finite.
What you find in nature today is what existed thousands and thousands
of years ago, it has not changed. The supply is finite and the demand
is growing, there is going to be serious pressure on this and as the Chairman
mentioned earlier, there is a theory floated by Ismael Seageldin of the
World Bank that the next war is going to be about water. I don't subscribe
to this theory about 'water wars'. It will take too much time to explain
why, but I think it is based on a very fallacious analogy with oil.
However there is no doubt that the future is going to be difficult and
faced with this prognosis of a difficult future, there are three kinds
of recommendations which people make. One is by bureaucrats, planners,
engineers and so on, that the demand is going to increase, so more supply
should be organised, like in any other industrial or consumer goods that
you project a future demand and you try and match it with supply. That
means you build a large number of big projects, dams and reservoirs or
projects long distance water transfers. The government of India subscribes
to this belief. In their reply to the World Commission on Dams in November
2000, they rejected the report, they rejected the recommendations of the
World Commission on Dams and they said that we have done pretty well so
far and we shall continue to follow the same path and in the next 25 years
we are going to build 200 billion cubic meters of storage, which means
building big dams and reservoirs. Later, sometime in 2002, the Government
of India announced its mega-project of interlinking of rivers, which is
really meant for transfer of water over long distances.
The other response is by the World Bank, ADB, international financial
organizations and our own liberal economists. This is that water is a
commodity like any other commodity; therefore it should be left to the
market. The market forces will make supply emerge in response to demand,
fix prices properly. The market forces will resolve conflicts and everything
will be fine. The third is by a group people representing the civil society,
who argue that water is a basic life support substance, therefore a basic
need. It is a fundamental right, as a part of the fundamental right to
life, in our legal system through judicial interpretation. It has been
recognised in the UN system as a human right. Therefore it is and ought
to remain a common property resource, subject to community management.
Now, is there going to be a crisis? In answering this question, I have
an extremely difficult dilemma to face. Namely, that if I say that if
a talk of a crisis is overstated and exaggerated, then I maybe suspected
of contributing to complacency and turning down the anxiety levels, which
is not what I want to do. I want the anxiety levels to remain as they
are. At the same I do believe that the predictions of a crisis are not
necessarily true. What I am saying is roughly what the National Commission
on Integrated Water Source Development Plan said in its report in 1999.
It said that the situation is going to be one of difficulty but not necessarily
one of crisis, provided that certain things are done.
Now why do I question the prognostication of a crisis? A crisis is projected
on the basis of two numbers, a demand number and a supply number. The
national commission projected the availability of water. The precipitation
or rainfall over the Indian landmass is 4,000 Billion Cubic Meters or
Cubic Kilometres (BCM). The availability of waters at the turning points
of the river system is 1,953 BCM, the rest of it either evaporates or
goes underground. There is also groundwater availability of 453 BCM. This
available water does not mean that all of it is available for use. There
is another category called the usable water. The usable water is said
to be, according to the National Commission, 690 BCM of surface water
and 396 BCM of groundwater, making a total of 1086 BCM. That is what is
going to be available and that is not going to change. As against this
they made projections for demand, for agricultural use, for industrial
use, for domestic use, municipal use and for maintaining certain minimum
flows in rivers, looking after the environmental concerns etc. They came
with two estimates, a low estimate and a high estimate, ranging from 9,70
to 1,170 BCM. So even the lower estimate is closer to what they project
as available and the higher estimate slightly exceeds it. Therefore they
said that this is going to be difficult, but manageable, provided a number
of things are done.
Since the predictions of crisis follows from these two numbers, the demand
number needs to be looked at very carefully. I started with the proposition
that we mismanage water in every use, I revert to that. In agriculture,
according to the National Commission, the efficiency of water use is very
low; they put it between 35 to 40 percent. The yields are very low, from
irrigated agriculture in the year 2050, the National Commission Projects
a yield of only 4 tonnes per hectare. Higher yields are being produced
in the country in some other places and certainly much higher yields are
being produced in other countries. Now if you improve efficiency in water
use in agriculture, minimise wastage in agriculture and increase the yield
from irrigated agriculture, your overall projection of water demand for
agricultural purposes may come down. Secondly you take Industry; our industrial
use is very wasteful. In other countries in the world industries keep
using the same water over and over again, we don't do that. Even the National
Commission in its future projections by 2050 makes only a very modest
projection of a 20 percent improvement in industrial usage of water. This
is really unacceptable, what we ought to be aiming at not immediately,
but in the distant future is regime under which you don't keep giving
water to the industry, you give it only once and insist on their using
it multiple times, giving only enough to make up whatever is lost in this
process. Ninety percent of industrial water should come from reuse. If
you do that, you projection of industrial demand for water will also come
down.
Then we come to water supply, particularly in urban metropolis's like
Delhi, Bombay etc. What we are doing is that we have a norm, we project
future requirements by adopting a norm of 140 litres per capita per day
in urban areas and 70 litres per capita per day in rural areas. You multiply
this by the projected population increase and you get huge numbers. Not
only that, the National Commission says that even these figures should
be increased to 200 and 140 respectively, as a result you get simply enormous
numbers. What happens is that today, in fact in Delhi, the Delhi Jal Board,
is supplying more than 200 litres per capita per day, which is higher
than any other city in India. What happens is that this 200 litres per
capita per day is average, and thus there are areas in Delhi which get
less than 30 litres per capita per day and there are areas in Delhi where
people are using 500 litres per capita per day. Clearly, if you give more
to the people who are using just 30 litres and bring down the use of those
using 500 litres, you may not need add to the additional water supplies.
Actually there are many European cities which are revising their norms
for water supply downwards. Now, admittedly, the conditions are different
in India, but never the less, there is a figure by a man called Peter
Glickwood, a great authority on this, who has projected what is called
BWR, basic water requirement for drinking, cooking, washing of 50 litres
per capita per day. Now you add something more to it for cleaning your
house and various other things but you really do not need more than 100
litres per capita per day. We have to bring down the excess use of water
by the affluent, partly through pricing, pricing above a level use ought
to be penal and above a certain level of use, it ought to be denied. I
know I am not offering simple solutions, these are politically extremely
difficult but faced with the predication of a water crisis, we have to
adopt harsh measures. If you do this, your municipal demand will also
be reduced.
Then you have the enormous generation of waste in all our urban centres.
There is waste in industry, there is waste in agriculture, waste in the
domestic/municipal use and very little of it is treated. In the first
place, we have to reduce this generation of waste and secondly we have
to recover as much of it as possible. This waste water must be recovered,
processed and reused for certain purposes. If you do all of these things
and then add up the total you may not get 970 or 1170 BCM as demand figures,
you may get 800 or 700 BCM, which maybe a much more manageable number.
On the supply side, there are only three possibilities. Even with all
your demand management, you may still need to augment your usable supply
of water to some extent. One possibility is building big projects, dams
reservoirs, long distance water transfers. The other is exploiting groundwater,
extracting it through bore-wells, tube-wells and using it. The third is
extensive local augmentation of availability through water harvesting
and watershed development. Now all these are problematic. We all know
the adverse impacts and consequences of big projects, displacements, environmental
impacts etc. Not all of them are foreseeable, not all of them are remediable
and though we cannot rule out big projects, it makes sense to minimise
recourse to big projects. But I do not need to elaborate that, as that
is a well known story, there have been big movements against big projects.
But take groundwater, starting from the 1980's there was a explosion of
groundwater usage for agriculture, today groundwater is a much more significant
driver of agriculture than surface water and certainly it has produced
dramatic results in the short run. At the same time it has created serious
problems, as it is running down the groundwater aquifers and polluting
and contaminating them and has virtually run many aquifers dry in many
parts of the country. The great authority on the subject is Dr. Tushar
Shah and he has been talking about a colossal anarchy. At the same time
it very difficult to regulate this because there are 21 million tube wells
in the country and mostly for private supplies, they are not linked to
public supply systems. But we cannot let this go on, we have to somehow
find ways and means of restraining this. 
Then we come to water-harvesting and watershed development. We have had
a number of success stories. We started with Anna Hazare's Raley gaon
siddhi , there is the work in Rajasthan by Tarun Bhagat Sangh and Rajinder
Singh, and about 500 villages are covered. In the south there is the Dhan
foundation that is working in three of the southern states, trying to
restore the old tank systems which have gone into disrepair and the benefits
are quite clear. At the same time people have started sounding alarm bells
about this system as well. As you intercept water in the upper catchments,
downstream of that, in the next village there maybe a shortage. You are
reducing the run-off, you are interfering with the hydrological cycle.
Obviously, we cannot rule out big projects because of displacement and
environmental impacts, rule out groundwater because we are running down
the aquifers, rule out water harvesting and watershed development because
of these upstream and downstream consequences. So we have to do all these
three things but in a wise and prudent combination. What we have been
doing in the past is to give priority to the big projects and treat these
local civil society-led, community- led water harvesting and watershed
development, as secondary and supplementary. My own view is that you have
to reverse this. You have to treat water harvesting and water shed management
as primary and treat the big projects as secondary or projects of the
last resort. What I mean by projects of the last resort is that for any
given situation for any given area we have to look at all the possible
alternatives and choose the best. If in any given area, a big project
or bringing water from another area is the best option or is the only
available option, then of course you have to do it. However this is the
kind of stringent evaluation that we have not applied so far and it needs
to be applied.
I don't want to discuss the privatization issue because it will take too
much time, but let me make only a small distinction. There is a confusing
use of the word "right". We talk about the right to water, at the same
time economists and the World Bank etc. talk about water-rights. Water
rights and the right to water are two different things. When you are talking
about the right to water, you are talking about a fundamental right or
a human right, life support, without which you cannot exist. When you
are talking about water rights, you are talking about economic rights,
irrigation, industry etc., but it is not a fundamental right. The World
Bank has gone one step further, and is talking about property rights.
What they are saying is that define water rights and allow trading and
all problems will be solved. Unfortunately what they are trying to do
is to transfer the argument for privatization from industrial and commercial
goods to water. But the analogy does not hold. Water is not like soap
or cement or fertilizer. If you don't get some of the industrial goods
you make do without them or find an alternative. You cannot do without
water and there is no alternative for water.
Secondly, you can say that we should not privatize the resource but we
can privatize the service. Instead of your municipality supplying you
with water, a private company can supply it to you. Superficially this
seems alright but in fact this is very difficult to separate privatization
of a service from the privatization of a resource because you do have
to entrust some degree of control over the resource to some private supplier.
If you allow a private supplier to put up a dam, as for instance, S. Kumar's
were allowed to take on this Maheshwar project. So you have allocate resources
to them, control over natural resource has to be given to them so that
they can supply. I will not elaborate on this but there are a number of
difficult issues that are involved in corporate control over natural resources.
You have a couple of very well known examples. You have Shivnath in Chattisgarh,
where 20 km. of this river Shivnath was leased out to this private corporate
entity for water supply purposes. Of course there was public outcry against
it, so the government tried to cancel it but they found certain legal
difficulties, so that is an unresolved issue. Then you have another dispute
in Kerala in Palchimada, where Coca-Cola was given bottling rights of
a certain capacity. They put half a dozen power driven bore-wells and
as a result the water in the surrounding areas, in the villages, ran dry.
These villagers went to court and won the first round in the district
court. The judge pronounced a public trust doctrine, stating that water
is held by the government in a public trust, not to be given away to a
corporate entity. Unfortunately that got turned over by a Division Bench
of the High Court and now the case is before the Supreme Court and we
do not know what the outcome is going to be. So there are a number of
difficult issues here but unfortunately in dealing with these matters
we face a very muddled legal system. We have in the Kerala Court, the
district judge pronouncing a Public Trust Doctrine but it is not there
in our laws. We have to introduce it. We have, broadly speaking, two things,
the State Governments claim control and ownership over surface water resources,
they claim what we refer to in legal parlance as "eminent domain" over
water. In fact in Rajasthan a dispute arose because of this when the local
villagers managed build some Bunds and Check Dams and regenerated some
long dry rivers and streams, the State came along and said that every
drop of rain that falls on the State belongs to the State and if you try
to intercept it you are committing an illegality. They wanted to arrest
and put Rajinder Singh in jail and it was prevented by a group of eminent
persons who went and talked to the Chief Minister, but the issue is still
unresolved. To whom does the water belong? If as a result of community-led
initiatives we are able to regenerate some water, do you have some rights
over that water or it immediately goes back to the bureaucrat for him
to allocate to anybody else. Another difficulty is that you regenerate
this water, the water level rises and downstream of you there is a rich
fellow, who sets up this bore-well and sucks out all the water that you
have generated. Unfortunately under our law, while the State claims ownership
and control over surface water, ownership of groundwater vests in the
ownership of land and under law there is no limit on how much water the
owner of the land can extract. He can install a very powerful bore-well
which makes the dug wells of the poor farmer nearby dry. Not only that,
he will sell this water to that farmer who is also sitting on that aquifer.
Whose water is being sold to whom? So these are extremely complex legal
issues and we need a comprehensive legal reform. The community initiatives
are not backed by Indian law today.
In a paper I wrote recently I made certain recommendations as to what
we ought to be doing in relation to water. Drawing the various threads,
that I have mentioned, together, it is clear that water is among the most
important problems facing this country.
1. A major national effort, a multi-pronged national campaign or movement
on water, encompassing not only the government but also the civil society,
is called for. Amongst other things, this movement will have to restrain
and manage demand within availability, promote efficiency and economy
in water use and resource conservation and foster a consciousness of scarce
and a precious resource.
2. Facilitate the prevention or quick resolution of conflicts.
3. Promote rainwater harvesting and micro watershed development through
out the country, to the extent technically feasible, without adverse effects.
4. Some large projects may still be required but subject them, where they
are found necessary, to a stringent evaluation procedure.
5. Arrest as quickly as possible, the present disastrous over exploitation
of groundwater.
6. Arrest and reverse the loss of a lot of good water to pollution and
contamination.
7. bring about the necessary changes in water laws needed for all this.
8. Lastly but most importantly, bring about a major change in the way
the people think about water. A very special effort is urgently needed.
It is much easier to build a dam or drill for groundwater and that is
why people take them, but this is what is really needed.
Mr. P.R. Chari
My remit this evening is to speak on regional cooperation and water crisis
in South Asia. Let me start by saying that over the last few weeks and
months, as all of you would have noticed, public attention has been focussed
on energy security and on depleting fossil fuels, but a new consensus
seems to be developing on the need for nuclear energy. Now this is important
because just about maybe less than a decade ago nuclear energy was a not
favoured and in fact it was a bad word. The nuclear industry had collapsed
almost all over the world and there were very few countries, India being
one of them, China, South Korea which were still committed to nuclear
energy. It seems to be important to appreciate the fact that even as far
as water, water scarcity and water issues are concerned, exploitation
of different sources of water are concerned that there is a kind of a
fashion and that the same truths that were there and accepted ten years
ago might change, because you will find that these truths, as Robert Frost
once wrote, come in out of fashion. With that let me say that it is my
belief that water will become an equally scarce commodity in 20-25 years
from now on present indications. Everyone of you must have heard Mr. Kaarthikeyan's
figures, I don't want to toss around any kind of figures, but what I want
to say is, looking to the kind of remit that I have this evening, that
this kind of water scarcity could lead to regional, bilateral, intra-state
crisis and conflicts. I could also extend this by saying that it could
lead to a range of conflicts at the village and also at municipal levels.
Here, if I might mention, going back almost half a century to the time
when I was recruited into the Indian Administrative Service and we were
all Assistant Collectors under training we used to be informed that there
are three kind of law and order situations that you will have to face
in your career. The first was communal riots, where we were supposed to
be absolutely ruthless you didn't look for orders, this was the thinking
of fifty years ago. The second was labour disputes where you had to show
certain sensitivity and then the third was student unrest. Then there
were conditions, because of climatic and other situations, of water scarcity,
you could expect riots because people wanted to access canal water and
you could also expect that there would be riots in municipal areas because
of the fact that drinking water was scarce and people would fight for
it. Now this kind of thinking I am talking about was there almost a half
a century back. Therefore I am not as sanguine as Mr. Ramaswamy Iyer that
we may perhaps not see conflicts over water and I hope he is right, but
although I do agree with the broad thrust of his presentation that one
has to think in terms of being a little more circumspect about demand
and also as far as supply is concerned we should try and exploit all sources
of water supply that are available, although one can disagree about what
should be the priorities. What I am trying to say is that when we talk
about water and water scarcity the problem is not only one of supply and
demand but also about water management, conservation, waste reduction
and my own view is that there is therefore a link between water scarcity
and conflict. Also therefore the need for regional cooperation to mitigate
conflict and reduce tension between the states, within the states and
even at local levels. The anomaly is and this is a scientific fact, that
river flows generally are increasing world-wide because, according to
one view, the increased deforestation and urbanization leads to decreased
absorption of rainwater in rural areas. But there is also the phenomenon
of global warming, which is responsible for larger snow melts and leads
to increase in river flows in snow-fed rivers and also to floods. It also
leads to receding glaciers. Glaciologists tell us that receding glaciers
will aggravate the problem of water scarcity, water pollution. Salination
of underground sources of water is also likely as a result of the exploitation
of underground resources of water and that highlights the need for an
optimum use of the rivers and underground sources and so on.
There is no free lunch here, because of the fact that if we think in terms
of harnessing rivers, construct big dams, there are problems which will
arise because of rehabilitating oustees, deforestation, maintaining of
bio-diversity and therefore I would like to point out that although the
problems exist and although the need exists, it seems to me, going back
to where I started, that the harnessing of river waters seems to be coming
back into fashion. There seems to be a new consensus that could be developing
in this regard, with the World Bank now being willing to support such
projects.
Now let me turn to South Asia. Crisis and water disputes have both internal
and external dimensions. As Mr. Ramswamy Iyer pointed out, we have disputes
between states, the Cuavery water dispute, between the States of Karnataka
and Tamil Nadu, we also have disputes between the States of Haryana and
Punjab over the SYL Canal. As between nations, we had a dispute between
Bangladesh and India, now happily resolved over the sharing of the Ganga
Waters at Farrakha. We have had river water disputes between Pakistan
and India, several of them continuing. There is Baglihar, which is currently
referred for adjudication to a neutral expert. Salal happily resolved,
the Tulbul Navigation or Wullar Barrage dispute remain unresolved, Kishenganga
remains unresolved. We could include here, if one is talking about water
disputes in a more general kind of way, the unresolved Sir Creek maritime
dispute. As between India and Nepal, we had the dispute over the Mahakali
river, there several others which are on the anvil. But the Mahakali river
dispute although resolved, the treaty in this regard is yet to become
functional.
One can say that the situation in the cases of unresolved disputes seems
to be that politics has triumphed over economic and developmental priorities
and plays into, as far as South Asia as a region is concerned, the demonisation
of India by the smaller nations and also there is this belief in India
that as far as the small nations are concerned they are particularly recalcitrant
and display a kind of a small neighbour persecution complex. Now India
Bhutan water relations on the contrary can be held up as a model. There
is the Chukha and the Tala hydro-electric projects that were built by
India and the power generated from them is being paid for by India to
amortise the costs and the royalties. Indeed I would say that as far as
these two projects are concerned, they have totally transformed the economy
of Bhutan and that can be held up as a sort of an example of what is possible
with regional cooperation.
The legal situation is that the upper riparian should not cause 'substantial
harm' to the lower riparian, but what that really means is that both have
rights but distribution and regulation of river waters is the heart of
the problem. The existing problems between the states of South Asia, particular
reference of course to our region are three or four fold. Number one,
there is this geographical reality that you have in South Asia, that India
is both the upper riparian state, as far as Pakistan and Bangladesh are
concerned, and the lower riparian state, as far as Nepal and Bhutan are
concerned. So India finds itself, because of its geographical situation,
to be something in the middle. Number two, that India has both disputed
and cooperative river water arrangements with its neighbours, you have
for instance the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan, which
is held up in the literature and in most bilateral negotiations etc. as
a kind of a model confidence building measure and it has withstood the
tensions and conflicts since 1960 when it was signed. We have the Farrakha
agreement which can also be held up as a model agreement between two countries.
On the other hand we have this reality that we have several Indo-Pakistan
water disputes that revolve around Kashmir like Baglihar, Kishenganga,
Tulbul/Wullar Barrage disputes. As we all know that Kashmir is a major
if not the core issue that lies in contention between India and Pakistan
and therefore these water disputes can be linked to the overall political
relations between the countries. The fourth point I would like to make
over here is that water disputes have also become an aspect of internal
politics, particularly something which is very peculiar to South Asia,
plebiscitary politics. By plebiscitary politics that an issue is used
by the opposition of the day to obstruct any kind of bilateral agreement
which is reached by the government of the day, it doesn't matter whether
when the opposition was in government might have been agreeable to certain
conditions or to have a certain agreement with another country but once
the government of the day changes and the party in power is in the opposition
then they start denigrating exactly what they wanted to when they were
in the government. The politics in Nepal and Bangladesh is an example
of this, though we see it in India also.
Now as far as water disputes are concerned, they have in the past been
acrimonious, it is my belief that if this water scarcity is not handled
sensitively in the manner in which Mr. Ramaswamy Iyer has wisely urged,
they could become even more acrimonious. We have experience in India over
loss of life in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery dispute. I must
point out that in 1948 India and Pakistan almost came to war when India
interrupted water flows at the Husseniwala head-works in Ferozepur district.
Nationalistic statements were made in India recently during the Indo-Pak
crisis, for instance during the Kargil conflict there were a number of
hot-headed remarks and hot headed suggestions made that India should stop
all the waters that were flowing into Pakistan and that of course caused
a great deal of concern in Pakistan. I don't think it was a particularly
wise suggestion because if you stop the water flows into Pakistan from
the dams that are here in India it would only result in the flooding of
the Indian territory. Anyway these high emotions do come and they could
lead inadvertently to conflict because these do become 'lifeline issues'.
So far as Pakistan is concerned, except for one, all the other rivers
that flow into the Indus, which is in a sense the lifeline of Pakistan,
all arise in India. Therefore if people even talk about stopping water
that flows into that territory it leads to very high emotions there and
there is a conflict potential in that. This points to the need of negotiated
settlements and unless discussed, serious disputes are portended by these
kind of remarks that are made in moments of high crisis.
Now let me turn to the successes that we have had in South Asia. There
are five conditions that are revealed by these successes stories as to
what made them successful and why others have failed. These are:
1. The decisive role that was played by the national leadership. Now there
is no doubt that in 1960, when the Indus Water Treaty was signed, Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Ayub personally got involved in
the resolution of the dispute and the World Bank acted as a mediator.
In the 1996 Ganges Water Treaty, you found there was a personal commitment
on the part of Inder Kumar Gujral from India's side and Shiekh Hassina
from Bangladesh's side, along with Jyoti Basu, the Chief Minster of Bangladesh.
2. As a corollary to the above point, negotiations on politically charged
river disputes cannot be left only to technical personnel and diplomats.
Otherwise as far as bureaucracies are concerned they can drag on these
negotiations forever. 3. We need to understand that all negotiations
involve give and take and therefore it is very necessary even before entering
negotiations to be clear as to what is going to be our own negotiating
position if you want to take the negotiation to fruition.
4. Summit meetings cannot solve complex issues like water disputes. Particularly
in the age of round the clock news channels, it limits the scope of open
diplomacy but also secret diplomacy because the investigative journalists
derive great pleasure in trying to find what is the secret diplomacy going
on and then bringing it out into the open, making it far worse than when
the secret diplomacy was started. Therefore the via-media I suggest is
emissary level negotiations, with access of the emissaries to the highest
decision makers, something like what Brijesh Mishra and Tariq Aziz were
doing together or something like what earlier R.K. Mishra and Niaz Naik
were attempting, before Mr. R.K. Mishra's cover was blown. So this is
something which I feel is workable if one wants to be serious about resolving
water disputes. Compromises that are of course made and decided upon by
the political leadership can be inked in summits.
5. It seems that bilateral cooperation is easier than regional negotiations.
Involvement of more than two countries makes things complicated.
Let me conclude by urging the need to appreciate that a water crisis looms
ahead and it requires a much greater national attention to address problems
of supply, ensure water quality, bring about conservation, use the pricing
mechanism to try and control demand and all these issues in totality are
linked to good governance. But we also need to appreciate the need for
internal and regional cooperation to harness rivers for mutual benefits.
I would like to draw attention to negotiating an extended Indus Water
Treaty, an Indus Water Treaty II.
Dr.
Subhash Chander:
I am focussing my talk on fresh water, which is not only a source of life
but also a source of culture. Think of what the city of Benaras or the
total cultural ethos of Bangladesh would be without water? What are the
characteristics of water? One of the characteristics of water is its variable
availability. Usually when people talk about resources they talk about
fixed quantities but water is a resource which varies from year to year,
from season to season and from place to place and therefore you are required
to plan for this resource in a different fashion. It needs development
to meet the demand, if however you can bring down the demand its better
because as Mr. Iyer said, this resource is finite. In India there is an
inter-annual variability and when we talk about inter-annual variability
then average figures like 1100 BCM have no meaning because in some years
the usable water is as low as 500 to 600 BCM and in other years it maybe
as high as 2000 BCM. So there will always be shortages. This is a problem
that you have to tackle on a day to day basis.
We get all this water in a period of about 90 days and I some times wonder
how people imagine that we can supply it throughout the year without some
kind of conservation and storage.
The per capita availability is something in the order of 1000 cubic metres
per year, so we are already, as per global standards, in a state of scarcity.
So it is important that we realise that there is a problem.
This scarcity is going to increase due to increasing population, increasing
variability due to climate change as areas which dry will get drier, ageing
water infrastructure which limits options and we are not investing money
into modernizing this infrastructure due to all the activism against it.
This is a complex problem which requires for us to have a mechanism to
get a solution as one solution cannot be there for the whole of India.
There is a conflict between the demands for water between people, cities,
agriculture and environment. The issue is how a community can cope with
variability, scarcity and conflict. The community needs sustainable water
development for its use and sustainability requires that the development
is designed and managed to contribute to the objectives of the community,
meeting current and future needs, maintaining ecological, environmental
and hydrological integrity. These are the issues which will help you find
a solution.
The sustainability also requires limiting environmental and human uses.
Simply because water is there does not mean that you use all of it and
refer to the rest as waste, e.g. the water that is going into the sea
which also performs important functions like developing deltas, biotic
communities, fisheries and is also being used by other people but just
because the people in the cities don't get to use it therefore it is termed
as waste. I feel nothing is waste and is merely a trade off. One should
limit pollution to maintain the sociological, cultural and ecological
uses dependant on the resource. The people involved in polluting water
should not be allowed to do so. Sustainability also requires that there
should be damage minimization and recovery post disaster like floods and
droughts. Therefore the key factors that I have mentioned are vision of
the community, availability on use, limiting pollution, maintaining hydrological,
ecological and environmental integrity recovery from extreme events like
floods and droughts and demand management.
The solution for this is adaptive management, that is manage what is available
for that particular year using the latest technology, in order to find
out how much water in order to allocate it. There is no option but to
go for higher technology for the management of water based on online technology
or near online information due to the variability, changing societal objectives
and because of the limited knowledge of ecological requirement of environmental
flows which will require monitoring of environmental outcomes. There is
a group of scientists who have written in the journal Current Science
that if you are using water for consumptive use which gets evaporated
and gives you agricultural produce and start using more of it, you may
impact the monsoon because the salinity in the Bay of Bengal is going
to decrease. Therefore one cannot use all the water available and thus
requirements have to be limited and usage has to be continuously monitored.
This is what adaptive management is all about.
There is a three year case-study performed by A.P. to look at air and
water resources. They have gone for adaptive management, which requires
a shared vision to ensure a secure water future for the people of Andhra
Pradesh, to provide economic development, promote agricultural industry
and natural ecosystems. Under availability and use they have tried to
see what is the long-term average surface flows and dynamic recharge.
Short term solutions like rain-water harvesting, minor and medium irrigation
projects and water reuse etc. are also there.
Long term solutions are essentially going to be conservation of an additional
200 to 300 BCM of water. How we are going to do it is something we have
to start thinking about right now because it takes 15 to 20 years before
you can conserve and use that amount of water.
About pollution in A.P. they are taking steps to protect water sources,
natural channel network leading to water bodies from dumping of waste
and contamination of water bodies. They are making laws for the same and
are looking to implement the 'polluter pays' principle for clean up. Ecological
and environmental integrity involves maintenance of geomorphology, groundwater
levels and wetlands because they are linkages to biodiversity, river corridors
and estuaries and other coastal resources.
They are limiting water extraction for domestic needs, drinking water
supplies, irrigation, industry and power generation, without jeopardising
future use. Reusing of water is one of the strategies that they are using.
The best water is used for drinking, while reuse is becoming the norm
for industries.
They are also thinking about the environmental aspect and are providing
for the maintenance of healthy aquatic eco-systems by providing environmental
flows and adopting the precautionary principle.
I think the most important aspect is hydrological integrity. This is achieved
through impact assessment of obstructions and regulations on downstream
flows. This has to be done very meticulously taking into account seasons,
pollution loads, natural regeneration capacities, sustainability of aquatic
and associated eco-systems, quality standards, environmental and human
uses. Impact assessment requires extremely specialised tools for predicting
expected future such as computer based interactive optimization and simulation
models with GISM interface, specialised programmes and techniques of analysis.
Once you have the future scenario then you have multi-disciplinary teams
which are responsible for the evaluation of plans, integrating technology,
ecology, social and political infrastructure and identifying trade-offs.
I am very hopeful that the civil society has woken up to the problem of
water and something good will emerge from this. There is technology to
devise a solution, there are mechanisms by which various people can sit
across the table and take decisions which are acceptable, durable and
which can help to prevent conflicts.
Clarifications
Mr. Ramaswamy Iyer
I wanted to supplement what Mr. Chari said. He mentioned some success
stories and mentioned the factors involved. There is one more factor,
namely 'Track Two' initiatives, that is talks at a non-official level
outside the government. We had done some extensive work on this between
India and Bangladesh about the sharing of the water of the Ganges, which
was of no practical significance so long as the political relations were
bad but when the political climate changed there was body of work available
which was very useful and the same has been acknowledged by the Indian
government as well as the Bangladeshi government. Similarly in case of
the Cauvery dispute, there are a group of people who are bringing together
the farmers of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka promoting goodwill and though
it has not solved the problem, the generation of goodwill has been very
remarkable.
Questions and Answers
Question: Nothing was said about the option to desalination as
a means of producing supplementary fresh water?
Mr. Kaarthikeyan
I learn that Desalination has been approved by the Government of India
for the Tamil Nadu government. There is a global tender for the same.
The problem with regard to it as an option is that it is too expensive.
The Gulf countries can use this option due to the large amount of oil
money that they have. However this option will have to be explored as
the scarcity of water has reached a critical stage, especially in South
India.
Dr. Subhash Chandra Desalination is a solution if you require small
amounts of water. There exists a certain indigenous technology for the
same and they are in the process of setting up a plant in a coastal on
an experimental basis to test the same. In another twenty years this will
be an economically viable alternative source of water for cities near
the coast.
Question: As a common citizen of the city I would like to know
what is being done about supplying water to the cities? What is the status
of the interlinking of rivers project?
Mr. Kaarthikeyan
We were unfortunately not able to get a speaker from the water supply
department of Delhi to speak to us today. On the issue of interlinking,
the then Prime Minister Mr. Vajpayee made a statement in the parliament
that they would go for interlinking of rivers, which was immediately supported
by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi as the then leader of the opposition. There was a
public interest litigation before the Supreme Court to ensure that the
project was implemented. The government made a commitment to the Supreme
Court that the project would be completed in fifteen years. Dr. Abdul
Kalam in his very first inaugural address to the country on assuming the
august office of the President of the nation said that interlinking of
rivers has to be implemented, as otherwise there will be flooding in some
parts of the country and droughts in some other parts. As for sometime
after the UPA Government took charge nothing was taking place on this
front, I called on the Prime Minister and asked him whether his Government
believed in the project. To that he replied that he and his government
firmly believed in the project of interlinking of rivers they did believe
in it and one agreement in this regard had already been signed between
the states of UP and MP. This project is not proceeding on the same pace
as the Golden Quadrilateral Project, mainly due to the reluctance of some
states, whose consent is required as water is a State subject in the Constitution.
One option is to go in for connecting Canal waterways, as the same would
fall in the concurrent list of the Constitution and the consent of the
states would not be required. However, sooner or later the project has
to be implemented, to prevent a great disaster to the nation.
Dr. Subhash Chander
I have examined most of the proposals for interlinking since I am on the
advisory committee for the same and the question that arises is, where
is the water? I published a paper in the journal of hydrology in 2004,
where I said there should be a criteria where inter-basin transfer can
occur and the first criteria was that when you require water in one place,
there should be surplus water available at the same time in another basin.
Has hydrological analysis been performed as to ascertain whether there
are basins where surplus water exists at the time when the water is needed
by the water scarce basin? Unless you do this kind of rigorous analysis
in order to ascertain the viability of these schemes it does not make
sense to undertake them. All the data with regard to this project is not
in the public domain and is not transparent. However, everything should
be scientifically data-based.
Question: Can't this movie that has just been screened be shown
in schools so that young children get educated about the harmful effects
of aerated drinks?
Umesh Agarwal
Very soon we will be organizing the screenings of this movie in Universities
and schools all over India.
Question: Water flow as per the National Commission was 1953 BCM;
however we then say that usable water is 690 BCM. Where does the remaining
water go?
Dr. Subhash Chander
Before you are able to use water you have to develop it. Therefore you
need to have site where you can store it. The unused water flows into
the sea.
Observation
We will not be able to solve the problem of water scarcity with the same
mindset with which we created them. A lot of myths have been created in
this regard and they should be dispelled. The only way of dealing with
this issue is by adopting a disaggregated approach towards it and not
an integrated approach. A balance between micro solutions and macro solutions
is required.
Observation
I would like to draw your attention to the Indus Water Treaty. It has
started having a negative effect on Kashmir. Kashmir has to be compensated
for the losses it is undergoing due to this treaty.
|
