More comments on NFB postings on the Tipaimukh Dam

Ref: http://newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=267804
and http://www.newsfrombangladesh.net/view.php?hidRecord=267803


It is good to see Mr. Meer Husain's informed views on great dangers posed by the dams. As a concerned expatriate and environmental geologist he has been at the forefront of making a scientific case that relates arsenic poisoning found in groundwater of Bangladesh and the West Bengal with the dams like the Farakka. In this write-up he has put up a couple of rhetorical questions and offered valid suggestions, which I am afraid, Govt. of India will ignore, as it has done in the past a number of times. A visit to the Teesta and Padma rivers during the dry seasons is good enough to see the devastating effect of Indian dams on Bangladesh. A friend of mine who recently had taken a boat ride on the Teesta wrote to me, "We had to physically push the boat like you push a bullock cart." That says a lot about what these Indian dams are doing to Bangladesh!

On the Indian side of the proposed Tipaimukh Dam, thousands of Manipuri Indians will be displaced from their villages, and most of the once-beautiful place will be submerged under water for most of the year. The decision to build hydro-electric dams to alleviate hunger and poverty has never worked; more people have become poor than rich. And yet, India, with the highest number of dams in the world, is determined to add not only this one, but few hundred ones over the next decades, which will inevitably bring in untold misery to the people on all sides. Arundhati Roy had her losing battles with the Indian Government trying to stop the Narmada Dam projects.

In his recent write-up Barrister Munshi has mentioned about a litigation filed at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh to challenge the 1996 Treaty on Farakka. I am not convinced of any good outcome from such a litigation either. As I know during the signing of the 1996 Treaty, the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses and the 2004 Berlin Rules on Water Resources simply did not exist. It is not difficult to understand why the 1996 Treaty had failed to omit internationally accepted safeguards and guarantees that those latter conventions contained.

As we all know having a treaty between dissenting parties is usually better than not having one since the absence of it, as the JRC findings on share of water on the Ganges have repeatedly demonstrated, gives the stronger party the bullying right to unilaterally withdraw as much as it wants without any restriction. However, we have also found out through our bitter experience that India has never kept her side of the treaty obligations on ensuring Bangladesh's share of water (that were agreed between the two parties). She has violated many clauses of the 1996 Treaty. If she had honored her side of the treaty clauses, the situation on Bangladesh side would not be this bad today. This comment of mine should not in anyway be interpreted as my endorsement of hydroelectric dams or the ensuing treaties to safeguard the weaker party. Much like Arundhati Roy, I am totally opposed to such dams and prefer alternative eco-friendly means to cater to energy needs of our people. To confine our choices on technology to those envisioned and formulated in the 1920s and 1930s, is simply stupid.

As I have mentioned in my writings, sadly, self-interest rules our world in which the powerless has hardly anything to demand or bargain for a fair share. Bangladesh is a smaller and weaker nation compared to its giant neighbor. International agencies like the WB, IMF and ADB are all too eager to finance dam projects of this kind.

My more important question has been: what options are left for Bangladesh to make her case to stop construction of such killing dams when hard facts on the ground, protests and complaints have failed to produce desired results with an arrogant and short-sighted neighbor like India? Can our intellectual community invest its valuable time, away from political bickering and blame-game, into suggesting options that are meaningful? Issues like Tipaimukh and Farakka Dam are too important for every concerned citizen to find these confined to narrow partisanship that plagues Bangladesh politics. We cannot afford another self-destructive and suicidal choice with the Tipaimukh. The sooner the better.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Defining the Biden Doctrine

George Soros at the Davos Forum