Flooding stirs bad blood in S Asia

Politics, corruption and high water trigger a crisis in India and Nepal leaving over 3 million homeless and dozens dead.

Good fences make good neighbors, especially if the neighbors happen to be two sovereign countries of unequal sizes.

However, in the case of India and the tiny republic of Nepal, the 1800 km border between the two countries is demarcated on the basis of rivers that flow from the Himalayan ranges to the Bay of Bengal, a designation that is now proving to be contentious.

"The Himalayan ranges divide Nepal from its northern neighbor China," Chandra Prakash Gajurel, a legislator from Nepal's ruling Maoist party and its foreign affairs chief, told ISN Security Watch. "Therefore there are no outstanding border disputes with China. But with India [with whom 26 of Nepal's 75 districts share a common border] there are border disputes in over 60 places."

The bad blood has been made worse by flooding caused by the Kosi river, a tributary of the Ganges, which flows through both India and Nepal.

On 18 August, ironically the day Maoist chief and former revolutionary Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" took oath of office as the new republic's first prime minister, the Kosi overflowed its embankment in south Nepal's Sunsari district, causing a deluge that spilled into India's adjoining Bihar state.

Besides displacing over 100,000 people in Nepal, the river, known as the "Sorrow of Bihar," unleashed the worst flooding in the country in 50 years, leaving over 3 million homeless, thousands missing and dozens dead.

Now the two neighbors, who have a blow-hot, blow-cold relationship during the best of times, blame each other for the disaster.

Bad feelings run deep


While at least 80 deaths have been reported from both countries, thousands are still missing. There is also a growing fear of epidemic as water-borne diseases stalk the shelters opened for flood victims. Food, medicine and safe drinking water are in short supply. Infrastructure and crops worth billions have been destroyed. Nepal's lifeline, the East-West Highway, which links it to India, has been disrupted, slashing the supply of essential goods and fuel and from Wednesday causing a 37-hour weekly power cut in Nepal.

The seeds of the dispute were sown in 1954 when Nepal and India signed a treaty agreeing to share the waters of the Kosi.

"It was an unequal accord from the very beginning," says Ratan Bhandari, coordinator at the Kathmandu-based Water and Energy Users Federation, an NGO is that locked in several legal fights with the Nepal government over controversial water and energy agreements.

"Nepal gets only 3 percent of the Kosi waters for irrigation use while India gets the rest. The then-Rana rulers of Nepal were facing a political upheaval that threatened their stint in power. So they thought an agreement with India would win over the bigger neighbor, which would help them remain in power."

According to the terms of the agreement, India built a barrage on the river inside Nepal as well as embankments that were fortified by a series of spurs.

"But you can't tame a river like the Kosi," says Bhandari, who returned to Kathmandu from flood-hit Sunsari last week to produce a report on the situation. "It is the second-largest sedimentation-bearing river in the world after China's Hwang Ho."

The rapid siltation of the river caused the water level to rise alarmingly fast in August though the rainfall was not extraordinarily high. The increased water pressure caused two of the spurs to collapse, enabling the raging river to breach the embankment and gush out, submerging villages in Sunsari and Bihar.

Politics drown out solution


Caught in a crisis immediately after coming to power, Nepal's six-party coalition government headed by the former Maoist guerrillas has declared emergency in nine villages in Sunsari to grapple with the devastation.

The Kosi agreement stipulates that India would maintain and repair the barrage and its accompanying infrastructure. However, the state government of Bihar showed tremendous negligence in doing so.

"The spurs are feeble," says Bhandari. "Besides being nearly 50 years old, they are made of sand and boulders, which is not strong enough. They should have been built of concrete. Also, due to the political turmoil in both Nepal and Bihar, for four years, little repair work has been done."

The state of Bihar floats tenders for periodic maintenance and repair work, eventually handing over the job to contractors who, in turn, hire sub-contractors in Nepal. It is an incredibly tortuous, complicated and corruption-riddled process which needs frequent greasing of palms of government officials and political parties in both countries.

In Nepal, the Maoist party's strong arm, the Young Communist League (YCL), vied with a debutant ethnic party, the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum, over the contract for local labor to repair the spurs. When the latter won, the aggrieved YCL prevented the team of Indian technicians from reaching the site. The delay caused the eroding spurs to collapse.

When the flood waters began to advance, Nepal pointed to India's negligence in repairing the spurs while India blamed the Nepal government's inability to provide security. The crisis was seized gleefully by the opposition parties in both countries.

In Bihar, the Janata Dal (U) government led by chief minister Nitish Kumar was flayed by the opposition Ratriya Janata Dal (RJD) party while in Nepal, former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala's Nepali Congress is blaming the new Maoist government.

Now all eyes are on Nepal Prime Minister Prachanda, who on 14 September goes to India on his first formal and political visit after assuming office.

The prime minister's own party is calling for the abrogation or review of all "unequal" treaties with India, including the Kosi agreement, which Prachanda himself condemned as a "historic blunder." There are two more equally controversial water treaties that have also come under fire by various parties in Nepal: the Gandak Treaty signed in 1959 and the Mahakali Treaty of 1996.

The barrage built on the Gandak river allows Nepal to use only 3 percent for its waters for irrigation with India getting the rest. Nepal's state media reported this month that the Gandak barrage, also maintained by India, was showing signs of wear and tear. If this barrage is breached, it would also submerge India's adjoining Uttar Pradesh state.

Water plans in opponents' sights


The Mahakali Treaty is an ambitious, integrated multi-purpose project that plans to build a 315 m dam as its centrepiece. Nepal lies in an earthquake-prone zone. This, coupled with the large number of displacement it would cause, has generated strong protests from anti-dam activists in both Nepal and India.

Besides the existing feuds, fresher ones are expected to rise if India goes ahead with its ambitious river-linking project. Planned by the previous government, it seeks to transfer the waters from the areas of surplus traversed by the Himalayan rivers in the north to the deficit areas in the peninsular south by linking 37 rivers. Since the rivers run international watercourses, lower riparian states like Bangladesh object to the program.

The current Indian government, caught in a nuclear fuel debate, is yet to put any thrust on the river-linking scheme. Once it does so, there are bound to be fresh water feuds in South Asia.

"Both Nepal and Bangladesh will oppose the project," says Bhandari. "We think the neglect of the Kosi embankment is a ploy by India to trigger floods and arm-twist Nepal so that it agrees to the river-lining scheme as well as high dams."
JavaScript has been disabled in your browser