Indo-Nepal Mahakali Treaty has not been properly ratified

[Kosi Admin]

Interview with Dipak Gyawali : Indo-Nepal Mahakali Treaty has not been
properly ratified

NOV 30 - After much delay, Nepal and India have just agreed to set up
Pancheswor Development Authority which, it is hoped, would pave the
way for commissioning of the much-anticipated Pancheswor Multipurpose
Project, a key component of the Mahakali Treaty.<b> Pranab Kharel<b/>
and <b>Biswas Baral<b/> met <b>Dipak Gyawali<b/>, a leading expert on
water resources, to seek his views on the agreement and water issues
between the two countries.



What do you say to the proposition that water is a 'political
commodity' in Nepal?



Gyawali: It is so everywhere in the world. It's the nature of water.
Mark Twain once said: "Whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting
over." Why are we pretending as if water is some ethereal, divine
commodity that has no conflict behind it? It's a resource and resource
has conflicting uses. We should instead focus at devising the means of
addressing those conflicts in a civilised manner. We don't seem to be
doing that.



The governments of Nepal and India have recently agreed to set up the
Pancheshwor Development Authority (PDA). India says this marks the
beginning of implementation of the Mahakali Treaty. How do you see
this development?



Gyawali: It's all a bull, frankly. Mahakali Treaty has never been
properly ratified. The draft of the treaty was extremely flawed and
that was brought out before the ratification. We had a whole slew of
CPN-UML leaders including Madhav Kumar Nepal and the late Prem Singh
Dhami and Khadga Oli come to our office. We gave them a three-hour
lecture on it and despite that they went ahead and ratified the
treaty. They have no right to complain that they didn't know it was
wrong. What they did during the ratification was that they passed what
is known as a set of four strictures on the treaty. These strictures
redefine the treaty — saying this is what the treaty really said. But
these strictures are not included in the final treaty. The right thing
would have been to tell India 'sorry the treaty can't be approved
unless these strictures are there'. Those strictures were ratified by
100 percent of the parliament and then the treaty was ratified by
about 80 percent. Thus the strictures had more validity than the
ratification.

The point is: Mahakali Treaty has been ratified conditionally and
conditional ratification is no ratification. India has not agreed to
it while the Nepali state is bound by the four strictures. Without
addressing the concerns of the strictures and without making sure they
are included in the body of the treaty, it's not a proper treaty.

If you say the treaty is a legal document, there is a clause in it
which says that the treaty would be reviewed in 10 years, which has
not been done. None of the provisions stated in the treaty — the DPR
of Pancheswor being completed within six months, financing arrangement
in two years and the completion of the project itself by 2002 — has
been honoured. As the treaty was passed by a two-third majority of the
parliament, only a legitimate parliament has the right to change even
a full-stop or comma in it. The treaty, I would argue, is what we
would call in Nepali a 'date-expired medicine.' If you take medicine
past its sell-by date, you are asking for trouble. You cannot predict
its side-effects.

It's got many flaws. It even lacks clear provision on what constitutes
Nepal's water rights. But without addressing these flaws, they went
ahead and signed an agreement in Pokhara for the formation of
Pancheswor Development Authority (PDA). But who gave you the right to
set up such a body? The treaty didn't, which says a Pancheswor
Commission would be set up instead. The strictures say the commission
would be formed by taking the opinion of all parties into account. At
least, all 25 parties in the parliament have to be on the board,
ideally all the 52 parties in Nepal. You haven't done that.

Besides, this is not the right time to sign agreements on Mahakali.
This current parliament does not have the mandate to do that, which
was formed to draft a constitution, not to go around doing what they
have no business of. Once the constitution is made and we have a
formal representative body there, it's up to them to work on it. The
time of the treaty has lapsed anyway. What was the hurry to do it
right now? This smacks of something very fishy.



How do you assess India's role in current negotiations?



Gyawali: The basic problem here is that India is in a state of denial.
Some people compare the state of Nepal with Bhutan, a totally
irrelevant comparison in my view. Bhutan has a population of six lakh;
we have got 30 million people. Corresponding to Bhutan's 336 MW need,
India would need to develop somewhere in the region of 17,000 MW in
Nepal on the same rate (60 percent grant and 40 percent soft loans).
India does not have that kind of money. Secondly, we have to sign a
security and foreign affairs over-lordship of India as Bhutan does,
which I don't think is palatable to most Nepalis. Electricity is not
the real thing that India wants from Nepal.

India forced the post-2006 government to hand over to Indian
companies, illegally to my mind, Upper Karnali and Arun III. Arun III
is a good site, but the way the World Bank had developed, it was a bad
project. The estimated cost was around U.S. $5,400 per KW. You don't
build anything at that cost, five times more expensive than what a
private sector Nepali company managed to build in the Arun valley. How
did Pilua Khola get made there at U.S. $1,400 per KW? How can the
World Bank justify the U.S. $5,400 'estimated' cost? If we had gone
ahead, we would probably be on the same route as Mid-Marsyangdi. It's
the same institution that set up the Mid-Marsyangdi. We would be
building the world's most expensive hydropower project at the 1995
estimated cost.

The point is: it was a good site but bad project as it was done. It
could be made cheaply. We have always argued it could be made for U.S.
$1,500/KW or even less. And it should have been built for Nepal. But
they gave it for export to India without going to the parliament as
Article 136 of the past constitution and Article 156 of the current
interim constitution require. So this is illegal.

Why are we rushing to build the 400 MW transmission Dhalkebar-Janakpur-
Mujjaffarpur line to India? For India, 400 MW of electricity, when it
has a shortage of 10,000-15,000 MW, is like a needle in a haystack.
What can the measly 400 MW do for India?

There is no initiative to provide Nepali industries cheap, reliable
electricity. I don't know what India hopes to gain by forcing their
companies like Sutlej, a company blacklisted in India, on Nepal, to
build Arun III? It's not meant for Nepali grid, and it will mean
nothing to the Indian grid. It would have worked wonders for Nepali
grid if 400 MW were developed from Arun or Karnali. It isn't going
anywhere because, as I said, India is in a state of denial.

There are tremendous benefits to be gained by regulated waters by
storing them in dams in Nepal. There are irrigation benefits which
will provide dry season irrigation for up to four crops a year in some
places. The calculated agronomic benefit of that is huge. But India
does not allow us to share those benefits. India must be a free-rider
on regulated water. West Seti would provide 90 cumecs of increased
flow in the dry season which will cultivate 90,000 hectares of paddy,
or as much as 250,000 hectares of high value crops with drip-
irrigation. I wouldn't mind irrigating 250,000 hectares by flooding
2,000-3,000 hectares of territory, but India doesn't want to discuss
this, doesn't want to share flood-control benefits.

On water resources and hydropower development, you should have a very
clear idea. There are five basic guidelines Nepal must follow in
developing its hydropower. Nepali hydropower should be developed
cheap; the electricity must come on line fast; the electricity should
be reliable; there should be regional balance in electricity
generation, and electricity should be produced for both socio-
political and techno-economic reasons; foreign demands should not be
entertained without achieving a strong domestic base. Can someone give
me a better policy?



Some commentators say India claims Nepal's share of water accounts to
some 4 percent after deducting the amount of water already claimed by
India from the Sarada barrage.



Gyawali: This is nonsense. The maximum it can use from Sarada barrage
is the dry-season flow of Mahakali. The maximum capacity of Sarada
canal is 326 cubic meter per sec and Nepal is entitled to 1,000 cu
secs. By building a Pancheswor dam on top what happens is you build a
storage project there which means a dry-season flow of Mahakali will
come to anywhere from 3,000-4,000 cu secs. While the dry season flow
increases ten times India cannot say I have the right to all the
increased flow. As far as the issue of 'prior use' is concerned, how
could India claim more prior use of water than there is in the river?

To claim something on the basis of your wish, hope and intention, is
plain wrong. You have to share the dry-season flow. So if the flow
goes up ten times after building Pancheswor dam, say to around 3,000
cumecs, then 2,700 cumecs have to be shared. Our share of it would be
able to pay for the entire cost of the dam.



How does Mahakali treaty compare to other international treaties?



Gyawali: Very badly. It talks about how much water Nepal gets, which
is about 4 percent but doesn't specify how much India is entitled to.
Assuming India takes all 96 percent, which is all wrong. To be blunt,
it's extremely shady and shaky foundation on which you can build mega-
projects like Pancheswor.



How do previous water agreements like Gandak and Koshi compare to
Mahakali?



Gyawali: Actually, they were better agreements as our water rights
have not been curtailed in those treaties. There are flaws in those
treaties, but we could do what we wanted to do in the upper
catchments. Mahakali denies us that right. After 50 years of Gandak,
you bring a new set of democratic leaders who have learnt nothing.

http://www.ekantipur.com/2009/11/30/Oped/Monday-Interview/303605/