Exploding Kashmir population needs Indus water now going to Pakistan
Habshi
can compensate them with real money .
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1909/19090340.htm
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1909/19090340.htm
A treaty questioned
PRAVEEN SWAMI
THE chorus calling for a review of the Indus Waters Treaty is growing
to operatic proportions. On April 3, the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative
Assembly called for a review of the September 1960 India-Pakistan
agreement, demanding that the State be compensated for losses it had
suffered as a result. Speakers who denounced the Treaty ranged from
the National Conference's G.M. Bawan to the Bharatiya Janata Party's
Shiv Charan Gupta and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader
Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami.
Indeed, discontent over the Treaty has been building up throughout the
State. The State government claims that clauses in the treaty cost it
some Rs.6,000 crores each year. The treaty limits Jammu and Kashmir's
right to use the waters of the Jhelum and the Chenab, in particular
its ability to build storage reservoirs on the two river systems.
This, the State argues, has meant that it has had to sacrifice an
estimated potential power generation of 15,000 MW. Jammu and Kashmir
believes that it should have received compensatory access to power and
water generated on the Ravi, Sutlej and Beas systems.
Seven years of negotiations went into the making of the 1960 Treaty.
When it was signed, newspapers in both India and Pakistan hailed the
Treaty as a major achievement. Many hoped that it would redress
Pakistan's fears about Indian control of the water that fed its key
agricultural areas in west Punjab. In essence, the agreement gave
Pakistan principal rights to the Chenab and Jhelum systems, while
giving India similar rights to eastern rivers. The Treaty restricted
India's rights to use the western rivers for domestic non-consumptive
purposes, agriculture, and power generation, and placed curbs on the
construction of storage reservoirs.
In effect, the Treaty gave Pakistan the power to veto Indian projects
on the river systems it was allotted. In the case of the massive Salal
Project, for example, Pakistan successfully objected to plans to build
anti-siltation sluices. As a result, siltation levels in the
113-metre-high dam have reached upwards of 90 m, curtailing generation
capacity. Alternately, in the case of the Lower Jhelum Hydel Project,
because of the absence of a storage reservoir it is able to generate
just 35 MW although its installed capacity is 400 MW. The August 1998
Report of the Committee on Economic Reforms in Jammu and Kashmir noted
that "on the recently commissioned Uri and Salal Hydro Electric
Projects, the energy loss is to the order of 44 per cent and 50 per
cent respectively."
APART from the matter of power, farmers in Jammu and Kashmir have been
pushing politicians to take an aggressive stand on the Treaty. While
the Kashmir Valley has traditionally been considered to be
water-surplus, successive droughts in recent years have pointed to
severe strains on the irrigation system. Farms have spread to the
edges of the Kandi area, creating demands that traditional canals
simply cannot meet in years of poor rainfall. To the south, the
situation is similar. In 1960 much of Jammu was barren, but
water-intensive paddy cultivation has now spread as far south as
Samba. Farmers of new lands from Reasi to Sunderbani have also been
asking for water from the Salal dam.
Part of the problem is the poor marshalling of resources that do
exist. The Ranbir Canal, built in 1870, was intended to feed the areas
of Miran Sahib, Vijaypur and Madhopur. Poor maintenance has ensured
that it can now carry just 300 cubic feet per second of water, rather
than the 1,000 cusecs it was designed for. The Pratap Canal, meant to
meet the needs of the Akhnoor-Sunderbani belt, has also silted up. And
the Ravi Uplift Canal, meant to service southern Jammu, has gone dry -
for the twin reasons that Punjab is unwilling to provide any water and
there is no electricity to pump it up.
All of this precipitated a minor crisis in the wake of the
post-January Army build-up. Indian defensive positions are protected
by a series of ditches against a tank assault. When troops sought to
fill them up, farmers dependent on the Ranbir and Pratap canals raised
a furore. But officials in Jammu and Kashmir say that these systems in
themselves would not address the problem. "The fact is that our needs
have grown," says a senior State government official. "The population
has exploded as has the area under cultivation. Both our large urban
centres face water famines each summer, which is an intolerable
situation. And when industry revives in the State, the demands both
for power and water will increase manifold."
Legal experts point out that any move by India to abrogate the treaty
would fly in the face of international law (see "A treaty to keep",
Frontline, April 26, 2002). This position, however, finds few
receptive ears in the State. "I'm saying something very simple," says
Tarigami. "We are suffering because of Pakistan's water needs. Fine,
compensate us for what we have lost. And if you cannot do that, review
the situation. After all, people make laws." Others in the defence
establishment argue that the Treaty has failed to secure its principal
raison d'etre from India's point of view. "The whole idea was to
reassure Pakistan that our presence in Jammu and Kashmir would not
threaten its vital national interests," argues a senior Army official.
No one believes that any dramatic movement on the issue is likely in
the near future, notwithstanding the gathering pace of calls to
abrogate the Treaty. But the stage seems set for another festering
dispute with Pakistan. Water, not terrorism or the future of Kashmir,
might just prove to be the reason for any future India-Pakistan war.
Habshi
where the official media incites hatred against India and Hindus and
which sends terrorists to kill Indians in Kashmir and Gujarat ??
jang excerpts
former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority who wrote that "no
army, with bombs and shellfire could devastate a land so thoroughly as
Pakistan could be devastated by the simple expedient of India's
permanently shutting off the source of water that keep the fields and
people of Pakistan alive".
Although the supplies of waters were restored because of an interim
agreement of May 4, 1948 but it seems that the Indians appeared to be
well aware of this power as one observer then wrote that "if India
were to cut off the waters, it is bound to impair Pakistan's strength
considerably. Even her existence may be endangered". Nevertheless the
Indians continued to progressively reduce the supplies. The two
governments continued to hold meetings to resolve the issue but were
unable to settle it.
According to the treaty, the waters of the western rivers -- Indus,
Jhelum and Chenab -- were allocated to Pakistan and the flow of waters
in the eastern rivers Ravi, Beas and Sutlej was allocated to India
with certain specified exceptions. The treaty covered matters relating
to the agricultural use of waters, the generation of hydroelectric
power, the storage of waters, procedures of arbitration and
transitional arrangements. The real solution to the crux of the
problem revolved around the building of storage dams and the
construction of link canal system to transfer water from western
rivers to cater for those areas directly dependent upon waters of the
eastern rivers.
" When Pakistan cannot honour the Simla agreement and the Lahore
Declaration, then why should we honour the Indus Basin Treaty?" It is
obvious that he neither fully comprehends the true difference between
the words like agreement, declaration and treaty nor fully realises
the significance of mutual benefits.
Soon after signing of the Indus Basin Treaty, the president of the
World Bank referred to the treaty a "billion dollar investment in
peace".
Apart from the repeated assertions of a Union minister and a chief
minister of state, the first major manifestation of contrived
obstruction has taken place in January 2002. In January this year, the
Indians drastically and abruptly reduced the flow of water in river
Chenab from 5700 cusecs to 3200 cusecs without any prior warning and
justification. The concerned Pakistani official has written letter to
his Indian counterpart asking for some explanations and
justifications. The Pakistani officials are suggesting to the
incumbent government not to take the issue lightly but should lodge a
strong protest with India. To take the case before the International
Court of Justice is also being discussed and recommended by some
quarters if India did not desist from the violations of the treaty.
Generating pressures against Pakistan and damaging Pakistani interests
is indeed a pursuit in which almost all Indian governments
irrespective of their political colourings have taken some strange
kind of satisfaction. The variation is only the degree and volume of
satisfaction. Third explanation revolves around the rigid nature of
some of the current rulers. Compared to others, BJP seems to enjoy
larger a share of inflexible hard nuts. Reason or logic is somewhat
alien to them. Power and security of ones own interests are their
guiding principles. Finally, one cannot overrule the possibility of
playing into the hands of a power hungry Kashmiri family. This
particular Kashmiri family which enjoys power both in the state as
well as a minor share in the central government may have its own axe
to grind and deliberately leading the BJP astray by focusing and
asserting the suggestion to abrogate the Indus Basin Treaty.
No economic comeback
Dr Manzur Ejaz
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Washington DC
Washington Diary
The IMF has given the impression that Pakistan's foreign currency
reserves have been strengthened because of regular growth of the
external sector. Fact of the matter is that out of the much-touted $5
billion, $2.6 billion have been purchased in the open market. In an
interview on the Awaz TV programme in Washington, Dr Ishrat Hussain,
Governor, State Bank of Pakistan, disclosed that foreign currency was
purchased by paying Rs 2-3 above the official rate, costing Rs 8-10
billion to the government. Therefore, it is clear that the rise in
foreign reserves has not occurred due to higher exports and economic
revitalisation. As a matter of fact, one has to wonder about the
source of money used for buying such a huge chunk of foreign currency
reserves. Such a market operation (whether money was printed or other
methods were used) would have negatively impacted the economy.
Dr Ishrat Hussain was very candid in evaluating the economic
performance of the present government. No new investments are made, no
new industries are added and no employment opportunities are created
in the last two years, admitted Dr Hussain.
According to the World Bank report, Pakistan Development Policy
Review: A New Dawn, "Macroeconomic sustainability is a serious
problem, because public debt is at an unsustainable level. Interest on
public debt, together with defence spending, consumes 70 percent of
total revenues." Under such macroeconomic instability, Pakistan's
economic growth rate declined to 2.6 percent in 2001 from 3.9 percent
in 2000. Despite foreign aid hoopla, economic growth is expected to
make a very modest recovery to 3 percent in 2002. Fiscal budget
deficit will increase from 5.3 to 5.7 percent of GDP during this year.
CBR is faltering in revenue generation despite expanding the tax net
to even medicines. Inflation has risen to 4.4 percent in 2001 from 3.6
percent in 2000.
Pakistan's agriculture sector -- the source of livelihood for 70
percent of Pakistanis -- is also in a serious trouble. Water shortages
and rising prices of inputs have hampered this sector to a great
extent, according to the World Bank. Despite tall claims the present
government has not taken any concrete action to repair the
deteriorating irrigation system or to extend drainage system to stop
waterlogging. More importantly, total investment declined by 14.7
percent in 2001
Government's claims of standing up for the poor are not born by data.
In its report the IMF, otherwise soft on Musharraf government, says,
"Expenditures on social services were disappointingly lower than
expected." World Bank concurs, "Pakistan under-performs other
countries with similar per capita income in just about all the social
indicators." There are no indications that the present government has
even tried to reverse the anti-social sector trends.
The World Bank has not found any meaningful progress in Pakistan in
six key areas: governance, investing in people, macroeconomic
sustainability, financial sector, investment climate and agriculture.
Similarly, the Asian Development Bank has shown that all indicators of
Pakistan's economy are moving in the negative direction.
Both, the World Bank and the IMF expect this government to be more
pro-poor in its future policies. However, these international
institutions are pursuing anti-poor policies in the form of pushing
the government to increase taxes (in Pakistan, it is usually
consumption tax paid by the poor) and take away subsidies. However, to
satisfy the critics from the left, these institutions keep on paying
lips service to the poor. The Musharraf government has been following
their lead by adopting anti-poor policies while keeping up a pro-poor
rhetoric. But unfortunately, the records show that this government has
not been able to do much for the ones who are not so poor either.
Habshi
irrigate their fields and desilting the Chenab reservoir will have
tremendous effect . Why should Hindus keep giving water to a country
bent on extermintaing them out of Kashmir and rest of India ?
dawn.com
Chenab, Jhelum vulnerable to treaty mischief: Indian minister's threat
By Ahmad Fraz Khan
LAHORE, May 25: India can disturb the flow of river Jhelum and divert
Chenab's water to Ravi if it decided to use river flows as a weapon
and unilaterally abrogate the Indus Basin Water Treaty , water
planners said here on Saturday as a Pakistani delegation left for
India to attend a mandatory meeting of the permanent treaty
commissioners.
The planners have been busy studying various scenarios on the
instruction of the government, to meet any eventuality.
Despite the exercise in run up to the meeting, they professed their
faith that India would not take such a route. "This will guarantee a
regional and, perhaps a global, disaster."
"Due to the hilly train India cannot divert Jhelum's water to another
river or stop it from flowing into Pakistan. But it can certainly
build a dam and regulate its flow to the detriment of Pakistan," an
expert in the Irrigation and Power Department said. He said India
could regulate the river flow in a way to disturb the farming pattern
in Pakistan, flooding it when water was not required stopping it when
it was needed.
The central Punjab as well as parts of southern Punjab depend on
Jhelum's water for irrigation. An Agriculture Department official said
if India disturbed the flow, it could make a large part of the Punjab
barren. The possibility, however, was at least be 15 years away, the
time required to build a big enough dam.
"Chenab is the river most vulnerable to Indian mischief," an expert in
the Pakistan Indus Basin Treaty commissioner's office said. The river
flows only 50 kilometres away from the Ravi in the Indian planes.
India can thus easily dig a canal to transfer its water to Ravi and
consume its entire flow. With additional water from Chenab, it can
expand its irrigation network to Rajhisthan desert.
River Indus is by and large safe from Indian designs. Originating from
Tibet, it flows through the Ladakh valley into area controlled by
Pakistan. Along its route in Indian controlled area, there is no site
suitable for a dam. Even if a site should be found and the dam built,
most of the water in Indus comes from its tributaries in the areas
under Pakistan's control.
A hydrologist working for the WAPDA said, "Indian can disturb river
flows but it would be at a phenomenal engineering cost." Engineering
solutions, he said, could be found for even the most difficult task,
but one should not lose sight of the cost. He hoped that the Indian
people will not support such an adventure.
An official in the WAPDA's water wing said projects involving changes
in river flows took a long time, decades in most cases. He said
Pakistan could invoke guarantees and mount diplomatic pressure which
may be unbearable. Being the upper riparian country India can
certainly create problems for Pakistan. In fact, that is what it has
been doing for the last many months. It snapped all links with
Pakistan in December and has refused to transfer data and there has
been a decrease in Chenab's flow since January, reportedly because
India has built a reservoir at Baghliar.
A lawyer said it was not easy to revoke international treaties like
the Indus Basin Treaty because they affected lives of billions of
people. The present Indian leadership could create the hype around the
treaty and derive some political mileage out of it, but legally
speaking its options were limited.
In practical terms, a river diversion would amount to a declaration of
war, an official in the Ministry of Water and Power said. Pakistan
would be bound to retaliate. "How could India expect Pakistan to let
it squeeze it drop by drop?" This would also expose Indian dams to
attacks by Pakistan. Dams are not attacked even during a war. But such
niceties are observed only on reciprocal basis.
He also expressed his faith in international guarantees and rational
behavior. Most of the worst-case scenarios never happen because their
cumulative cost is too much for everybody. With the passage of time,
the Indians would realize that most of their hostility is misdirected
and blaming others for one's own failures does not bring any
dividends.
KARACHI: Many city localities to go dry for 48 hours
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, May 25: At a time when several parts of the city have already
been in the grip of acute water shortage in the current hot and sultry
weather for the last one week , various other localities will go dry
for the next 48 hours owing to a burst that occurred in a 84-inch dia
pipeline of Syphon-19, near the Karachi University.
A spokesman for the KWSB said that repair work of the bursting
pipeline that supplies 25 million gallons of water to the COD Filter
Plant from Indus source would begin on Sunday, hence supply to a
number of localities would be badly affected for the next 48 hours.
The localities which will either go completely dry or receive scant
supply during the next 48 hours include all cooperative housing
societies, Lines Area, Jut Land, Saddar, Mehmoodabad, Chaneser Goth,
Azam Basti, Liaquatabad, Clifton, Shireen Jinnah Colony, Kharadar,
Mithadar and their adjoining localities.
Habshi
By Rasheed Channa
Pakistan's second largest populated province, Sindh, is afflicted by
an acute shortage of fresh water. Its lakes, rivers, tributaries,
canals and wells whose subsoil aquifers were replenished by
percolation from the River Indus are running dry.
The concentration of saline density around the coastal water has also
consequently risen above the optimum survival levels for marine life.
This has drastically reduced the mangrove forests as the increasing
salts eat away at the roots.
Marine life had flourished under the nutritious mangroves which
thrived because the fresh waters from the Indus maintained a balance
in the ecology of the coastal waters. The salubrious effect of the
Indus waters extended 250 nautical miles into the continetal shelf.
This is the exclusive, and vital, economic zone of the country's
marine life, commerce, supply of fish, crabs and prawns. Without fresh
water that limit has been reduced drastically and is continuing to
fall further.
The entire ecosystem has been upset by the imbalance in the fresh -
saline water mix which is different from pure sea water.
Agricultural activity has also diminished recently and the entire
agricultural economy is existing on survival rather than optimum
levels.
The degradation of the environment is an everyday phenomenon in
Pakistan because of constant breaks in the chain of life that the
fresh water kept intact. The fishermen have migrated and left fishing;
there is less fish for people on which millions survived as it was a
cheap and easily available source of protein-that builds intelligence
in developing children. The nation is facing a serious threat of less
intelligent generations which will have a disasterous effect on the
advancement of science, trade and commerce.
Shortages of water have also led to a proportionate increase in the
toxic outflows of pesticides from factories, from fields, from
industrial effluent. People are using the available (toxic) water to
irrigate their crops and vegetable which we have to eat to survive.
The growth of forests, particularly in the riverine belt of the
country has been bludgeoned by the controlled flows in the rivers. The
wood mass of the country, according to an estimate, will not last
longer than ten years. Pakistan is now heading straight into a
semi-desert environment and soon thereafter will turn in to a lifeless
desert.
Sindh, the lower riperian of the Indus River system, has a gross area
of 34.80 million acres out of which about 35 per cent is cultivable.
An estimated 22.50 million acres are under agriculture and forestry in
one form or the other. Out of this, about 13 million acres are in the
canal command areas. Regulated agriculture is, therefore, almost
entirely dependent on a network of canals which off-take from three
barrages, Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri. The total length of the canal
network in Sindh, from all the three barrages, is over 12,000 miles
(19,200 kilometers) delivering a discharge of 142,000 cusecs during
peak days of the cropping season.
According to para-2 of the 1991 Water Accord, Sindh's water share is
48.76 million acre feet (33.94 for Kharif and 14.82 for Rabi crops).
The average inflows in the Indus river system are 140MAF. For the last
three years, however, the decline in inflows has been quite large:
during 1998-99 it was138.715MAF; during 1999-2000 117.508MAF and it
was 96.484MAF during 2000-2001.
Due to the reduction in inflows, canal withdrawals in Sindh has also
gone down as follows:
During the 1999 Kharif, Sindh withdrew 32MAF water against its share
of 33.94 MAF (a 6 per cent shortfall).
In 2001, Kharif withdrawals were 24.47MAF which showed a 24.47 per
cent decline in availability; in 2002 Kharif, Sindh received 25.559
MAF which was a 25 per cent shortfall.
Sindh's water share for Rabi season stands at 14.82MAF but it received
17 per cent short in 1999-2000, 43 per cent less in 2000-2001 and 54
per cent short during 2001-2002.
Apart from the river water shortages, Sindh has experienced natural
calamities for the last five year's such as Cyclone 2-A in May 1999,
the Jan 28 earthquake, severe drought in the Kohistan areas and
chronic water shortage all over the province.
These calamities damaged mostly the agro-based economy, destroyed
marine life and caused an environmental disaster by helping the sea
intrude further inland.
Cyclone 2-A with strong winds and twisters was followed by dark clouds
that rained warm, salt water along the coastal belt between May 19 and
20, 1999 and lasted nearly 36 hours. The devastation was
unprecedented, the worst in the memory of those living in Thatta and
Badin districts.
It claimed 202 human lives and 29,606 livestock. As many as 141
persons are still classified as missing. Around 138,719 houses were
damaged (72,796 completely and 65,924 partially), the Kharif crops
standing over 1 million acres were seriously affected and the land
prepared for rice lost its potency with the salt water that rained
down.
An earthquake hit the districts of Tharparkar, Mirpurkhas, Hyderabad
and Badin on Jan 26, 2001, which disrupted normal life in lower Sindh
and caused extensive damage to life, property and the environment. It
had claimed 12 lives, injured 115, damaged 1,989 houses completely and
43,613 partially.
Drought 2000-2001: In the recent years the stranglehold of the drought
has tightened with cycles becoming longer and the intensity worse:
1991-92, 1995-96 and 1999-2002 (to his date).
The changing climatic cycle has meant spare rainfall. This has had a
particularly nasty effect on the arid zones of Mirpurkhas and
Hyderabad.
Economic activity, both agricultural and pastoral with stunted crops
and emaciated livestock, is teetering at the barest survival level in
the districts of Tharparkar, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Kachho and the
Kohistan region of districts Dadu and Thatta.
The Thar is the largest desert of Sindh. It spreads over 20,000 square
kilometers extending from the coastal area of the Rann of Kutch along
the southern border with India to Sukkur. The Kohistan area starts
from the West-North-West of Karachi and goes along the border with
Balochistan. This region spreads over about 33,000 square kilometers
and the area depends on rain, lacking any other source of water.
The entire area has been subjugated by extreme poverty where 95 per
cent of the population lives below the poverty-line. The treacherous
weather has brought drought conditions forcing around 300,000 people
to migrate in search of barrage areas with water to sustain their only
source of income, their livestock. But, that hope too was dashed as
they found the canals dry and the hinterland parched.
According to a Sindh government survey, a population of 1.38 million
(194,798 families living in 2,863 villages) have been adversely
affected by the drought. The number of livestock that has suffered is
around 5.60 million.
The talukas of districts Thatta and Badin, Mirpur Sakro, Ghorabari,
Keti Bander, Jharo Chhan, Jati and Shaheed Fazil Rahu have compounded
problems as they are also badly effected by sea erosion. With
insignificant flows down the Indus, the natural protection from salt
water encroachments having been removed 1.2 million acres have been
eaten away in the tailend area of the irrigation system.
The main cause behind the increasing desertification of Sindh is the
climate such as dryness of the atmosphere in arid and semi-arid
regions caused by low (less than 200mm) and sporadic rainfall, high
rate of evaporation, acute shortage of river water and sea intrusion.
Due to present drought conditions in Sindh, the forests of the
province are most affected. The main forests affected by the drought
are riverine forests, mangroves forests, range area and other sites
relating to forestry.
Agriculture, forestry and pastures are three main land uses in Sindh.
The province is already deficient in forest resources with less than 5
percent of its geographical area under forests, including riverine
forests, 0.241 million hectares, irrigated plantation 0.082 million
hectares and mangroves 0.2345 million hectares. Out of these,
productive forests cover over 2.3 per cent of the land.
In the last five years, the reduction in the flows of fresh water
downstream of Guddu Barrage and negligible rains have had a negative
impact on the status of forestry in Sindh. The sustainability of the
forest ecosystem has been threatened due to decline in downstream
flows over the years. The effects of change in the hydrological regime
are quite evident in the form of highlying area, reduction in ground
water level, loss of wildlife habitat, decrease in forest cover.
The most significant effect of the drought and shortage of water in
Sindh have been on important ecosystems causing hydrological,
geomorphological, ecological and social impacts upon its various
components such as the riverine eco-system, mangrove ecosystem and
rangelands.