ajtr
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pertaining to the following article here is its counter.John Briscoe is just spreading pakistani propaganda in the guise of neutral expert on IWT.
Originally Posted by ajtr
He wrote:
Best I can find, India filled Baglihar in August 2008.
E.g., The Dawn reports August 23, 2008, about the filling of the Baglihar.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/23/top15.htm[/B]]India filling Baglihar Dam in violation of treaty -DAWN - Top Stories; August 23, 2008
This is squarely in the middle of the monsoon season, which runs from June to September (e.g., as per Wiki)
Monsoon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As per the Hindu, the rains in Indian Punjab were mostly normal at that time.
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/17/stor ... 621000.htm
Quote:
In Uttar Pradesh, 34 out of the 64 districts have recorded excess rainfall, 20 normal and five deficient. In Punjab, 10 out of the 16 districts have recorded excess rainfall, four normal and two deficient.
---
The Pakistani growing seasons are:
Agriculture Problems in Pakistan And Their Solutions SAP-PK Blog ... solutions/
Crop | Sowing season | Harvesting season
Kharif | April – June | Oct – Dec
Rabi | Oct – Dec | April – May
----
I.e., India filled Baglihar in the middle of the monsoon.
Also in 2008, the monsoon rains were quite heavy in Pakistan.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natura ... p?id=20333
Quote:
Unusually intense monsoon rains pounded Pakistan in late July and early August 2008.
-----
Therefore, he may be a very well-intentioned South African, but he has essentially shot his credibility with any concerned Indians - unless he can explain exactly what he meant by
-----
If he want to do any good for India and Pakistan whose people he claim to love, he had better stick strictly to telling the truth.
Moreover for the so called IWT expert this is what Annexure E, article 18 of IWT says
Quote:
India may carry out the filling as follows :
(a) if the site is on The Indus, between 1st July and 20th August ;
(b) if the site is on The Jhelum, between 21st June and 20th August ; and
(c) if the site is on The Chenab, between 21st June and 31st August at such rate as not to reduce, on account of this filling, the flow in the Chenab Main above Merala to less than 55,000 cusecs
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:14 AM ----------
Baglihar was filled during august 2008 monsoon season.Moreover for the so called IWT expert this is what Annexure E, article 18 of IWT says
Quote:
India may carry out the filling as follows :
(a) if the site is on The Indus, between 1st July and 20th August ;
(b) if the site is on The Jhelum, between 21st June and 20th August ; and
(c) if the site is on The Chenab, between 21st June and 31st August at such rate as not to reduce, on account of this filling, the flow in the Chenab Main above Merala to less than 55,000 cusecs.
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
The writer does not give enough credit to IWT which has worked despite enmity between treaty states. It says Pakistan is fearful that India would /might use its leverage if all dams are constructed. It doubts intention of India to inflict major damage on Pakistan through mechanism of IWT without showing any proof, except saying that Baghlihar was filled up when PaKistan needed water. It also blames Indian media for not objectively reporting official indian position and existential vulnerabilities of PaKistan . It overlooks what Pakistan is saying and doing vis-a-vis many Indian concerns. There is very little doubt in India that Pakistan actively encourages terrorist acts, even plans directs and executes which would not be possible if Pakistan state is not involved.
It then asks India to be magnanimous and reinterpret treaty in such a way that forgoes leverages which is available to it.
Unfortunately , the article does not say that official forum including IWT comm and Foreign Minister have duly acknowledged that India is not in violation of IWT. The problem faced by PK in irrigating its agri field is of its own making. The article expects that official Indian position should be that we deliberately violate IWT due to enmity with PK whereas media reports that India is in full compliance with IWT.
Upshot of this is
1. Be courageous for the existence of Pakistan
2. Give leadership to become truly great power and good neighbour
3.Invite Pakistan for IWT
4. Delink IWT from other issues.
Essential article asks India to take initiative to open pandora's box without any commensurate benefit except removing legal uncertainty ( pakistan not challenging any and all IWT projects of India, however he is not in a position to guarantee that).
In my view article fails to make any case for India to seek any of the four positions when it comes to Pakistan, especially when it is not yet proved that IWT has broken down.
Existential problems of pakistan and its bad neighbourly behaviour is of its own making and they should make amends and prove their credentials to the writer. WE don't need such lecturing.
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
The writer has shied away from the real issue. He hinted but did not elaborate upon it in his solution.
Given that the Indian Press takes its lead from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs it does not follow that merely informing the Indian public of Pakistan’s fears would solve anything.
Also, so far as I am aware, Baglihar was not filled in the low season. It was filled in the monsoon season.
The writer is correct in saying that creating live storage on all those dams will cause a certain amount of water shortage, cumulatively, but this accumulated shortage is going to be spread over 30 years or more, the time it will take at the minimum, to build those dams. Remember, it has taken India 50 years to build the three relatively large projects on the Chenab, Dul Hasti, Baglihar and Salal. It has managed to put only one large project on the Jehlum in that period, the Uri project. Any threat of a water shortage to Pakistan on account of these proposed dams can be discounted for that reason alone.
Let us also further remember that the Indus Waters Treaty allots 80% of the combined Indus waters to Pakistan. India gets only 20% and even that is not yet fully exploited either for irrigation, drinking or power.
The solution at which the author hinted (and I wish he had devoted more space to it) is to develop dead storage on the rivers allotted to Pakistan, not just live storage. This would benefit India and Pakistan. India would increase its capacity to generate power and Pakistan would gain by more lean season flows when they are needed and less flooding at the wrong time. India has been suggesting such a solution to Pakistan but to no effect. The opportunity to build upstream regulation will be lost forever once all the dams planned in India are built. The time is now. It will be impossible to tear down the structures and rebuild new ones in some idyllic future where India and Pakistan are friends, or where Pakistan has defeated India and won Jammu and Kashmir for itself. Already the sites of Salal, Baglihar, Dul Hasti and Uri have been lost, but upstream regulation of water is still possible, if India and Pakistan can come to an agreement.
And this where the question of trust arises. Does threatening India with war over water help anyone?
Kashmir is one permanent casus belli, now we have a second one in the making.
The goodwill that Professor Briscoe talks about, which is so essential to resolving the waters issue let alone Kashmir, cannot be conjured out of thin air. Those confidence building measures were proposed nearly a decade now and we haven’t moved one inch. How does Professor Briscoe expect the Indian Ministry of External Affairs to react to the threats from the likes of Hafiz Saeed, or the references to India as Pakistan’s main enemy by the PA Chief except with anger. It is naive of the Professor to expect the Indian government to sympathize with Pakistan’s water shortage, or, in the face of the unremitting hostility to coach its citizens to be sensitive to Pakistan’s needs. Why would it do that? It has an active political opposition to counter, and eventually, voters to face. Besides Indian sensitivity by itself solves nothing.
India’s states are at each others throats over water, including its own share of Indus waters. Pakistan can help itself and India by modifying its attitudes over the Indus waters, if not over Kashmir. In friendship and trust all sorts of things become possible. In the case of the Indus Waters though, it wont always be so. The window is now.
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
There is one more issue- almost all of Pak’s three western rivers get much of their water from glacier melt unlike Gangetic rivers which also get a lot of their hydrology from rainfalls and not just snowmelt. Thus Indus rivers will be more vulnerable to receding glaciers- most of Indus and Jhelum glaicers will be gone in another generation of so, if I understand correct. My impression as a Delhi-ite for almost 30 years is that it rains a lot less in winter and there is far less frequent snowfall in Western Himalayas. Even if we co-operate on dams there may not be much water to capture anyways.
---------- Post added at 04:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
The moot point is that actually India has never been found guilty of any breach of treaty on IWT. It was merely asked to reduce its dam height by a couple of meters in Baglihar (???)As far as timing issue is concerned, I believe IWT has a 24 hour deadline- i.e whatever water enters the dam must leave within the same day, so if water is being used for hydel generation, I dont see how it can be used for delaying Pak requirements beyond a few hours.
Btw, didnt some Pak minister too say recently that the water thing was more about Pak mismanagement than Indian kanjoosi.
---------- Post added at 04:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 AM ----------
India did not fill Baglihar in the low season. The professor is quite wrong. Nor did Pakistan object when India filled Salal or Uri. There was no need to because it was all perfectly legal. But by the time Baglihar came up the discourse of cheating by India had begun to take hold in Pakistan.
Take the case of Salal. The dam is silting up, but Pakistan will not allow silt ejection gates to be built in any project. The Tulbal navigation project in Kashmir on the Wular would raise the lake by about three metres and enable better flood control in the valley as in Pakistan, plus raise the power potential of down stream dams without taking any water away from Pakistan. Yet it is stuck for the last 30 years.
The point is that Professor Briscoe does not elaborate the real solution that he hinted at in the very beginning. He merely castigates India for not being friendly with Pakistan, and the MEA, not for being untruthful or cheating but for being insensitive about Pakistan. Given the state of relations between our two countries that is nothing startling or immoral. If India and Pakistan were friends they could help each other in many ways-as enemies they both lose something.
Where there are interstate water disputes in India the states concerned dont have sympathy for each other, nor does Delhi; it looks on neutrally or intervenes in favour of one state or the other depending on which party is in power. To expect the Indian government to build up sympathy for Pakistan is unrealistic, and what would it serve-the solution wont come through sympathy. The last 13 years have seen not only reduced snowfall but also reduced monsoons in the North. The wettest months in Kashmir used to be March and April, but now it seems to get only a few showers in that period.
Thought the Himalyan glaciers are not melting as fast as feared they are retreating. Underground water levels in the Punjab and Haryana have dropped by 50 feet and more. Underground water reservoirs are no longer being charged at the same rate, and water is being mined from deeper aquifers by submersible pumps in both states.
It is not possible to siphon off water through underground channels that harvest water. What comes into the rivers is the run off after ground absorption. The rivers are the harvest. Besides the water that does go underground into aquifers need not end up in a desired area. With the present state of technology who can say what aquifer is fed by which run off. The bore wells along the Indo- Pak border probably tap into the same aquifers.
---------- Post added at 04:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 AM ----------
Politicians and Islamic outfits in Pakistan accuse India of stealing upstream Indus system waters, threatening Pakistan’s very existence. More sober Pakistanis complain that numerous new Indian projects on the Jhelum and Chenab will create substantial live storage even in run-of-the-river hydel dams. This will enable India to drastically reduce flows to Pakistan during the crucial sowing season, something that actually happened for a couple of days when the Baglihar reservoir was filled by India after dam completion. What this debate misses is that dam-based canal irrigation is an obsolete, wasteful 19th century technology that cannot meet 21st century needs. It must be replaced by sprinkler and drip irrigation, distributed through pressurised plastic pipes. This approach has enabled Israel to irrigate the desert. It can enable India and Pakistan to triple the irrigated area with their existing water resources, escaping water scarcity. Drip and sprinkler irrigation systems are expensive. They use a lot of power for pumping. But they greatly improve yields too. Israel’s agriculture is highly competitive.
Canals are hugely wasteful of both land and water, something well-captured in Tushaar Shah’s book ‘Taming the Anarchy’. Up to 7 per cent of the command area of a conventional irrigation project is taken up by canals, and this no longer makes sense when land is worth lakhs per acre. In the Narmada command area, farmers have refused to give up their land to build distributaries from the main Narmada canal, so only a small portion of the irrigation potential is actually used today.
Instead of canals, we can transport water through underground pipes that leave the land above free for cultivation. Indeed, the downhill flow of water through massive pipes can run turbines, generating electricity for pumping the water to the surface where required.
Gujarat has shown the way out of this water crisis. It has gone in a big way for drip and sprinkler irrigation. It has been rewarded with an astounding agricultural growth rate of 9 per cent despite being a semi-arid state. Jain Irrigation has become one of the biggest producers of drip and sprinkler equipment in the world, and other corporate rivals are coming up fast.
Like Gujarat, India and Pakistan need to replace canal-based irrigation with pipe-based irrigation. India has world-class technology and equipment that it can share with Pakistan. Such co-operation cannot end controversies over Indus water sharing. But it can take the sting out of them.
---------- Post added at 04:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 AM ----------
Therefore the treaty must consider only the waters of the five rivers of the Punjab-Kashmir and not Indus itself. How much water flows down Indus at all points above Panjnad is not any business of Hindustan. But in the Indus Basin Treaty it is the accumulative flow of the Indus plus the five rivers of Punjab-Kashmir which was considered as basis in developing the water sharing formula. A clear act of theft on part of Hindustan. In reality Hindustani Punjab only deserves waters of Satluj and Beas while Pakistani Punjab must have Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum. But by wrongly including Indus in the calculations the ‘Treaty’ awards waters of Ravi to Hindustan as well. Not fair. Now Hindustan is blocking the flow in Chenab, Jhelum and their tributaries. Not an act of a peace loving neighbor.”
The Indus arises in the Tibetan plateau and flows through Ladakh and Baltistan where various rivers join it such as the Shyok and Zanskar rivers before flowing into Pakistan controlled territory. The Chenab and the Ravi arise in Himachal Pradesh. It is only the Jehlum which arises in Kashmir. Your premise that Pakistan is entitled to all the waters originating in Kashmir is in any case a mistaken one. Because regardless of the status of Jammu and Kashmir, that state is entitled to the waters of the rivers that flow through it. The Indus Waters Treaty has deprived the people of that state of their full potential. Punjab, Haryana , Delhi and Rajasthan are not entitled to the water of the Indus, Jehlum, and do not get any of it, but nor does J&K because of the treaty. J&K’s power potential is also limited because it cannot store water. Your assumption that Pakistani Punjab and Sindh have an automatic right to all the water of these rivers is mistaken ab initio. Its right arises from the IWT. That treaty discriminates against J&K, not Pakistan.
The Indus Waters Treaty is a negotiated one under the auspices of the World Bank. To call India’s share theft is to undermine the treaty. In these water stressed times there are too many voices in this part of the world who would be happy to call it off altogether.
India has never blocked water to Pakistan even in 1965 and 1971.
The Ravi is the border between J&K and Punjab, flowing down from Himachal. Pakistan claims all the waters of Indus including the Hindu Kush tributaries. This is not contested, nor has Pakistan been deprived of the waters of the Chenab and the Jehlum. Your argument therefore does not stand. India has not blocked the flow of the Chenab and the Jehlum. Let us argue on facts not assumptions.
Theft implies criminality. It is an inappropriate word to describe the terms of a treaty fifty years after it was signed by your country. The Upper Bari Doab Canal taking off from the Ravi and irrigating Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts now used earlier to flow into Pakistan. Its diversion to Indian North Punjab was part of the IWT under which Pakistan received World Bank aid to build its own dams and canals. It was perfectly legitimate and equitable.
Originally Posted by ajtr
He wrote:
"This vulnerability was driven home when India chose to fill Baglihar exactly at the time when it would impose maximum harm on farmers in downstream Pakistan."
Best I can find, India filled Baglihar in August 2008.
E.g., The Dawn reports August 23, 2008, about the filling of the Baglihar.
http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/23/top15.htm[/B]]India filling Baglihar Dam in violation of treaty -DAWN - Top Stories; August 23, 2008
This is squarely in the middle of the monsoon season, which runs from June to September (e.g., as per Wiki)
Monsoon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As per the Hindu, the rains in Indian Punjab were mostly normal at that time.
http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/17/stor ... 621000.htm
Quote:
In Uttar Pradesh, 34 out of the 64 districts have recorded excess rainfall, 20 normal and five deficient. In Punjab, 10 out of the 16 districts have recorded excess rainfall, four normal and two deficient.
---
The Pakistani growing seasons are:
Agriculture Problems in Pakistan And Their Solutions SAP-PK Blog ... solutions/
Crop | Sowing season | Harvesting season
Kharif | April – June | Oct – Dec
Rabi | Oct – Dec | April – May
----
I.e., India filled Baglihar in the middle of the monsoon.
Also in 2008, the monsoon rains were quite heavy in Pakistan.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natura ... p?id=20333
Quote:
Unusually intense monsoon rains pounded Pakistan in late July and early August 2008.
-----
Therefore, he may be a very well-intentioned South African, but he has essentially shot his credibility with any concerned Indians - unless he can explain exactly what he meant by
""This vulnerability was driven home when India chose to fill Baglihar exactly at the time when it would impose maximum harm on farmers in downstream Pakistan."
-----
If he want to do any good for India and Pakistan whose people he claim to love, he had better stick strictly to telling the truth.
Moreover for the so called IWT expert this is what Annexure E, article 18 of IWT says
Quote:
India may carry out the filling as follows :
(a) if the site is on The Indus, between 1st July and 20th August ;
(b) if the site is on The Jhelum, between 21st June and 20th August ; and
(c) if the site is on The Chenab, between 21st June and 31st August at such rate as not to reduce, on account of this filling, the flow in the Chenab Main above Merala to less than 55,000 cusecs
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:14 AM ----------
Baglihar was filled during august 2008 monsoon season.Moreover for the so called IWT expert this is what Annexure E, article 18 of IWT says
Quote:
India may carry out the filling as follows :
(a) if the site is on The Indus, between 1st July and 20th August ;
(b) if the site is on The Jhelum, between 21st June and 20th August ; and
(c) if the site is on The Chenab, between 21st June and 31st August at such rate as not to reduce, on account of this filling, the flow in the Chenab Main above Merala to less than 55,000 cusecs.
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
The writer does not give enough credit to IWT which has worked despite enmity between treaty states. It says Pakistan is fearful that India would /might use its leverage if all dams are constructed. It doubts intention of India to inflict major damage on Pakistan through mechanism of IWT without showing any proof, except saying that Baghlihar was filled up when PaKistan needed water. It also blames Indian media for not objectively reporting official indian position and existential vulnerabilities of PaKistan . It overlooks what Pakistan is saying and doing vis-a-vis many Indian concerns. There is very little doubt in India that Pakistan actively encourages terrorist acts, even plans directs and executes which would not be possible if Pakistan state is not involved.
It then asks India to be magnanimous and reinterpret treaty in such a way that forgoes leverages which is available to it.
Unfortunately , the article does not say that official forum including IWT comm and Foreign Minister have duly acknowledged that India is not in violation of IWT. The problem faced by PK in irrigating its agri field is of its own making. The article expects that official Indian position should be that we deliberately violate IWT due to enmity with PK whereas media reports that India is in full compliance with IWT.
Upshot of this is
1. Be courageous for the existence of Pakistan
2. Give leadership to become truly great power and good neighbour
3.Invite Pakistan for IWT
4. Delink IWT from other issues.
Essential article asks India to take initiative to open pandora's box without any commensurate benefit except removing legal uncertainty ( pakistan not challenging any and all IWT projects of India, however he is not in a position to guarantee that).
In my view article fails to make any case for India to seek any of the four positions when it comes to Pakistan, especially when it is not yet proved that IWT has broken down.
Existential problems of pakistan and its bad neighbourly behaviour is of its own making and they should make amends and prove their credentials to the writer. WE don't need such lecturing.
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
The writer has shied away from the real issue. He hinted but did not elaborate upon it in his solution.
Given that the Indian Press takes its lead from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs it does not follow that merely informing the Indian public of Pakistan’s fears would solve anything.
Also, so far as I am aware, Baglihar was not filled in the low season. It was filled in the monsoon season.
The writer is correct in saying that creating live storage on all those dams will cause a certain amount of water shortage, cumulatively, but this accumulated shortage is going to be spread over 30 years or more, the time it will take at the minimum, to build those dams. Remember, it has taken India 50 years to build the three relatively large projects on the Chenab, Dul Hasti, Baglihar and Salal. It has managed to put only one large project on the Jehlum in that period, the Uri project. Any threat of a water shortage to Pakistan on account of these proposed dams can be discounted for that reason alone.
Let us also further remember that the Indus Waters Treaty allots 80% of the combined Indus waters to Pakistan. India gets only 20% and even that is not yet fully exploited either for irrigation, drinking or power.
The solution at which the author hinted (and I wish he had devoted more space to it) is to develop dead storage on the rivers allotted to Pakistan, not just live storage. This would benefit India and Pakistan. India would increase its capacity to generate power and Pakistan would gain by more lean season flows when they are needed and less flooding at the wrong time. India has been suggesting such a solution to Pakistan but to no effect. The opportunity to build upstream regulation will be lost forever once all the dams planned in India are built. The time is now. It will be impossible to tear down the structures and rebuild new ones in some idyllic future where India and Pakistan are friends, or where Pakistan has defeated India and won Jammu and Kashmir for itself. Already the sites of Salal, Baglihar, Dul Hasti and Uri have been lost, but upstream regulation of water is still possible, if India and Pakistan can come to an agreement.
And this where the question of trust arises. Does threatening India with war over water help anyone?
Kashmir is one permanent casus belli, now we have a second one in the making.
The goodwill that Professor Briscoe talks about, which is so essential to resolving the waters issue let alone Kashmir, cannot be conjured out of thin air. Those confidence building measures were proposed nearly a decade now and we haven’t moved one inch. How does Professor Briscoe expect the Indian Ministry of External Affairs to react to the threats from the likes of Hafiz Saeed, or the references to India as Pakistan’s main enemy by the PA Chief except with anger. It is naive of the Professor to expect the Indian government to sympathize with Pakistan’s water shortage, or, in the face of the unremitting hostility to coach its citizens to be sensitive to Pakistan’s needs. Why would it do that? It has an active political opposition to counter, and eventually, voters to face. Besides Indian sensitivity by itself solves nothing.
India’s states are at each others throats over water, including its own share of Indus waters. Pakistan can help itself and India by modifying its attitudes over the Indus waters, if not over Kashmir. In friendship and trust all sorts of things become possible. In the case of the Indus Waters though, it wont always be so. The window is now.
---------- Post added at 04:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
There is one more issue- almost all of Pak’s three western rivers get much of their water from glacier melt unlike Gangetic rivers which also get a lot of their hydrology from rainfalls and not just snowmelt. Thus Indus rivers will be more vulnerable to receding glaciers- most of Indus and Jhelum glaicers will be gone in another generation of so, if I understand correct. My impression as a Delhi-ite for almost 30 years is that it rains a lot less in winter and there is far less frequent snowfall in Western Himalayas. Even if we co-operate on dams there may not be much water to capture anyways.
---------- Post added at 04:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:15 AM ----------
The moot point is that actually India has never been found guilty of any breach of treaty on IWT. It was merely asked to reduce its dam height by a couple of meters in Baglihar (???)As far as timing issue is concerned, I believe IWT has a 24 hour deadline- i.e whatever water enters the dam must leave within the same day, so if water is being used for hydel generation, I dont see how it can be used for delaying Pak requirements beyond a few hours.
Btw, didnt some Pak minister too say recently that the water thing was more about Pak mismanagement than Indian kanjoosi.
---------- Post added at 04:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 AM ----------
India did not fill Baglihar in the low season. The professor is quite wrong. Nor did Pakistan object when India filled Salal or Uri. There was no need to because it was all perfectly legal. But by the time Baglihar came up the discourse of cheating by India had begun to take hold in Pakistan.
Take the case of Salal. The dam is silting up, but Pakistan will not allow silt ejection gates to be built in any project. The Tulbal navigation project in Kashmir on the Wular would raise the lake by about three metres and enable better flood control in the valley as in Pakistan, plus raise the power potential of down stream dams without taking any water away from Pakistan. Yet it is stuck for the last 30 years.
The point is that Professor Briscoe does not elaborate the real solution that he hinted at in the very beginning. He merely castigates India for not being friendly with Pakistan, and the MEA, not for being untruthful or cheating but for being insensitive about Pakistan. Given the state of relations between our two countries that is nothing startling or immoral. If India and Pakistan were friends they could help each other in many ways-as enemies they both lose something.
Where there are interstate water disputes in India the states concerned dont have sympathy for each other, nor does Delhi; it looks on neutrally or intervenes in favour of one state or the other depending on which party is in power. To expect the Indian government to build up sympathy for Pakistan is unrealistic, and what would it serve-the solution wont come through sympathy. The last 13 years have seen not only reduced snowfall but also reduced monsoons in the North. The wettest months in Kashmir used to be March and April, but now it seems to get only a few showers in that period.
Thought the Himalyan glaciers are not melting as fast as feared they are retreating. Underground water levels in the Punjab and Haryana have dropped by 50 feet and more. Underground water reservoirs are no longer being charged at the same rate, and water is being mined from deeper aquifers by submersible pumps in both states.
It is not possible to siphon off water through underground channels that harvest water. What comes into the rivers is the run off after ground absorption. The rivers are the harvest. Besides the water that does go underground into aquifers need not end up in a desired area. With the present state of technology who can say what aquifer is fed by which run off. The bore wells along the Indo- Pak border probably tap into the same aquifers.
---------- Post added at 04:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 AM ----------
Politicians and Islamic outfits in Pakistan accuse India of stealing upstream Indus system waters, threatening Pakistan’s very existence. More sober Pakistanis complain that numerous new Indian projects on the Jhelum and Chenab will create substantial live storage even in run-of-the-river hydel dams. This will enable India to drastically reduce flows to Pakistan during the crucial sowing season, something that actually happened for a couple of days when the Baglihar reservoir was filled by India after dam completion. What this debate misses is that dam-based canal irrigation is an obsolete, wasteful 19th century technology that cannot meet 21st century needs. It must be replaced by sprinkler and drip irrigation, distributed through pressurised plastic pipes. This approach has enabled Israel to irrigate the desert. It can enable India and Pakistan to triple the irrigated area with their existing water resources, escaping water scarcity. Drip and sprinkler irrigation systems are expensive. They use a lot of power for pumping. But they greatly improve yields too. Israel’s agriculture is highly competitive.
Canals are hugely wasteful of both land and water, something well-captured in Tushaar Shah’s book ‘Taming the Anarchy’. Up to 7 per cent of the command area of a conventional irrigation project is taken up by canals, and this no longer makes sense when land is worth lakhs per acre. In the Narmada command area, farmers have refused to give up their land to build distributaries from the main Narmada canal, so only a small portion of the irrigation potential is actually used today.
Instead of canals, we can transport water through underground pipes that leave the land above free for cultivation. Indeed, the downhill flow of water through massive pipes can run turbines, generating electricity for pumping the water to the surface where required.
Gujarat has shown the way out of this water crisis. It has gone in a big way for drip and sprinkler irrigation. It has been rewarded with an astounding agricultural growth rate of 9 per cent despite being a semi-arid state. Jain Irrigation has become one of the biggest producers of drip and sprinkler equipment in the world, and other corporate rivals are coming up fast.
Like Gujarat, India and Pakistan need to replace canal-based irrigation with pipe-based irrigation. India has world-class technology and equipment that it can share with Pakistan. Such co-operation cannot end controversies over Indus water sharing. But it can take the sting out of them.
---------- Post added at 04:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:17 AM ----------
Therefore the treaty must consider only the waters of the five rivers of the Punjab-Kashmir and not Indus itself. How much water flows down Indus at all points above Panjnad is not any business of Hindustan. But in the Indus Basin Treaty it is the accumulative flow of the Indus plus the five rivers of Punjab-Kashmir which was considered as basis in developing the water sharing formula. A clear act of theft on part of Hindustan. In reality Hindustani Punjab only deserves waters of Satluj and Beas while Pakistani Punjab must have Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum. But by wrongly including Indus in the calculations the ‘Treaty’ awards waters of Ravi to Hindustan as well. Not fair. Now Hindustan is blocking the flow in Chenab, Jhelum and their tributaries. Not an act of a peace loving neighbor.”
The Indus arises in the Tibetan plateau and flows through Ladakh and Baltistan where various rivers join it such as the Shyok and Zanskar rivers before flowing into Pakistan controlled territory. The Chenab and the Ravi arise in Himachal Pradesh. It is only the Jehlum which arises in Kashmir. Your premise that Pakistan is entitled to all the waters originating in Kashmir is in any case a mistaken one. Because regardless of the status of Jammu and Kashmir, that state is entitled to the waters of the rivers that flow through it. The Indus Waters Treaty has deprived the people of that state of their full potential. Punjab, Haryana , Delhi and Rajasthan are not entitled to the water of the Indus, Jehlum, and do not get any of it, but nor does J&K because of the treaty. J&K’s power potential is also limited because it cannot store water. Your assumption that Pakistani Punjab and Sindh have an automatic right to all the water of these rivers is mistaken ab initio. Its right arises from the IWT. That treaty discriminates against J&K, not Pakistan.
The Indus Waters Treaty is a negotiated one under the auspices of the World Bank. To call India’s share theft is to undermine the treaty. In these water stressed times there are too many voices in this part of the world who would be happy to call it off altogether.
India has never blocked water to Pakistan even in 1965 and 1971.
The Ravi is the border between J&K and Punjab, flowing down from Himachal. Pakistan claims all the waters of Indus including the Hindu Kush tributaries. This is not contested, nor has Pakistan been deprived of the waters of the Chenab and the Jehlum. Your argument therefore does not stand. India has not blocked the flow of the Chenab and the Jehlum. Let us argue on facts not assumptions.
Theft implies criminality. It is an inappropriate word to describe the terms of a treaty fifty years after it was signed by your country. The Upper Bari Doab Canal taking off from the Ravi and irrigating Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts now used earlier to flow into Pakistan. Its diversion to Indian North Punjab was part of the IWT under which Pakistan received World Bank aid to build its own dams and canals. It was perfectly legitimate and equitable.