Thursday, September 19, 2013

Speech of Mr. Sharat Sabharwal, the honorable Indian Ambassador, about the Indus Water Treaty: Post # 49


Issues Associated with Indus Water Treaty


This presentation of H.E. Mr. Sharat Sabharwal (3rd April 2010, updated in December 2012) reminded me a presentation by another famous Indian personality, Mr. Chandra Baboo Naido, in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in 1999.   The then Chief Minister gave all the details of  on-going participatory irrigation management project in his state in such as way as if he himself were the executive engineer or an immediate person in-charge of the project. 
Just look at the data provided and complaints refuted by Mr. Sabharwal in a professional manner. Let us hope that our top guns do fire once in their life time to take the case, issue by issue, and counter such claims. I can bet that nothing such sort of anything is going to happen at official level at all as “the wet water of rivers is too dry for them.”

We will be mistaken that the H.E. Sabharwal was doing a nice and diplomatic job to remove misunderstanding on the part of Pakistan; but no, quite the contrary, this was a far deeper move than we could imagine. We can only guess and I'll share my guess about this move at the end of this post.

I do agree 100% that fault lies squarely on our part. We are the modern “Shaikh Chillies” of the 21st century. We have developed a habit of living on mere rhetoric, the blame games, right or wrong, but incapable of doing anything like taking proactive measures as suggested by many knowledgeable persons of Pakistan.  We lack political will, guts and courage to lead and tell people straight what they really need to do something meaningful fast if they don't want to have the current irrigated agriculture converted into a rain-fed agriculture as a dominant feature of our future agriculture. 

In a country where newspapers refuse to print an article that draws attention towards the lack of water storage capacity, even after a clear statement of
 setting aside the proposal of Kalabagh Dam till a consensus is achieved, it is difficult to hope for a change to take place soon. Let me come out of an ostrich syndrome and say openly: “if we do not agree for building water storage facilities, we'll have to have either a  paradigm shift in the foundation of our economy to survive like Dubai or be ready to become another desert-land.” If our great leaders hiding in their respective comfort zones can't make use of the great resources of water available, I am not sure if they can even dream to make Pakistan either California of Asia or a new Dubai.

Frankly, we can't expect anything extra-ordinary from India as stated by a friendly professional scholar like John Briscoe. It will be foolish to expect good gestures from a hostile country, period. My question is that what are we doing proactively to meet the looming crisis at the national and provincial levels? The only answer is: Nothing. 

Most of the mismanagement of water occurs at provincial level; have we ever tried to hold accountable those entities that are responsible to manage water at provincial level? As long as Patwaris, technical and revenue officials of irrigation departments are required to do the dirty laundry of the top guns, nothing can happen in the political landscape of Pakistan. 

At the national level, obviously, we have decided to commit collective suicide. There is no single person or party who can lead from the front in the choice area; all are being lead by the masses of different regions on emotional & wrong information. Where technical matters are vetoed in provincial assemblies, how can you beat the revenge of democracy of Pakistani style?

Let me say in an honest way; our total amount from the three western rivers is NOT consumed by India by diverting the water from three western rivers to three eastern rivers. To some extent, India can do so by having tunnel of few kilometers from the Chenab River to the Ravi. However, even with this demonstrated capability in case of the Kishan-Ganga Hydro-electric Project, she has not done so and she would not do so in the future either, if some level of sanity prevails. What India has acquired, as a matter of fact, is the capacity to change the flow in time or timing of the river flows. 

We must need to remain vigilant about Indian designs and take appropriate actions in time as per the Indus Water Treaty. However, we need to do homework on our part that we have failed miserably to plan and execute so far. Our big guns have got only limited vision confined to repair Marala, Balloke, Jinnah barrage, etc; they are obvious and routine requirements, something that is not being done is to create capacity within provinces to accept any and every challenge that India can throw
 towards us. 

If provinces can't agree & develop consensus to this storage required because of an utter and unfair distribution of water by the decedents of the Mughals as well as an extremely skewed seasonal river flows, we should recognize this insecurity and try to overcome this road-block using alternative like letting provinces to start working on cascades of water banks to store their respective due shares as per the Water Apportionment Accord of 1991.

There is another problem on our part; if new ideas are offered; there are people who take routine &  familiar position to prove that how such alternatives can't be undertaken instead of trying to think the ways and means to make them happen. Recently, I circulated a paper on the root-causes of our water crisis; my other learned colleagues have to come forward to propose even better alternative solutions or support the ideas presented to let them become reality on ground.

 As a matter of fact, we can even benefit from the 48 dams that India has built (the number will keep increase
), if we do our homework right and get arbitration or through bilateral negotiations to seek schedule of emptying and filling of the dams that does not hurt our needs or interests. In principle, India may not oppose the idea but unless it is guaranteed in black in white, uncertainty will prevail.

At the end, let me guess the game plan of H.E. Mr. Sabharwal; I think that India has initiated a project to bring the international community to make Pakistan renegotiate the Indus water Treaty to claim the part of the water that goes to the sea as he the ambassador drew our attention to the difference between 38 -39 MAF  and  8-9 MAF below the Kotri Barrage as identified by a technical consultancy report. 

If India can build 48 dams on the western rivers with more to come on board and we are still debating or threatening to endanger the federation if dams are built; there is lot more for us to lose than just the federation. We have to come out of the famous ostrich syndrome for keeping the Indus Basin green and to show our determination not to let it become another great desert.

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