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Monday Interview
- Indo-Nepal Mahakali Treaty has not been properly ratified
NOV 29 - 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. Pranab Kharel and Biswas Baral met Dipak Gyawali, 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.
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