Kofi Annan goes to Punjab

Facetious as the headline of this column may sound, it remains true that the abrogation of the 1981 water treaty by the Punjab government has the potential to open up even the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan and, Annexure G, which covers arbitration between the two countries, says the chairman of the arbitration panel has to be nominated by either the UN Secretary General or the President of the World Bank—so it’s either Kofi Annan or James Wolfensohn!

The engineering member has to be nominated by either the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US or the Rector of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in the UK, and the legal member by either the Chief Justice of the US or of the UK. The Punjab action also opens up all manner of demands from states like Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, and that’s why leaving the matter to the Supreme Court isn’t going to help.

Under the treaty, Pakistan got to use the western rivers of the Indus, the Jhelum, and the Chenab—India could use these waters in her territory for drinking water, agriculture, and the like. As for hydro-power on these rivers (the existing projects, like Salal on the Chenab, were to operate as they did), India was allowed to construct run-of-the-river projects (as is being done at Dulhasti and Bagalihar on the Chenab) after informing Pakistan, in such a manner that the water flow to Pakistan was not affected.

India was given the use of the eastern rivers of the Sutlej, the Beas and the Ravi, and similar restrictions were put on Pakistan. Since there was relatively small demand in undivided Punjab (parts of which later became Haryana and Himachal Pradesh), India included Rajasthan as part of the Indus basin to justify its demand for the Ravi waters.

So, now that the Punjab government is making the argument that Rajasthan should not get water because it is not a riparian state, Pakistan is well within its rights to ask for a review of the Indus Treaty.

Since being a riparian state is being cited (wrongly) as the sine qua non for whether a state is to get water from one where the river flows, it’s useful to spend some time on this. Indeed, Harwant Singh’s article in Hindustan Times on August 3 is the best defence of Punjab since it argues that while the Madras Presidency was riparian for the Cauvery, Andhra got no share in the river waters when the presidency was carved up. Similarly, while greater Punjab was riparian for the Yamuna, after it was broken up, Punjab has no right over the river while Haryana does. A host of other such examples are provided for those interested. Since this means no state will get water if it doesn’t have a river flowing through it, it needn’t really detain us. Because if this logic is used, Delhi shouldn’t get water (as it will) from Tehri since Delhi is part of the Yamuna basin and not the Ganges basin.

Similarly, it’ll also mean that Haryana shouldn’t get water from the Beas since it isn’t in that basin—yet, Haryana gets water from the Beas at the Pandoh dam in Himachal Pradesh—but should get it only from Bhakra since it is in the Sutlej basin. (It’s a different, though important, matter that even if states like Delhi and Rajasthan are granted more water, from Tehri and the Ravi, they will not be able to access it since they have not invested in building the requisite canals for it!)

In fact, the whole situation is so complex that no court can ever resolve it. The only solution has to be a political one. Ever since talk began on the construction of the Thein dam on the Ravi two decades ago, this has been the focus on various disputes. In fact, since there is no surplus water in the Sutlej, the issue of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link and extra water from Punjab came up only after the Thein construction began.

Rajasthan filed a claim ten years ago asking for its share of Ravi waters and, around this time, Himachal Pradesh filed a suit in the Supreme Court demanding a compensation of Rs 2,400 crore for the fact that it got nothing from the Bhakra Beas project, though the submergence was in its territory.

As per the rules, it has asked for 12 per cent free power of the total generated at Bhakra, a share in the employment at Bhakra, and so on. And now that J&K has been sent a notice by the Supreme Court, it too will come up with its demands since part of the Thein submergence is in its boundaries. While Haryana hasn’t made a formal claim on Thein, it takes its share for granted.

It is due to this extremely complex web that the water portfolio is best handled by a very senior minister, if not the PM himself. The crisis, in fact, is going to get dramatically worse with each passing day for another reason.

With the food procurement policy completely skewed in favour of water-intensive crops like rice, states which had no competitive advantage in growing them (like Punjab) went to it like a moth to a flame, so much so that large parts of Punjab are waterlogged due to excessive use of water.

Addressing this fundamental cause for the water wars, again, is something only the PM can even attempt. This is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s baby and there’s no point his trying to push it away; it’s going to come back. More so since Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has obliquely promised a return to Khalistan if he’s forced to part with water.