NEPAL-POLITICS: Another Row over River Sharing with India

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Suman Pradhan

KATHMANDU, Sep 23 1996 (IPS) - South Asia’s rivers of discord are again churning up ill will against regional giant India with protests in the small Himalayan kingdom of Nepal against the ratification of a water sharing accord with New Delhi.

Opponents of the Mahakali River treaty which was endorsed by the Nepal Parliament late last week after a prolonged and acrimonious debate both within and outside the House, are accusing Premier Sher Bahadur Deuba’s year-old coalition of a sell-out.

Though the accord on jointly developing the Mahakali which flows along the Nepal-India border in the West and which was signed during Deuba’s visit to India in February, won overwhelming support from the lawmakers, discontent is still simmering.

Like India’s eastern neighbour Bangladesh, Nepal views New Delhi with suspicion when it comes to sharing the region’s abundant water resources, a key factor in Nepali politics over the past four decades.

“What happened in parliament just goes to show that this Treaty has not been fully digested by the Nepali people,” says opposition lawmaker Chandra Prakash Mainali, one of the few who abstained during the vote. “People are still suspicious of Indian motives,” he adds.

It was this suspicion that almost wrecked the Treaty for the Integrated Development of Mahakali River finalised during the January visit of then Indian Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee. The accord, then backed by the main opposition left parties, was later signed in New Delhi by Prime Minister Deuba and then Indian Premier P.V. Narasimha Rao.

Despite the ratification, even ruling party members are not sure. “I am hopeful that some provisions in the Treaty, specially those related to sharing of water for irrigation, will be amended to Nepal’s benefit,” says Shailaja Acharya, vice president of the ruling Nepali Congress.

“This will ensure that the Treaty will not be implemented as it is but only after the necessary corrections which I too believe are needed,” she points out.

After the vote, Premier Deuba announced that the Treaty would be sent to a joint parliamentary committee for minor modifications.

Under the Treaty, India will get a large share of the electricity from a 315-metre-high dam to be built at an estimated cost of more than six billion dollars and 300 cusecs of water from an existing barrage during the dry months. India will also build 22 bridges across the river along the Mahakali-Kohalpur highway in Nepal.

The political passions aroused over the Treaty had almost brought Premier Deuba’s government to the verge of its first major defeat at the hands of the left opposition.

It was vehemently opposed at first by the former ruling Communist Party of Nepal, United Marxist-Leninist (UML) and its extreme left allies who alleged that the Treaty gave more benefits to India than to Nepal. The Deuba government was charged with trying to rope in India’s communist parties to persuade their Nepali counterparts.

The Communists had declared they would defeat the treaty if it was tabled in the House without changes. Under Nepal’s constitution, the accord had to be approved by at least a two- thirds parliamentary majority.

However, in the end, the opposition changed its mind and the government got more than the mandatory support with only eight of the 228 lawmakers who voted on the motion, rejecting it. These included three UML lawmakers who crossed the floor by defying the party whip to vote for the motion. They were joined by five legislators from radical left groups. But 28 UML legislators abstained in defiance of the party leadership.

The row over the Mahakali follows that over two earlier accords with India — the 1954 Koshi Treaty to control floods in the north Indian river plain and the Gandak Irrigation Treaty of 1959. Both these were assailed by nationalists here as a surrender to Indian interests.

Suspicions against Indian motives were fuelled again in 1991 when then Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, initialled the Tanakpur Treaty during a visit to New Delhi.

As before, critics of the Mahakali accord argue that India will cheat Nepal by siphoning off much of the benefits.

During parliamentary debates, leaders like Mainali and the ailing UML president and former Premier Manmohan Adhikari had urged the government to seek concessions on a range of outstanding bilateral issues with India before ratifying the Treaty.

These include New Delhi’s mediation to help send back tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and a land corridor to give landlocked Nepal’s foreign trade direct access to Bangladeshi ports.

They also demanded corrections in the language of the Treaty which they said was vaguely worded to give India ample opportunity to extract the maximum benefit.

The accord has also been criticised for not learning from Nepal’s experience with big dams. “We see problems in this kind of development”, says water expert Ajay Dixit who has campaigned against big dams.

“The Treaty is now legally binding, but it is still illegitimate. We foresee another 20 years of struggle against this project because this is bad economics,” he adds.

Last year, Nepal had to abandon the much smaller 201 MW Arun-III project when the World Bank announced its decision to pull out of the scheme.