Zafri Mudasser Nofil
As a lower riparian state with considerable established user rights to the waters of the Brahmaputra, India is quite concerned over China’s decision to construct three more dams on the river in Tibet as there is a threat due to any activity in upstream areas.
In January, the Chinese cabinet approved a document which mentioned that three dams will be built at Dagu, Jiacha and Jiexu on Brahmaputra. The document was related to listing of projects to be completed in China’s 12th five year plan.
China has already been building a 510 MW dam at Zangmu and one of these three proposed dams is said to bigger than this. The Zangmu dam, said to measure over 100 m, would supply water to China’s dry regions in the north, but starve Assam and neighbouring Bangladesh of water in the summer months, argue experts.
The move has come much to the disquiet of India and there has been no exchange of information in this regard prior to the decision. Beijing’s decision also comes at a time when India- China relations have improved considerably in all areas of cooperation and the two countries held lengthy round of the bilateral exchanges during National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s recent visit with his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo. India has conveyed its views and concerns at the highest levels of the Chinese government and has urged its neighbour to ensure that the interests of downstream states are not harmed by any activities in upstream areas.
All this time, China has been maintaining that its move to build three more dams will not affect the flows to downstream areas.
“China has always taken a responsible attitude towards cross-border river development. China and India are maintaining communication and cooperation on the cross-border river issue,” according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying.
“We fully considered the impact of the downstream region. The planned power stations will not affect the flood control or disaster reduction efforts as well as ecological environment of lower reaches.”
Hua did not specify whether the two countries are in communication regarding the new dams which it proposes to build by 2015. China has not officially communicated to India about the three dams even though top officials of the two countries held high level talks on a host of bilateral issues.
India and China have an agreement on sharing the data of the Brahmaputra waters but do not have any treaty similar to India and Pakistan on sharing the river waters. Indian officials maintain that the water flows by and large remained the same in recent years. While India has the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan under which the two countries share information and cooperate on the matter, the Ganges Treaty with Bangladesh establishes a 30- year water-sharing arrangement and recognises the neighbouring country’s rights as a lower-level riparian.
With an average altitude of 4,500 m, Brahmaputra, called Yarlung Tsanpo in Tibet, is the world’s highest river. It is the principal arm of the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra system. It originates from Kanglung kang glacier east of Manas–Sarovar at an elevation of 5150 m and traverses 1625 km in Tibet, 918 km in India (278 km in Arunachal Pradesh and 640 km in Assam) and 363 km in Bangladesh.
The Brahmaputra basin extends over an area of 5,80,000 sq km, out of which 2,93,000 sq km is in Tibet, 2,40,000 sq km in India and Bhutan and 47,000 sq km in Bangladesh.
According to UN data, the Brahmaputra’s annual cross-border runoff volume is greater than the combined flow of three rivers that run from Tibet into south-east Asia – Mekong, Salween and Irrawaddy.
Assam, whose economy is very much dependent on the Brahmaputra, is apprehensive that the dams might affect the state. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has requested Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take up the issue with China saying the entire economy of Assam and the northeast is dependent on the Brahmaputra and the construction of the dams in the upstream of the river might affect the interest of the region in downstream areas.
Neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh has also drawn the attention of the Centre for steps to neutralise the impact of three dams proposed to be built by China.
“We have no objection to China building dams but the life of the people which sustain on the flow of Brahmaputra since ages should not be affected by the dams,” says Arunachal Pradesh Water Resources Development Minister Newlai Tingkhatra.
In view of this development, India has decided to press China to have either a water commission or an inter-governmental dialogue or a treaty to deal with water issues between the two countries.
Following the Chinese move, a high-level interministerial committee, comprising officials from External Affairs Ministry, Defence Ministry and Department of Space among others take stock of the situation and decided to take up the issue with China.
The issue was once again taken up when a senior Chinese embassy official met MEA officials recently to give details on the construction proposal. Besides India raising the construction of dams on the Brahmaputra in talks with the Chinese leadership, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia had expressed similar concerns over eight dams being built by Chinese on Mekong river.
According to Brahma Chellaney, an international-affairs geostrategist and author of nine books including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground”, China’s decision to build new dams is set to roil inter-riparian relations in Asia and make it more difficult to establish rules-based water cooperation and sharing. The long-term implications for India are particularly stark because several major rivers flow south from Tibet.
“China’s dam programme is following a wellestablished pattern on international rivers: build modest-size dams on a river’s difficult uppermost reaches, then construct larger dams in the uppermiddle sections as the river picks up greater water and momentum, before embarking on mega-dams in the border area facing another country.
China already has a dozen dams in the Brahmaputra basin and one each on the Indus and the Sutlej. It is close to completing one dam and has just cleared work on three others on the Brahmaputra.
Two more are planned in this cascade before the dam-building moves to the water-rich border segment as the river makes a U-turn to enter India,” he wrote in a newspaper column.
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