Turmoil Over Water Diversion - The Ganga: Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent - page 139

water could have reduced the flood havoc in the Brahmaputra basin and increase the
irrigation potential in the arid regions of Assam and Bangladesh.
Widespread flood in the Ganga and the Brahmaputra basins are quite normal.
About 5% of the areas within the Ganga and the Brahmaputra basins in India are
flooded. In Bangladesh, more than 36% area normally goes in spate following spills
in the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, every year. The most devastating floods occurred
in 1986 and 1988 in Bangladesh. Almost the entire length of the rivers and their
tributaries pass through the plains of both countries, making it virtually impossi-
ble to construct any big storage reservoir within the landform except perhaps in
the hilly regions, encroaching on the territories of Nepal and Bhutan. Moreover,
the Himalayan hills, formed by recent geological deposits, are fragile and unstable
and prone to seismic and other geological problems. In spite of this, some reser-
voirs have already been built across some tributaries of the Ganga by India but the
cumulative capacity is insignificant, hardly about 10% of the total volume, which
is released in the lean season. Any big storage dam in the hilly region will, there-
fore, invite innumerable problems for India, Nepal and Bhutan. But the Brahmaputra
has remained untapped so far. The entire flow of the river passes through the state
of Assam and then enters Bangladesh with devastations every year. According to
the country's own report the estimated excess design flood-flow of the country is
about 239 million acre feet, of which local rainfall contributes about 32 million acre
feet of water. The World Bank is of the view that Bangladesh needs outside help
to mitigate incidence of flood. Seen in this context, India's proposal of linking the
Brahmaputra with the Ganga for augmentation of flow was more judicious and fea-
sible than Bangladesh's idea of constructing storage reservoirs in the hilly regions.
Since the lean-season discharge of the Ganga has fallen from 55,000 cusecs in 1950
to less than 40,000 cusecs in 1995 and as the major catchment area of the Ganga
falls within Indian States of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, it was very difficult for the
Government of India to embargo abstraction of water from the Ganga by these two
States for irrigation and other purposes.
In spite of these facts and circumstances, the augmentation proposal of India
was not accepted by Bangladesh, nor did India accept the proposal of Bangladesh.
As a result, the JRC meetings used to be sharply divided. Sometimes, they were
deadlocked on specific issues, like exchange of data. Though India gave all rele-
vant records on the Ganga, Bangladesh refused to give any about the Brahmaputra.
Formulation of any water augmentation scheme of the Ganga needs data of the
total quantum of flow against probable total requirement of the two countries
but Bangladesh did not comply; hence the bottleneck continued. Prime Minister
Mujibur Rahaman, though initially reluctant, ultimately agreed to give all informa-
tion about the Brahmaputra to India and accordingly, instructed his officials, but this
could not materialize in his life-time, up to July 1975.
President Mujibur Rahaman was assassinated on 15th August 1975 by the coun-
try's army officers, when India was observing its 29th Independence Day. Many
Indians who were associated, directly or indirectly, with the diversion of the Ganga
water through the feeder canal at Farakka felt that he had to give his life for let-
ting India continue the construction of the barrage at Farakka and for allowing