Agreements & MOUs - The Ganga: Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent - page 183

if constructed, would pass through seismically vulnerable areas and be a danger for
India. Besides, construction of 83 reservoirs along the entire northern territory of
India would make the whole of India and Bangladesh geo-technically and seismi-
cally unstable. India, therefore, maintained that Bangladesh proposal upheld only
its own interests, ignoring the safety aspects for India and Nepal, not to speak of
development of their water resources.
The Two Proposals in prism
The 1977 Agreement, signed between the two countries on sharing the Ganga water
at Farakka, was in three parts.
1) Arrangements for sharing of the Ganga water at Farakka;
2) Long-term arrangement;
3) Review and duration.
The second MOU was signed on 22 nd November 1985 between Rajiv Gandhi,
the then Prime Minister of India and President H. M. Ershad of Bangladesh, during
their meeting at Nassau, Bahamas. They recognized the gravity of the problem of
inadequate flow in dry season and sharing it for mutual benefit as well as long-term
solution for augmentation of the flow. They agreed to sign another MOU for three
years, commencing from the dry season of 1986 on the same terms as of 1982. The
Joint Committee of Experts (JCE), comprising Secretaries of the two governments
and two engineering members of the commission from each side would study the
schemes and identify alternatives of water sharing. This effort also came to naught
and the tenure of the MOU expired after the dry season of 1988. The minutes of the
two meetings are given in Appendix E.
It is clear that both sides were adamant and rigid about respective schemes and
did not come to a compromise. The technocrats were hopeful about the success of
their schemes and took a rigid and pessimistic view of the scheme of the other coun-
try. India contended that available water in the Ganga basin would be just sufficient
for her future needs, while the quantum of available water, estimated by India for
her future requirement, was unacceptable to Bangladesh; this quantum did not tally
with that in Bangladesh's estimate. Dhaka did not agree with India's view that the
Ganga basin would not have adequate water to meet local needs and for augmenting
flows in the dry season. The assessment of water availability and its requirement, as
assessed by the two countries, are given in Table 10.8.
Table 10.8 shows that there was wide variation in the estimates of demand and
storage capacity, put forward by two countries. The units of water measurement,
adopted by them, were also different.
Ben Crow in his topic 'Sharing the Ganges' has mentioned that the Indian pro-
posal was a carefully written, well-reasoned document, longer and more detailed
than its Bangladesh counterpart and has been discussed in three parts. The proposal
outlined the context in which India wished the augmenting of the Ganges flow to be