Agreements & MOUs - The Ganga: Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent - page 194

was busy tackling them. The Ganga returned to focus after 1988. The old-liners
blamed India and the Farakka Barrage Authority in particular for releasing all waters
from the reservoir and for creating flood havoc in Bangladesh.
Even senior politicians and government officials pursued this line of thinking,
ignoring the functions of a barrage and its difference from a dam. Even engineers
who should know better said in a chorus that complete flood control lay not with
Bangladesh alone but with the region too with cooperation of India and Nepal. A
French consortium, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the
World Bank disagreed with them and advised building embankments on the Ganga
and the Brahmaputra along most of their courses to prevent floods, as far as possible
and to train people to live with them, as they have been used to. The UNDP recom-
mended zoning of flood-prone plains, adopting judicious protection measures and
controlled flooding in some areas as well as river training.
Discussion on flood-control measures with India continued without any effective
solution. The agreement of 1985 expired after the dry season of 1988. The tenure of
the JCE also expired in November of 1985 and was not extended. The new line of
thinking on augmentation and dialogue on other river development issues between
the two countries did not also go further.
Developments between 1988 and 1996
There had been no agreement between India and Bangladesh on lean-season sharing
of the Ganga water at Farakka after 1988. Even the issue of water-sharing of all
common rivers between the two countries got no further momentum because of
rigidity in their approaches.
In end-1989, President Ershad visited Nepal and China and discussed the water-
sharing and augmentation issue with their heads of governments but he could not
make any headway either. The political situation in India and Bangladesh had also
changed. Through a general election in 1989, Viswanath Pratap Singh of the Janata
Party became India's Prime Minister after Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. Mr. Gandhi
was killed by a suicide bomber of the LTTE during his election campaign near
Chennai. President Ershad was also overthrown in December 1990 by Begum
Khaleda Zia who later became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Efforts made by
the heads of two Governments to solve the issues were stalled again. The Joint
Rivers Commission resumed the dialogues on the issues after years of gap.
In May 1991 election in India, P. V. Narasimha Rao of the Congress party became
India's prime Minister. He and Begum Zia met in New Delhi and agreed to forge a
comprehensive and permanent plan on developing water resources within a speci-
fied period but without exacerbating political problems in either country. In August
1991, foreign ministers of two countries met in New Delhi and discussed long-
term solutions. India proposed a package on the line of the Indus Treaty, involving
the Ganga, the Brahmaputra, the Meghna and the Teesta. It included use of the
Brahmaputra and the Meghna waters and constructing barrages across the Ganga
and the Brahmaputra, but as before, Bangladesh did not agree.