New Delhi, September 14
Nepal is likely to ‘drop’ the proposed multipurpose high dam project on the Kosi river which creates a flood havoc every year in the Himalayan state and Bihar, and demand a review of a treaty signed between the two countries in 1954 for the management of water resources.

The issue will figure prominently between Indian leaders’ meeting with Nepal’s Maoist-led government’s newly elected Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, who arrived here on Sunday evening on a five-day visit.

India is keen to build the dam. “We will try to persuade Prachanda to go for an overall review rather than scrap the dam project,” a senior official of the water resources ministry said.

Prachanda last month blamed the Kosi Treaty for the floods crisis, terming it as a “historic blunder.”

Nepal has accused India of “poor maintenance” of Kosi embankments. A breach in an embankment caused floods in the Kosi, which is also known as ‘the river of sorrow.’

Ahead of his first visit to India as Prime Minister, Prachanda on Saturday made it clear that he would discuss the review of the Kosi Treaty.

The Kosi river is called Sapta Koshi or Koshi in Nepal. A trans-boundary river between Nepal and India, it is one of the largest tributaries of the Ganga.

The Kosi is also called the “River of Sorrow” as floods every year leave a trail of destruction in Nepal as well as in Bihar, affecting lakhs of people, mostly on the Indian side.

The Tribune on September 7 and 8 carried detailed special reports on the Kosi Treaty, embankment’s breach and opinion of Indian and Nepalese experts.

After introduction of democracy in Nepal in 1951, New Delhi signed the Kosi Treaty with Kathmandu in 1954, during the tenure of its first elected Nepalese Prime Minister BP Koirala, elder brother of Nepali Congress leader and former Premier GP Koirala.

The Communist Party of Nepal-UML (CPN-UML), the party supporting the Maoist-led coalition government in Nepal, has already sought a quick review of the 1954 river treaty with India, and demanded compensation from New Delhi for the flood victims in the Himalayan state.

Nepal and India have for long been talking about speeding up the process to construct what could be world's highest dam on the Sapta Koshi in eastern Nepal.

A team of experts from both countries have worked on a feasibility study of the
Sapta Koshi multipurpose project. India in 2004 allocated Rs 290 million for the
project report.

India showed eagerness to carry out Kosi multipurpose project during Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh's visit to areas in Bihar in 2004 affected by the monsoon floods.

Then, he had announced that the UPA government would urgently start work to develop the Kosi dam.

“The high dam in Koshi is the only solution to floods in Bihar,” Dr Singh had said. He was then also quoted by the media as saying: “India, with cooperation from Nepal, would develop a high dam in Nepal to protect people in Bihar from the routinely occurring natural disasters.”

Over the last 250 years, the Kosi has shifted over 120 km, from East to West. The unstable nature of the Kosi — one of the world’s most violent river — is attributed to the heavy silt which it carries during the monsoon season.

India has been talking to Nepal about several projects — Karnali, Pancheswar, Sapta Kosi — for decades. Nothing has happened because of the complexities of the India-Nepal relations.

Indian experts on water resources are of the opinion that a comprehensive review of India-Nepal relations is necessary and inevitable.

“Now that there is a new government in Nepal. I think India should not keep talking about a special relationship, but should aim at a more low-key one-friendly, correct and not too close,” one of them said, wishing not to be named.

Nepal and India agreed in 1997 to set up a joint technical team of experts to carry out a study on the feasibility of developing the Koshi Dam 269 to 335 metres high.

If constructed, it was believed then that it could match the height of the one of the world's highest dam - the Rogun Dam on the Vakhsh River in Tajikistan (1,099 ft).

The mega project is expected to generate 5,500 mw of electricity. The irrigation system, under the proposed Kosi project, will water 300,000 hectares of agricultural land in Nepal and more than that area in Bihar.

A 165 km-long waterway from Nepal's Chatara in eastern Nepal, where the Kosi river flows out from the hills to enter the southern plains, to the Kolkata port is another vision for the project.

Nepal has been proposing a Sun-Koshi-Kalala diversion. This diversion will bring Sun Koshi river water through a canal into the Kamala River in central Nepal.

The Sapta Koshi is the largest river in Nepal, with an average 150,000 cubic centimeter per second of water flow in the dry season.

Proponents of the project hold that Nepal would reap tremendous economic benefits from it. Bihar also stands to reap tremendous flood control and other economic benefits from the project.

However, Nepali experts do not agree. “Bihar is flooded every year not because of monsoon rains in Nepal. Actually, it is the mismanagement of the natural drainage systems in Bihar which is causing the problem,” they point out.

Some experts in Nepal are against the massive dam. “The proposed high dam will be built in a seismic fault zone in the southern flank of the Himalayan range. Constructing a dam more than 300 metres high in this area is to invite destruction,” geologist Ramesh Sharma says.

“One can imagine what would happen if the dam is brought down by the jolt of an earthquake. Flow of millions of cubic meters of water per second will devastate a huge area in Nepal and in India,” Sharma warns.

The issue of human displacement is another problem. According to preliminary estimates, hundreds of villages and several thousands of people in Nepal will have to be displaced to make way for the project.

Loss of agricultural land and biodiversity caused by inundation is another issue. Nepali experts are against the proposed Kosi high dam not just on environmental grounds. They are skeptical that the long-conceived project will ever take off.

"I am not optimistic that the Koshi high dam would ever be constructed. It seems that Nepal is handing control over its huge water resources to India. Once we, in the name of joint venture, give all rights over Sapta Koshi to India, Nepal will not be able to develop any project in any of the major tributaries of this river," Nepalese political analyst KB Pradhanang some time back said.

Bihar water resources development department engineers are unanimous that the state is destined to face the disaster year after year unless high dams are constructed in the upper reaches of at least three rivers - Kosi, Kamla and Bagmati - all originating from Nepal.

Prachanda’s views will now determine whether Nepal will accept India’s suggestion for a high dam at the Kosi.

Ironically, Bihar, though at the receiving end of flood fury, has no role to play in the politics between New Delhi and Kathmandu.