O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

From prison to presidency
Pakistan’s democracy throws up Zardari
ASIF ALI ZARDARI’S election as President of Pakistan was a foregone conclusion in view of the party position favouring him. Neither Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, fielded by the Pakistan Muslim League and Mushahid Hussain, who was closely identified with General Pervez Musharraf, had the requisite clout to give him a tough contest. The results, by and large, conform to the strength of the various political parties.

Obama’s charge
Islamabad must not be allowed to misuse US aid
What Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for the US presidency, has said about the misuse of US aid to Pakistan in the name of fighting terrorism cannot be taken lightly. He has stated in the course of a media interview that “they (Pakistan) are using the US aid for preparing for a war against India”. 

Captain’s cross
Let law take its own course
The indictment by a Special House Committee in the Amritsar land deal case has come in as a big embarrassment for former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh at a time when he is trying to stage a political comeback. It is ill-timed for the Congress also because it had planned to use the monsoon session for pinning down the government on it poor performance in flood relief and undemocratic deeds during the panchayat elections.

• Thought for the Day

ARTICLE

Kashmir and idea of India
Valley people need to change their vision
by Arun Kumar
Kashmir is on the boil and itching for “azadi”. Clearly, even if the idea of India was ever present in some rudimentary form in the psyche of the average Kashmiri, it has long since evaporated from their consciousness. Not only during the phase from 1987 to the late nineties, when the movement for separation was strong, but today, after a lull of about a decade, it has become clear that this is indeed so.

MIDDLE

Ethiopia revisited
by Mukund B. Kunte
The Telegraph of London had the following news item which caught my attention: “Mengistu Marium, Ethiopia’s former dictator, was sentenced to death by the country’s Supreme Court for genocide.” That, incidentally, included Emperor Haile Selassie too — when his body was exhumed they found that his every bone had been broken.

OPED

A Tribune Special
Kosi: no lessons learnt
Calamities common in India’s most flood-prone area
by our Roving Editor
Man Mohan
The Indian establishment has refused to learn any lesson from the Kosi calamities in the past and it is the same story this year too, charged Dinesh Kumar Mishra (62), a well known environmentalist and flood expert from Saharsa and an author of several books on the Kosi.

Disaster was waiting to happen
Dipak Gyawali, Nepal’s former Minister for Water Resources and a reputed expert on river management believes that the Kosi floods calamity is “not a natural disaster, but a man-made tragedy.”

A nexus at work
The complete scenario of the racket of river breaches in Bihar has been captured by an author, Indu Bharati, in her report - Fighting the Irrigation Mafia in Bihar. Nepal’s former Water Resources Minister, Dipak Gyawali, has reproduced Bharati’s observations in his book - Water in Nepal/Rivers, Technology and Society.

Chatterati
UPA poll plans
by Devi Cherian
The UPA government has, it seems, finally worked out a plan for the election year. It is set to sell its achievements to the people through a media blitzkrieg. Letters from the Prime Minister are being sent to loan-beneficiary farmers along with booklets for village heads highlighting its achievements, while newspaper advertisements will quiz and reward people on their awareness of Bharat Nirman and other schemes.

EDITORIALS

From prison to presidency
Pakistan’s democracy throws up Zardari

ASIF ALI ZARDARI’S election as President of Pakistan was a foregone conclusion in view of the party position favouring him. Neither Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, fielded by the Pakistan Muslim League and Mushahid Hussain, who was closely identified with General Pervez Musharraf, had the requisite clout to give him a tough contest. The results, by and large, conform to the strength of the various political parties. The most remarkable victory was in his home state Sindh where he swept the polls, denying even a single vote to his two rivals. Overall, the victory is nothing but spectacular for a man who was at one time derided as “Mr Ten Per Cent”.

What transformed his fate - from a prisoner during much of Musharraf’s presidency to his successor - is the violent death of his wife. The Pakistan People’s Party leader did not have much political experience but the way he handled the post-Benazir situation showed how consummate his political skill was. Zardari had his son declared as his wife’s successor while retaining all the power to himself. He managed to have a trusted non-entity as the Prime Minister while giving the impression that he would remain behind the scenes. Few did know that he was inching towards his goal of replacing Musharraf. And finally when he struck at Musharraf, the wily General had no alternative but to quit. In all this, he may have broken promises to his one-time ally Nawaz Sharif but then Pakistani politics has always been a saga of betrayals.

As President, Zardari will have enormous powers, thanks in the main to the accretion in residual powers of the President during Musharraf’s presidency. Though he has benefited from the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people, he has not shown much democratic inclinations in his dealings with both his political rivals and friends. That civilian presidents in Pakistan have not completed their terms is a sad reality. But if his protestations in the past about laying greater emphasis on trade relations with India, rather than harping on the K-issue, are anything to go by, India has a lot to expect from his stewardship of Pakistan, although no one knows how far he will go in strengthening relations with India.

Obama’s charge
Islamabad must not be allowed to misuse US aid

What Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for the US presidency, has said about the misuse of US aid to Pakistan in the name of fighting terrorism cannot be taken lightly. He has stated in the course of a media interview that “they (Pakistan) are using the US aid for preparing for a war against India”. This means Pakistan has been strengthening its military with the help of the US funds it liberally gets for supporting Washington’s drive against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan has been receiving $1 billion a year since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US, but very little has been spent on eliminating the scourge of extremism. That is one reason why the Taliban has re-emerged as a force to be reckoned with not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan’s tribal areas. This is upsetting the American policy-makers, and now Senator Obama.

Senator Obama’s charge is supported by the findings of the US Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO’s report has it that so far the US has supplied at least $6 billion to Pakistan as part of its drive to stamp out terrorism, but there is no proof about where these funds have actually gone. The US aid to Islamabad has been the subject of a heated debate in Pakistan too. PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari has accused former President Pervez Musharraf of not spending the entire $1 billion a year his country has been receiving from the US for fighting Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. If Mr Zardari is to be believed, the Pakistan Army had been getting at the most $300 million for what it did on the terrorism front. The Pakistan government is yet to find out where the rest of the money has been going.

New Delhi has already maintained that Pakistan has used US military assistance against India. But this is the first time a While House aspirant has said so categorically. It is the ultimate responsibility of the US to establish how its aid for a major cause was spent by Pakistan. One hopes the US administration will force Pakistan to unravel the mystery. Surely, the US does not want that Pakistan should continue to use the military assistance for the purposes it is not meant for. May be, the US administration, new or old, will review giving aid to Pakistan.

Captain’s cross
Let law take its own course

The indictment by a Special House Committee in the Amritsar land deal case has come in as a big embarrassment for former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh at a time when he is trying to stage a political comeback. It is ill-timed for the Congress also because it had planned to use the monsoon session for pinning down the government on it poor performance in flood relief and undemocratic deeds during the panchayat elections. The focus will now willy-nilly shift to the indictment issue. The nine-member committee constituted by the Speaker on January 11 this year has squarely blamed Capt Amarinder Singh, his two cronies, Chaudhary Jagjit Singh and the late Raghunath Sahai Puri, and the then Chairman of the Amritsar Improvement Trust and MLA Jugal Kishore Sharma of corruption and misuse of office.

The nine-member committee had four members from the ruling SAD, two from its ally BJP and three from the opposition Congress. The three Congress MLAs have expressed dissent on the committee’s recommendation. To make sure that the committee report is not seen as politically partisan, it is imperative that a judicial enquiry is held into the allegations. Only when the law takes its due course will the serious charges levelled against Captain Amarinder Singh and others will hold water.

Then there are also procedural matters to contend with. The Congress has vehemently challenged the competence of the present Assembly to raise an issue that had already been decided by the previous assembly and has even quoted a 2002 Supreme Court judgement in this regard. All these legal matters will again have to be decided by judicial experts. The matter is also pending before the High Court. It should be settled without any kind of friction between the legislature and the judiciary. 

Thought for the Day

Victory has a hundred fathers, but no one wants to recognise defeat as his own. 
— Count Galeazzo Clano

ARTICLE

Kashmir and idea of India
Valley people need to change their vision
by Arun Kumar

Kashmir is on the boil and itching for “azadi”. Clearly, even if the idea of India was ever present in some rudimentary form in the psyche of the average Kashmiri, it has long since evaporated from their consciousness. Not only during the phase from 1987 to the late nineties, when the movement for separation was strong, but today, after a lull of about a decade, it has become clear that this is indeed so.

What to a non-Kashmiri is a non-issue has become the emotive trigger for the fresh expression of the Kashmiri’s alienation from the idea of India. The issue underlying the demand for “azadi” (from India) can hardly be the transfer of 100 acres of forest land to the Amarnath Shrine Board. After all, the land was allotted to a board headed by the Governor, who is the head of the state, even if he is seen as an imposition of Delhi.

It was in no sense being alienated from the state. It was also not the case that it was being colonised in any permanent sense by non-Kashmiris. It was only to be a kind of assistance to the Amarnath yatris (no one is as yet asking for the stoppage of the yatra) and was most likely to be manned entirely by the local people rather than people from outside the state. Further, this area was anyway being used for the yatra and no new activity was proposed.

The event triggered a deep-seated fear/suspicion in the Kashmiri mind. This is because the average citizen of the valley has not accepted or understood what India is about. Even though a part of the blame has to be borne by the Kashmiris themselves, the major part of it has to be that of the people in the rest of the country, especially the Indian government.

Instead of providing the much-needed healing touch so that the idea of India could seep into the valley, the country’s rulers have played politics. A short-term view has been taken. More recently, while the problem was brewing, the Centre was busy getting the Indo-US nuclear deal operationalised, to the exclusion of everything else.

Of course, there has been interference from Pakistan, encouraged by the US and China. This has kept things on the boil, but it was for New Delhi to devise a strategy to counter these aspects of geo-politics. New Delhi has failed in doing so due to its narrow focus.

The leadership in Kashmir has been manipulated rather than allowed to naturally develop along democratic lines. The state has for long been ruled with the help of the Army.

Some have recently appealed to let Kashmir go because that is what the Kashmiris want. Spoken like a true democrat or a tired fighter? But what if that strikes at the root of the idea of India. It may lead to terrible communal clashes. This is not idle speculation because there is no clean slate to write on.

Today, Hindutva forces and Islamic fundamentalists are active over large swaths of the country. They are waiting to take advantage of the situation to their own political benefit and will play politics with the “idea of independence” for the Kashmir valley. If Kashmir gains independence it will only be the valley, given the ground reality, and this could lead to blood-letting all around because the idea of India would be further damaged.

Secular leaders of India realised that all communities need to live in harmony in a multi-community society like ours. Nehru believed that majority communalism is more dangerous than minority communalism and, therefore, there has been a constant appeasement of the Muslim political leadership and its elite. The mistake has been that there has been little trickle-down to the Muslim masses who have been perhaps kept backward by the elite as a bargaining chip with the rest of the communities in India’s vote bank politics of MAJGAR.

It has been a failure of our short-termist leadership that the socio-economic conditions of the Muslims have hardly changed over the long run; statespersonship has been lacking. It has strived to maintain itself in power by any means. The idea of “India is Indira and Indira is India” pervaded the early seventies and led to the domination of the interest of a few over the national interest. While Indira Gandhi withstood the US pressure over Bangladesh, for the sake of internal consolidation of power she subverted democracy through the Emergency, let the situation in Punjab aggravate and later this happened in Kashmir too — all for narrow ends. The idea of India was diluted.

The people of South Asia have a common destiny. They are in the most backward part of the world and need peace to develop. It was the vision of the national movement which drew inspiration from all parts of the country and from all communities, and this contributed to its success. So, India was set up as a secular entity and the pressure of the creation of Pakistan did not sway the leadership to go for a Hindu rashtra.

Much has changed since. It is not just Muslims who have a grievance against the Indian state, but all the deprived sections of the population — the Dalits, the backward castes, etc.

The Indian ruling elite is responsible for this since it slowly lost faith in the idea of India, especially since the sixties. It has indulged in corruption on a large scale which has led to the failure of policies and to the erosion of the idea of collective good. Today, globalisation means maximising one’s gains, and devil may take the hindmost. People all over the country are struggling against these policies while the elite is concentrating power in its hands to deal with them.

Yet, the idea of India is a powerful one for all regions and communities of the country and it needs to be strengthened rather than weakened as is the case today. Even if the elite is committing hara-kiri, the common people (whether in Kashmir or in Gujarat) need this idea for their own sake and cannot abandon it.

Kashmiris need to become a part of a wider national democratic upsurge rather than reacting to the wrong policies of both the ruling elite of the country and the Kashmiri leadership. Much of the Kashmiri leadership has been compromised by the intelligence agencies of either India or Pakistan or the US (or some combination) and hardly represents the true interest of the Kashmiris.

Independence is a powerful idea, but an independent Kashmir will have to trade with the very same nation that it would separate from. Indo-Pak trade is important for both nations and used to take place through the mid-east till recently, to the detriment of both. This suggests that closer relations based on secular ideas remain important. Today nations, especially the smaller ones, are coming together in trade agreements to enhance their well-being and Europe is even trying closer political integration.

In brief, the people of Kashmir need to change their vision just as the country needs a better leadership than it has had over the last four decades. Democracy should get deepened to strengthen the idea of India, which remains as powerful as ever.

MIDDLE

Ethiopia revisited
by Mukund B. Kunte

The Telegraph of London had the following news item which caught my attention: “Mengistu Marium, Ethiopia’s former dictator, was sentenced to death by the country’s Supreme Court for genocide.” That, incidentally, included Emperor Haile Selassie too — when his body was exhumed they found that his every bone had been broken.

It leads me on to the Ethiopia I knew. In January 1968, Emperor Haile Selassie was on the throne in Adis Ababa and he had hosted an International Naval Review in the Red Sea port of Massawa to coincide with the birthday of his grandson. Commander Prince Alexander Desta had been trained in the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1952 a year after I had left that splendid institution. In Massawa, I was onboard our training frigate INS Tir which was invited along with ships from the navies of US, UK and France.

The ceremonial was as usual grand but I recall two events most vividly. First, the visit to our ship of His Exalted Highness. He wanted to personally return the call of my C.O. Rash Behari Mukherjee. The drill laid down is, that as the motorcade approaches the ship, a 31-gun salute would be fired with the last salvo coinciding with the unfurling of the royal standard from the ship’s masthead just as the VIP was stepping on the Quarterdeck to receive the salute from the guard of honour.

Well, we were advised to modify the drill and finish the gun salute when the motorcade was a mile away, as HEH was well advanced in age. That was achieved easily enough and all went well, thank God, with no apparent damage to royal eardrums!

The second event was the parade. Resounding cheers were drawn by the Indian contingent at the marchpast. Not surprising, because we had fielded cadets of the 33rd Course who were freshly out of the NDA and their immaculate marching was easily the best.

But the real reason I write this piece is because around the time of the revolution in Ethiopia, I and my wife had played tennis in the Delhi Gymkhana club with their Ambassador, as many of our members must have done. Those were the days when heads of several missions, among them the US, Belgium, Egypt, Poland, France, Chile and even Pakistan, along with the unforgettable Mr Octavio Quatrochi, were club members who could be regularly seen on our magnificent grass courts.

High Commissioner Humayun Khan was more than just club standard and O.Q. was charm personified with his habit of kissing the hand of his mixed-doubles partner before beginning the game!

Then, one day in 1975, the Ethiopian Ambassador just vanished because I suppose he was on the wrong side. It may be recalled, that the 17-year old rule of the military Junta started with Prince Desta being beheaded and it included war with Eritrea, a famine, purges and killing of people with impunity. So finally, just deserts seem to have been dished out.

OPED

A Tribune Special
Kosi: no lessons learnt
Calamities common in India’s most flood-prone area
by our Roving Editor
Man Mohan

Dinesh Kumar Mishra

The Indian establishment has refused to learn any lesson from the Kosi calamities in the past and it is the same story this year too, charged Dinesh Kumar Mishra (62), a well known environmentalist and flood expert from Saharsa and an author of several books on the Kosi.

Biharis keep dying due to floods, but the nation doesn’t take notice. I know so many families in north Bihar who have lost their homes 14 times in floods since Independence

An engineer from IIT, Mishra operates in India’s most dramatic flood theater - Bihar. He is organising communities in flood-prone areas of India to remember local, decentralised ways of coping with floods. But, he says, “Bihar is destined to die. Nobody counts us.”

“Biharis keep dying due to floods, but nation doesn’t take notice of them. I know so many families in north Bihar who have lost their homes 14 times due to floods after Independence. Do you know last year 960 people died due to floods in north Bihar? Nobody reads news from Bihar,” complained Mishra.

The Kosi embankment, locally called as the eastern afflux bundh, was breached this time near Kusaha village in Nepal, turning four panchayats in that country, and, at least, eight districts of Bihar into a watery grave.

“It will take about a year to get the complete story, and till then the usual blame game and mud slinging will continue unabated,’’ Mishra told this correspondent in an interview from his home-town, Patna. “There is no history of the Kosi breaches being plugged before March next year,’’ he pointed out.

Since 1992, Mishra has been working in the Ganga and Brahmaputra river basins in Bihar - India’s most flood-prone region - where he has created an umbrella network, the Barh Mukti Andolan, of over 700 rural groups of “flood historians.”

Mishra is running a grassroots movement that challenges the current, top-heavy flood control policy. Dams and embankments, he says, have become ‘silt-laden time bombs’ sending tidal waves of water that routinely destroy the whole rural belt.

“The 1984 Kosi breach had uprooted nearly half a million people in 96 villages in the Saharsa and Supaul areas. The displaced people could return to their homes – only after the Holi festival in March 1985,” Mishra pointed out.

According to him, relief operations are picking up for the survivors and so are the rescue operations. Unless marooned people are accessed, relief operations carry little meaning. The relief that is reaching the people is not adequate as they were braving the floods for about a fortnight without any external assistance.

The blame game and mud-slinging that is so common following such calamities are going on. Many leaders of opposition have blamed the Bihar government for the breach while the state government and its ministers are calling the breach a ‘natural calamity’ and that the river is now trying to go to the east.

The Kosi embankments have breached thrice on its western side and each time it was officially said that the river is trying to go to the west.

The breach in the Kosi embankment reminds one of a similar incident that took place on September 5, 1984, near Navhatta in the Saharsa district of north Bihar. Then, the Kosi had breached its embankment at 75 km south of the much talked about Bhimnagar Barrage and come out of the jacket just as has happened at Kusaha this year. 

“It is hilarious to hear the excuses that have been given by the Bihar government over the decades for the breaches in the Koshi embankments,” said Mishra.

The first breach took place in the Kosi’s western embankment in Nepal in 1963 near village Dalwa. “Bihar’s then Congress Chief Miniser, Binodanand Jha, passed the responsibility of the breach to rats and foxes that dig holes in the embankments, leading to their fall as water seeped,” said Mishra adding that bad roads were also blamed as the boulders could not be sent to the site.

Then came the breach of 1968 at five places in Jamalpur (Darbhanga). This was caused due to the highest flow of 913,000 cusecs ever recorded in the river but an enquiry held by the Chief Engineer – Floods of CWC, P N Kumra, revealed that “the failure was once again caused by the rats and foxes.”

The Bhatania Approach bundh that was constructed in 1968-69 collapsed 10 to 19 km below Bhimnagar in 1971 and many villages were washed away but eastern embankment had not breached. The approach bundh was constructed at a cost of Rs. 3.17 lakh but the repairs were done at a cost of Rs. 2.87crore.

The next breach occurred in 1980, near Bahuarawa on the eastern embankment in Salkhua block of the Saharsa district, close to the 121st km point below Bhimnagar. The river eroded the embankment in about two km reach but just after eroding, it receded fast and did not spill on to the countryside.

In 1984, a tragedy as bad as Jamalpur struck the eastern embankment near Hempur village in the Navhatta block of Saharsa district, 75 km below the Bhimnagar barrage, uprooting half-a-million people.

“People could go back to their villages only after the Holi festival of 1985 when the breach got plugged. The breach was repaired at a cost of Rs. 8.2 crore,’’ said Mishra.

In 1991 there was a breach in the western embankment near Joginia in Nepal that led to a political crisis in Bihar and the State’s Water Resources Minister had to resign his post. However, his resignation was not accepted by the then Chief Minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav.

This was a repeat performance of the Bahuarawa breach where the river had receded after eroding the embankment. The repair of the embankment cost Rs 5.17crore and a compensation of Rs. 19.80 lakh was paid to Nepal for the temporary acquisition of the land and trees etc.

According to Mishra, engineers and politicians, after every breach, accuse Nepal and Nepali people of non-cooperation and claim that the river has changed its course and it now wants to move to the east.

“If that is true, why on earth the embankments were constructed along the river? Were they not meant to prevent the river from moving either east or west? How did the water resources department know that the river wanted to change its course? Why did it help the river accomplish its objectives?” said Mishra commenting that “all this can happen in India as there is no accountability at any level.” 

Disaster was waiting to happen

Dipak Gyawali

Dipak Gyawali, Nepal’s former Minister for Water Resources and a reputed expert on river management believes that the Kosi floods calamity is “not a natural disaster, but a man-made tragedy.”

In an exclusive interview from Canada, where Gyawali is currently travelling, he told The Tribune’s Roving Editor Man Mohan that “the entire Kosi project has become a synonym for the corruption that goes by the name of Bihari politics, which ‘New Nepal’ seems to be importing with glee.”

The Kosi treaty made Nepal just a bystander. it can’t order the opening of gates during floods. Everything is in the hands of New Delhi

“The Kosi disaster was waiting to happen,’’ said Gyawali, who heads the Nepal Water Conservation Foundation, “because of the poor maintenance of the Kosi embankments…nature just took advantage of the man’s faults.”

India and Nepal are blaming each other for the Kosi breach and floods.

This catastrophe happened because of three things: wrong technological choice for the hydro-ecological regime, wrong institutional arrangements resulting from the Kosi Treaty, which are not fit to manage such a trans-boundary river system, and wrong conduct in public service over the last half-century, including corruption and what people in Delhi like to deride as ‘Bihari politics.’

Why do you call it a man-made tragedy? The Kosi released its fury when it was breached.

When the lateral, left-bank embankment (not the barrage across the river) collapsed on August 18, it was not a natural disaster, but a man-made tragedy. The river flow then was lower than the minimum average flow for August, and, not even close to a normal flood, which had not even begun during the monsoon. In the Kosi, it generally occurs from mid-August to mid-September, and when this natural stress is added to a man-made tragedy, together they have all the potential to become a major calamity.

In Nepal everyone is blaming India for the Kosi breach.

Well, well…the Indian embassy in Kathmandu in a undiplomatic and ill-informed statement has blamed Nepal. India had forced the Kosi Treaty on Nepal in 1954, taking over the responsibility for design, construction, operation and maintenance of this river project, leaving Kathmandu absolutely no room to do anything except for allowing India to quarry all the boulders they like - incidentally these are rarely used in the Kosi. They only reach the black market, and crushers from Muzzafferpur to Siliguri!

The Nepalese seem to be quite upset with India.

The Kosi treaty made Nepal just a bystander, even for matters within its own territory: it can’t order the opening of gates during floods or release the waters to its fields. Everything is in the hands of New Delhi, which has conveniently passed the buck to Bihar. The treaty, when signed, was seen as a ‘construction’ treaty, rather than a management one. In a tragic and perverse way, the current catastrophe has washed away the very foundations of the treaty and calls for revisiting the management of the Kosi in a more sane and equitable manner. 

The Kosi is one of the most violent rivers of the world.

Also, it is a massive conveyor belt of sediment from the Himalaya to the Bay of Bengal. This is a natural geological process that is responsible for creating not just Bangladesh but also much of Bihar out of the ancient Tethys Sea. Some 100 million cubic meters of gravel, sand and mud flow out of Chatara every year. As the river slows down in the Tarai plains, the sediment settles down raising the river bed by four meters, forcing it to overflow the bank, before finding a new course…you have to be extremely careful when you start fooling around with such awesome force of nature.

The Kosi has become unpredictable, changing its course every year.

The problem is not the breach at Kusaha in Nepal. No one knows where the new Kosi channel would be - in the middle and lower delta in Bihar. The satellite pictures show that it might be moving along the Supaul channel. The Kosi is filling up every depression, canal, old oxbow lake or the space between the indiscriminately built embankments. As the land slopes eastwards, the new Kosi could be as far east as Katihar. If not this year, it will inevitable do so in the years to come.

What will be the correct technology to solve the problem?

Let us put to rest another wrong technology - a high and expensive dam on the Kosi. It would take decades to construct, thus failing to address problems of current and immediate future concerns, like the primary problem of sedimentation (the reservoir will fill up too soon with the Himalayan muck). Then, it is an earthquake-prone belt. Nepal and Bihar require alternative technologies suited to an unstable but very fertile flood plain.

You have alleged that the entire Kosi project has become a synonym for corruption.

Nepal’s ruling political parties’ local cadres learnt about the corruption practised across the border, and they demanded a share in the booty. The Bihari contractors could not agree as they have already been paying high amounts to their political and civil servant bosses in Patna. I am told that tough negotiations were going on before the start of the monsoon, but no agreement could be reached.

An interesting tale of corruption across the border…

Bihar’s officials are complaing that the contractors had gone on August 8 to strengthen the embankment but were not allowed to do so. How come they came to do the repair works - if that is what they really wanted to do - in the middle of the monsoon?...you don’t carry out repairs during the monsoon season…maybe, such is the practice in India. 

A nexus at work

The complete scenario of the racket of river breaches in Bihar has been captured by an author, Indu Bharati, in her report - Fighting the Irrigation Mafia in Bihar.

Nepal’s former Water Resources Minister, Dipak Gyawali, has reproduced Bharati’s observations in his book - Water in Nepal/Rivers, Technology and Society.

Bharati says, “Such is the racket of breaches that out of the 2.5 to 3 billion rupees spent annually by the Bihar government on construction and repair works, as much as 60 percent used to be pocketed by the politician-contractors-engineers nexus.

“There is a perfect system of percentages in which there is a share for everyone who matters, right from the minister to the junior engineer. The actual expenditure never exceeds 30 percent of the budgeted cost and after doling out the fixed percentages, the contractors are able to pocket as much as 25 percent of the sanctioned amount. A part of this they use to finance the political activities of their pet politicians and to get further projects sanctioned,” says Bharati.

“Thus the cycle goes on. [The result is that...] the contractor’s bills are paid without verifying them says Bharati.

— M.M.

Chatterati
UPA poll plans
by Devi Cherian

The UPA government has, it seems, finally worked out a plan for the election year. It is set to sell its achievements to the people through a media blitzkrieg. Letters from the Prime Minister are being sent to loan-beneficiary farmers along with booklets for village heads highlighting its achievements, while newspaper advertisements will quiz and reward people on their awareness of Bharat Nirman and other schemes.

An open letter from the PM will be translated in regional languages, patting the UPA government’s relief initiatives. A “special publicity campaign” will be launched to be followed by a “state-wise outreach material” printed in 15 languages with information about the government’s achievements and policies.

Now in a film

Amar Singh and party colleague, actress Jaya Prada, are acting in a film “Sesh Sanghat” in which she is wooed by Singh. Amar Singh has long dabbled in films and politics and is a big Bollywood fan.

Amar Singh plays a retired politician, who gives Jackie Shroff tips on how to go about a case involving exploitation of have-nots in a village on the Bengal-Jharkhand border, by feudal lords who enjoy political backing. Jaya Prada plays one such exploited woman. It is a delicate situation as he is a politician in real life and, hopefully, he will not say anything that could be later used against him politically. But, no doubt, a man with many sides!