China said then that it was constructing a hydropower project at Zangmu and that there will be four more on the Brahmaputra, which would be all inside Chinese territory and being a run-of-the-river project, it would not involve storage of water. China also made it clear that it did not really have to share its plans with India, but was doing it out of a sense of “trust”. The 510 MW project, worth $1.2 billion, is being built by Gezhouba, one of China’s biggest dam-building companies.
The fresh proposal is reportedly different from what was envisaged in China’s south-north water transfer project approved earlier. Satellite pictures had picked up the construction of a dam in Zangmu, in Lhokha prefecture of Tibet, but even as late as 2009, China had denied that such a project was underway.
On June 18, 2011, the Guwahati Senior Citizens’ Association (GSCA) urged chief minister Tarun Gogoi to take an all-party delegation to New Delhi to impress upon the Government of India the vital need for “foiling the ‘sinister designs’ of the Chinese government to dry up Indian rivers, which would affect vast tracts of land in the northeast by blocking regular supply of water”.
The association, in its meeting held by its president, senior journalist D.N. Chakravarty, threatened to launch a mass agitation unless the entire process of the “Chinese conspiracy” was foiled by the Government of India. External affairs minister S.M. Krishna’s reported statement that China’s Zangmu Dam on the Brahmaputra river is no cause of concern to India as it is a run-of-the-river dam was contradicted by a television network claiming to have accessed a latest intelligence report which clearly states that India has reasons to be alarmed as the dam will severely restrict water flow downstream.
The report says China has no plans to reduce the height of the dam, a demand that India has been making for a long time. This contradicts Mr Krishna’s recent assurance to Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi that the dam will not affect water flow to India.
According to the intelligence report, the current height fixed at 3,370 feet will severely affect the flow of water downstream. The Zangmu Dam is being built on the eastern side of the Tibetan Plateau where the river has a steep drop. The report says that in the long run this will also affect the Himalayan ecosystem on the Indian side. Stating that Isro satellite maps showed no construction, Mr Krishna had assured Mr Gogoi that China had heeded India’s requests on the dam. According to the television network, it is the very same map that the intelligence report is quoting showing construction.
Indian and Chinese water experts were scheduled to meet in 2010 to draft an “implementation plan” for sharing hydrological data on the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra rivers. These agreements were signed in 2005 and 2008, but China had refused to share anything because there was no “plan”. The first lot of data was to come from China to India after the meeting of the water experts.
There have been reports that these projects are the beginning of a much bigger plan by China to divert the waters of the Brahmaputra to feed its parched northeast, an ambitious and technically challenging plan called the Western Canal that many Chinese reports say will be completed by 2050.
However, China has officially clarified that such reports aren’t “consistent with facts”.
Answering questions on this, Mr Krishna said, “In November 2009, the foreign ministry of China clarified that China is a responsible country and would never do anything to undermine any other country’s interests.”
Paragraph 9 of the joint communiqué issued during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s December 2010 visit to India reads: “The two sides noted the good cooperation between China and India in the field of trans-border rivers. The Indian side appreciated the flood-season hydrological data and the assistance in emergency management provided by the Chinese side. The two sides reiterated that they will promote and enhance cooperation in this field.”
Referring to the meeting of an expert-level mechanism set up in November 2006, ministry of external affairs spokesman Vishnu Prakash had said, “The Indian side has taken up with the Chinese side reports about the construction of a large dam or diversion project on the Brahmaputra.” Defending its decision to build a dam on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet, amid concerns that it could disrupt water supplies downstream in India and harm the ecosystem, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei was reported to have said, “In the development of cross-border water resources, China has always had a responsible attitude and places equal emphasis on development and protection,” and added that China took “full consideration of the potential impact on the downstream area”.
Earlier this year, Chinese dams were reported to be channelling water away from the upper reaches of the Mekong river and contributing to the waterway’s record-low levels — a charge Beijing has dismissed. The Chinese government on June 14, 2011 indicated it would not divert the waters of the Brahmaputra, saying it would take into “full consideration’’ the interest of downstream/lower riparian countries while implementing any project, but once again refrained from denying directly that it was planning to divert the flow of Brahmaputra. According to an Indian analyst, Beijing has repeated this line ad nauseam while quietly building more dams to siphon off the waters of the Mekong, Irtysh and Illy rivers.
Chinese hydropower experts have also ruled out any plan to divert the river’s waters in the near future, describing proposals from some scholars to direct the flow of the river to China’s arid northwest as unfeasible. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said in response to a question on India’s concerns about a diversion plan that China adopted “a responsible attitude towards the development of cross-border water resources”.
Mr Krishna said that the government has sought a report on the matter from its mission in Beijing. Apparently to deal with severe drought conditions in the region, Chinese experts associated with the government have come up with a new plan that seeks to divert river waters in the upper reaches to the north-western province of Xinjiang. “We are trying to get more details both from the government and our mission and then depending upon the report that we get, we will be able to make an assessment and take appropriate diplomatic steps,” he said to the media.
The need of the hour is not building hysteria but of a pragmatic approach. Some facts, which should be known are: (a) The Brahmaputra flows in spate every year. (b) The water in the area of Tuting and Pasighat, in Arunachal Pradesh, a popular destination for white-water rafters who find the rapids quite a challenge, flows uncontrollably and according to some sources even inundates some small islands seasonally. (c) Even if the Chinese are constructing the dam with a reservoir, there may be some restriction of flow downstream till the reservoir fills up. Once it is filled, there should be no problem, provided the water is regulated properly. Regulating water with malicious intent can cause problems of flooding.
While there is no doubt about the need for India to engage China and work out a water treaty, there are many dam projects in the ecologically complex north-eastern region which must be undertaken only after diligent research and with public welfare in mind.
A Northeast Vigil study report concludes that there are at least two dozen large dams in the Northeast that are at an advanced stage of planning or clearance. The questions that need to be asked and answers found without compromising on detail are: Have the development needs and objectives been formulated through an open and participatory process at local and regional levels? Has a comprehensive options assessment for water and energy resource development been done? Have the social and environmental factors been given the same significance as techno-economic aspects in assessing options? Do we have a basin-wide understanding of the ecology of the rivers and the dependence of local communities on them? Ushering in these projects without adequately addressing these fundamental concerns cannot justifiably be a way out of the Northeast’s development dilemmas. Decisions taken at this stage will determine how bright the future of the Northeast — its people and its environment — will really be.