Surinder Sud: Troubled waters

India should ensure that the Baglihar project doesn't drown in the objections raised by Islamabad.

An early resolution of the dispute between India and Pakistan over the Baglihar hydropower project on river Chenab in Jammu and Kashmir is more or less ruled out after Islamabad decided to slam the door on bilateral talks and move the World Bank for neutral adjudication.

The last-minute bid by India to prevent the breakdown of the secretary-level dialogue at New Delhi, by seeking a week's time to examine afresh Pakistan's objections to the project design and come out with tenable concessions, could not prevent Islamabad from abruptly abandoning the negotiations.

The process of neutral adjudication will, obviously, take its time and the fate of the project will continue to hang in balance indefinitely.

This is the last thing the Centre or the Jammu and Kashmir government wanted.

The militancy-ridden state has already invested around Rs 25 billion in the project since its inception in 1999, and has just signed a fresh agreement with the Power Finance Corporation of India to secure an additional loan of Rs 17.7 billion for the early completion of the project.

This is in addition to an earlier loan of Rs 4.2 billion from a banking consortium. The Centre has also given a grant of Rs 6.3 billion.

That is why the Jammu and Kashmir government did not lose time in declaring that it would not allow Baglihar to go the Wullar Barrage project way.

Also called the Tulbul navigation project, the Wullar project was abandoned mid-way in the late 1980s on objections raised by Pakistan.

The state government has been spending around Rs 20 million every year since then for the upkeep of the idle site near Sopore.

In any case, the Baglihar project is crucial for alleviating the acute power shortage in Jammu and Kashmir, which has necessitated prolonged load shedding even in a key tourist town such as Srinagar.

The power scarcity has also come in the way of the state's development in both the agriculture and industrial sectors. The state's current peak period requirement of power is reckoned at around 1,710 MW, against the availability of less than 600 MW.

Jammu and Kashmir's own power production has, of late, dipped to a mere 240 MW, forcing it to spend about Rs 19 billion annually to buy power.

Incidentally, the state possesses a hydropower production potential of 15,000 MW. If the west-flowing rivers "" Indus, Jhelum and Chenab "" assigned to Pakistan under the Indus Water Treaty of 1960, are left untapped, a sizeable chunk of this potential will remain untapped. Baglihar is one of a series of projects conceived for construction on the Chenab. This 450-MW hydroelectric project (capacity to be expanded to 900 MW in the second stage) is located in Ramban Tehsil of the Doda district of Jammu.

It envisages construction of a 144.5-metre-high (from the deepest foundation level) and 317-metre-long concrete gravity dam with a storage capacity of 15 million cubic metre.

It will have a spillway of six submerged radial gates 10 metre wide and 10.5 metre high, and a chute spillway of two crest radial gates 12 metre wide and 19 metre high.

There will be two diversion tunnels, which will be 939 metre long and 10.15 metre in diameter, and a circular head-race tunnel 270 metre long.

Besides, there will an underground power house, an underground transformer hall and an outdoor switch yard.

The project's installed capacity of 450 MW comprises three generators of 150 MW each. On completion, it will generate 2,804 million units in a 90 per cent dependable year.

The actual civil work on the project commenced in 2000 and was scheduled to finish by December 2005. If the work goes on uninterrupted at the current pace, state officials expect the project to begin generating power by around March 2006.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has given the contract of executing all civil and hydro-mechanical works to Jaiprakash Associates Limited. The engineers in-charge on behalf of the state government are Lahmeyer International of Germany.

The talks on Pakistan's objections to the project, held at the level of the Indus water commissioners of both countries and subsequently at the secretary level, have helped in crystallising them into six issues of technical nature: weir at low level; pondage; the level of intake; gated spillway; freeboard heights; and low-level tunnels.

Essentially, what Pakistan fears is that the submerged gated spillways will enable India to control the water supply to Pakistan from this river, which will violate the Indus Treaty and that the pondage facility and the height of the gated structure will permit India to deprive Pakistan of upto 7,000 cusecs of water a day.

However, India does not believe Pakistan's apprehensions are well-founded. It has, in the past, allowed technical experts from Pakistan to visit the site to verify the facts.

The data related to the project, sought by Pakistan, has also been supplied to that country. Indeed, the Indian view-point is being expressed more vocally by the state government than the Centre.

State officials say that if Islamabad's plea for removal of the gates is conceded, as was done in the Salal project earlier, the silt deposition rate will be unmanageable and may ultimately destroy the project.

Indian circles also discount Pakistan's objection to the storage of 50 million cubic metre of water, maintaining that this is well within the Treaty's permissible limits.

India has also assured Pakistan that the impounded water will be used only for power production and not for irrigation. This is despite India not having yet fully exhausted its quota of irrigation from the Chenab waters.

Against the permissible irrigation command area of 1,32,389 acres in the Chenab basin, the actual potential created is only 1,15,619 acres.

Where exploitation of the permissible power production potential of the west-flowing rivers is concerned, the situation is even worse. The treaty allows India to generate as much as 8,769 MW of power at 60 per cent load factor from the three western rivers.

So far, projects having an installed capacity of only around 1,348 MW have been put up on these rivers. The projects under construction have a combined installed capacity of only about 1,300 MW.

The Indus Treaty also permits consumptive use of water for drinking-water needs and non-consumptive use for purposes like timber floating, navigation, flood protection, fisheries, wild life and the like.

India has not made full use of this facility.

Thus, under the circumstances, Pakistan's rigid stance on the Baglihar issue seems based on considerations unrelated to this project.

Otherwise, why should it have chosen to ignore India's goodwill gesture of considering some amendments in the Baglihar project design subject to the condition that these did not impact the safety of the dam and the people? India is believed to have offered to Pakistan to come up with alternative design calculations or some alternative fact sheet that could be examined bilaterally.

Pakistan's real motive for perpetuating the stalemate could be to show the world that the bilateral track is not delivering results and that third-party mediation is necessary.

Indeed, the latest round of secretary-level talks would not have occurred but for the initiative taken in this regard by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Though Article VIII of the Treaty provides for setting up a permanent Indus Water Commission for settling routine disputes, the Article IX and Annexure F have provisions for appointment of a neutral expert for resolving major issues.

This expert has to be a subject matter specialist of international repute and his verdict is binding on both countries. India will now have to prepare its case rather well to turn the tables on Islamabad.