From Tryst to Tendulkar: The History of Independent India

by Balaji Viswanathan

  As both sides started to dam the river, the water that came copious at the delta reduced to a trickle. Since the beginning of the arrangement in 1924, Tamil Nadu began massive irrigations that depended on the water. The question since 1970s was what should be the fair allocation of water between the states. In December 1991, after decades of hand-wringing, the Supreme Court of India ruled to release more water to Tamil Nadu.

  This caused an upsurge of patriotism on both sides and massive violence marred the region. The human chain I was watching was one of the protest mechanisms for the farmers to pressure the government into action. As the population and economic development grew on both sides, there was an increasing desperation to get whatever little water running in the river.

  * * *

  India is spread around the Tropic Cancer and this zone is among the driest zones in the world. Think of the Sahara, the southern desert in the US and the Arabian peninsula. However, the monsoons and Himalayas have made the Gangetic plains that should have been a desert into the world's densest populated zones.

For the 1,500 million people living in the subcontinent, the precious waters from the Himalayan glaciers and those running off the monsoons in the Western Ghats is a critical lifeline.

  Fight over Indus

  Indus is a major river system in South Asia and the only main water source for Pakistan and Northwestern India. The sharing of its water is the second biggest issue (after Kashmir) in the India-Pakistan relationship . As water gets increasingly scarce in South Asia, this issue is getting more important than ever.

  India is the upstream country and has built a few dams along the rivers. Pakistan feels threatened by some of the dams and disputed this. This is a highly technical issue whose details are debated before international organizations. Some of the disputes such as Baglihar Dam and Kishanganga have been in India's favor, but the key issues are how much India is allowed to draw the water down. The devil is in the details and I'm not an expert in either irrigation engineering or International law to see if India is violating the provisions or not.

  Background

  There are six main rivers that flow from India to Pakistan. These six rivers form the Indus Water System that gave origin to Indian civilization and her name. Over 300 million people depend on these waters in a water scarce desert. Since India's partition in 1947, both water-short countries were fighting for the scarce water resource.

  In 1960, the World Bank brokered a water sharing agreement between these warring nations:

  The three northern rivers in - Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab were awarded to Pakistan. India is allowed to construct projects that don't store water (called the "run of the river" hydroelectric projects).

  The three southern rivers - Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi were completely awarded to India.

  Thorny Issues

  Three rivers to India and three to Pakistan should sound fair enough. But, it has also robbed the state of Jammu & Kashmir of its key water resources (all the three rivers allocated to Pakistan flow through this state). It essentially robbed Jammu & Kashmir to help Punjab and Rajasthan (the bottom three rivers benefit these two states). Thus Jammu & Kashmir is facing a water shortage. The Indian Central government has to redress a part of this grievance under pressure from the state government.

  India wants to exploit the hydroelectric power potential of the rivers. This is allowed by the treaty. However, the treaty is 53 years old and dam engineering has significantly improved since then. Earlier, they didn't know what to do with the silt that is deposited by the river waters in the dam. Now, the state of dam engineering requires you to "flush" out the silt from the dam using stored water. While the 1960 treaty allows "run of the river" projects that doesn't allow water to be stored, it is antiquated and is not applicable in an era where you are required to remove the silt with stored water.

  The Key Dispute

  As India wants to build more dams to tap the hydroelectric potential of Indus, its water disputes with Pakistan is worsening. According to India, the treaty allows India to draw power from the rivers and that would mean storing some water to flush the silt that is accumulated in the power projects. This was not originally an issue in 1960 as it was not thought out.

  According to Pakistan, the treaty doesn't allow India to store water and "rob" Pakistan of its water. India is violating the treaty in their perspective.

  In short, we are dealing with an outdated treaty that has failed to keep up with the developments in irrigation engineering. Both sides are loathe to change the treaty (it takes decades to come to any kind of agreement) and given that both countries are not talking enough with each other, the broken treaty continues to exist as a sticking finger.

  Fight over Ganga

  If India and Pakistan are fighting over one holy river of the Indus, there is an another holy river at dispute on India's eastern borders. The river Ganga is considered the holiest in Hinduism. On the banks of Ganga, evolved some of the major cities of the north - Varanasi, Gaya and Patna.

  In 1974, India built a major dam - the Farakka Barrage - just 17 kilometers before the Ganga is to enter the Bangladeshi border. India needs the waters to flush the Kolkata harbor that was getting submerged with silt. Bangladesh needs the water for irrigation.

  After the barrage was built, India started negotiations with Bangladesh, but the talks failed after Mujibur Rahman, founder of Bangladesh, was assassinated and a military rule was established. After two decades of fighting, a treaty was finally signed in 1996 after Mujibur's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, came to power in Bangladesh.

  Although the 1996 treaty eased some of the water disputes, Farakka Barrage continues to be an emotive issue in Bangladesh and often touches a nerve with India's neighbor.

  Fight over Brahmaputra

  Brahmaputra is the largest river in India by water flow. It merges with the Ganga after it enters Bangladesh via Assam. Brahmaputra is the lifeline for India's northeast. The river originates close to Indus near Mansarovar in Tibet, China and runs over 1,000 kilometers along Tibet's borders before entering India via the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

  Historically, India never worried about the waters of the Brahmaputra as China seemed so far away. However, as China is rapidly building dams all over the region, India is concerned. To make matters worse, there are no existing talks on water between these two countries. In the coming decades, both nations have to take this dispute head on.

  Interstate Disputes

  The water disputes are not restricted to the international arena. There are 14 major and nine minor interstate rivers in the country and especially in the south there is a big dispute between the upstream and the downstream territories. The Kaveri dispute at the top is one of the dozen interstate disputes.

  To manage the disputes, the Central government passed a series of reforms in 1956 that included the Interstate River Water Disputes Act (IRWD), which allowed for tribunals to resolve the disputes among the states and the River Boards Act that created River Boards to manage these interstate rivers. These were based on the Doctrine of Equitable Apportionment practices that the US courts have ruled on various matters.

  Some of the major water sharing disputes:

  Godavari and Krishna rivers - this involves the rights of Andhra Pradesh vs. those of the upstream states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Orissa.

  Mullaperiyar Dam - This is a dispute on the access to the Periyar river and the storage at Mullaperiyar Dam that is leased by the state of Tamil Nadu from the state of Kerala.

  The Push for a National Water Grid

  India gets 4,000 cubic kilometers of rain water every year. That is about four million liters of water per person or about 10,000 liters of water per person every day. In theory, this should be sufficient for drinking water, agricultural, and industrial needs.

  However, more than 80% of this rainfall is received in less than 20% of the year. This leads to a significant water management issue. Moreover, the water is very unevenly distributed in geography. A
few regions of North East and Western Ghats get a sizable chunk of this rain. Without sizable reservoirs and canals, most of the water is wasted. Floods in some regions and droughts in other regions wreak havoc in parallel.

  Thus, many have sought for a National Water Grid that would move the water surpluses across the nation and also store the water during the lean months. The plan involves moving the waters of Ganga further west - to the drier parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan and interlinking the peninsular rivers of Mahanadi, Godavari, and Cauvery. This would move the water from water-heavy north and east to water scarce south and west.

  Key blockers for a national water grid:

  Heavy investment requirement - moving dirt to produce massive canals across the country requires heavy investment.

  Displacement issue - India is densely populated and the diversion would require moving people along some of the dense population corridors.

  Environmental issue - Building thousands of kilometers of canals in a tropical region is bound to burden sensitive ecological zones through salinity and waterlogging.

  Impact fisheries - creating massive canals could move fish away from some of the catchment places impacting existing fishermen.

  While the river linking has a strong support from the BJP that originally mooted this idea, it is opposed by Congressional leaders such as Rahul Gandhi. The grid has become a political issue and needs to deal with a wide range of political rivalries in both state and central level.

  With or without a national level river linking, India needs to find ways to preserve and utilize the four quadrillion liters of water that falls in this parched land.

  * * *

  Chapter 6: Fighting for Land in Troubled Waters

  May 1991

  Kilvelur, India It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.

  -- Charles Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities"

  It was the summer holidays at school. I was seven years old and my family was living in a small village 300 kilometers south of Chennai. It was a period of huge change and it looked as though the world would come crashing in front of us.

  The US and Iraq were fighting a brutal war in the Middle East. The Soviet Union was imploding. Indian economy was crumbling. Yugoslavia disintegrated into multiple nations. A major civil war started in Somalia. Japanese economy was starting a permanent recession. Nelson Mandela was now free and apartheid in South Africa was coming to an end with repeal of a controversial population registration act. A Tim Berners-Lee was announcing the invention of "World Wide Web" somewhere in Switzerland.

  That summer of 1991 was among the most eventual times in human history. I was blissfully unaware of most of these. However, my dad was quite impacted by some of these things. He was managing a government bank in that village and the bank was the center point of about 50 surrounding villages. He was worried about the economy. He was worried about his sister who was caught in the Middle East during the war.

  Before schools would reopen in June, my family wanted to take a quick break on the island of Rameswaram - barely a few kilometers away from Sri Lanka. We wanted to take the problems out of our head. The island is known for its grand Shiva temple - considered among the holiest in Hinduism for being the place where King Rama started his Sri Lankan mission to get back his wife.

  On the evening of May 21st, we reached the island and checked into a nice hotel there. It was to be a nice fun run over the pristine beaches.

  The next morning, we woke up to see the city completely changed; shops were damaged, garbage was all over the streets, and people were tense.

  My father initially thought a cyclone had struck the island. He approached the lone shopkeeper in the street who was still bold enough to keep the shop open. The news he heard was shocking.

  The prospective Indian Prime Minister - Rajiv Gandhi - had been assassinated.

  He was a charismatic leader who was loved by the people, even if his political inexperience and poor policies had costed India dear during his five-year reign from 1984 to 1989. His death was a huge shock.

  More importantly, he was killed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - a terrorist organization with goals of splitting the Tamil parts of Sri Lanka to form a separate Tamil nation. Until that time, plenty of terrorists had used the island as their springboard to launch their activities. Thus, the island bore the brunt of the government's fury and was completely cut off from the rest of India.

  The cause of Sri Lankan Tamils was always close to Tamil Nadu's hearts. The village I grew up in was closer to Tamil towns in Sri Lanka than the state capital of Chennai (then called Madras). We had a better reception of Sri Lankan TV and radio channels than those from our state capital. The classmates in my school group were dreaming of joining the LTTE and liberating the Tamil lands from the clutches of the Sinhalese.

  A whole lot of these was playing in our minds. We were confused, afraid, and hungry.

  Before I continue, I will give a brief background to the trouble in Sri Lanka.

  The Sri Lankan Issue and How India Got Involved

  One of my friends was always focused on building weapons out of simple things - catapults made out of tree branches and bicycle tire tubes, small projectiles made out of tar balls, and so on. I never understood then why he was such a lunatic.

  Part 1: Demographics

  There are four main ethnic groups here:

  Sinhalese - who are predominantly Buddhist or Christian. Seventy-four percent of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese. These people are believed to have migrated from Bengal 2,500 years ago.

  Sri Lankan Tamils - who are predominantly Hindu. These people have been there on the island since antiquity. According to some people in TN, the Hindu character of Ravan was a Tamil. They form about 15% of the population.

  Indian Tamils - These are people who migrated from India during the British era to work in the plantations. They are also predominantly Hindu, although there are also sizable numbers of Muslims and Christians here. These were the people worst affected in the war. They form about 11% of the population.

  Sri Lankan Moors - these are Tamil Muslims with some influence of Arabic in their language. There is a dispute on how they should be counted. Tamils want to count them as just Tamils, as Tamil identity is not based on religion. However, a few of the Moors believes in an Arabic ancestry and thus wanted to carve a separate identity.

  Part 2: India and Sri Lanka in Ancient History

  In 3rd century BC, the Sinhalese were converted to Ashoka's Buddhism (that originated around the Bihar/Bengal region). On the other hand, the Tamils have always maintained close ties with the kingdoms of Tamil Nadu, and hence Hinduism has been their main religion.

  The Tamil kingdoms of south India, especially the Cholas, have always fought the Lankans and have even invaded a few times. However, Lankans were also allied with another Tamil kingdom called the Pandyas (the arch rivals of Cholas). Both the Tamils and Sinhalese had a lot of genetic influence from the Indian Tamils.

  Since these native Tamil kingdoms fell in about the 13th century, Tamil Nadu started having less of an influence over Sri Lanka.

  Part 3: Lankan-Tamil Relationships

  Things were normal for centuries. When Britain took over the island in 1815, they started their own "divide-and-rule" there. They brought communal representations for each community.

  Since the 19th century, the Sri Lankan Tamils became the most progressive community among the major ethnic groups and quickly climbed the ladders of civil service and governance. Even the highest job in the colonial rule was held by a Tamil -Ponnambalam Arunachalam. By 1948, when Sri Lanka got its independence, 60% of all government jobs were held by the Lankan Tamils who constituted less than 15% of the population. This bro
ught plenty of resentment among the Sinhalese who felt disenfranchised and in that year two controversial acts were passed:

  Ceylon Citizenship Act - Stripped the Tamils of Indian origin, their citizenship.

  Policy of standardization - Instituted policy minimums that significantly reduced the Tamil involvement in education and civil service.

  Since the 1950s, the Sri Lankan government pushed an active form of ethnic cleansing through the Sri Lankan state sponsored colonisation schemes, which effectively meant the Sinhalese had to be distributed in those areas that were Tamil strongholds.

  Part 4: Violence Grips Tamils

  In 1956, Sri Lanka passed the Sinhala Only Act that effectively made Sinhalese as the official language, stripping Tamil of official recognition. This was followed by a massive riot against the Tamils in 1958 when Ceylon changed its official name to the Sanskritized Sri Lanka (from Ramayana). The riots left 200 Tamils dead.

  In 1974, during the International Tamil conference at Jaffna (capital of Tamil Eelam), Sri Lankan soldiers used brutal force and led to the loss of nine lives.

  In the 1970s, Sri Lanka banned the import of magazines and periodicals from Tamil Nadu. In 1981, the precious Jaffna Tamil library (one of the biggest in Asia) was burnt. This broke the camel's back.