Mostafa Kamal MajumderThe recent decision of India’s Forest Advisory Committee to suggest rejection of the Tipaimukh Dam, about 100 kilometers upstream of the Sylhet border of Bangladesh on the Barak, tributary of Bangladesh’s third largest Meghna river, has not surprised environmentalists here. Because they have just taken into consideration the sustainability huge project and found that the positives heavily outweigh the negatives. The FAC decision is seen by some Indian journalists as welcome news for Bangladesh. But there is no cause of for complacency for the people living in the catchment areas of the Meghna, Bangladesh’s third largest river, at the downstream of the proposed project site because the central government of India reportedly looks sure to override the FAC recommendation on the ground of the so-called huge electricity generation, they say, the project promises. It is to be noted that the Indian government embarked upon the project after obtaining clearance from their official environmental watchdog and the ministry of environment and forests. As has been reported by agencies from New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh actually offered Bangladesh to be a ‘stakeholder’ in the Tipaimukh hydel project when he met Foreign Minister Dipu Moni last Friday after the FAC had actually said ‘no’ to the project. The Bangladesh Foreign Minister had been to India to salvage the land boundary agreement which has to be approved in Parliament which Manmohan’s ruling alliance cannot secure without the support of the opposition BJP. FAC’s recommendation will now go to union environment and forest minister Jayanthi Natarajan who will take a final decision on the fate of the project. The Indian Prime Minister’s Office is learnt to be strongly lobbying with the forest and environment ministry to push for acceptance of the project immediately after the FAC struck it down. But it will not be easy for the Forest and Environment Minister to overrule the FAC’s decision and clear the project, reports coming from Delhi say. The people of Bangladesh who are more or less aware of the dangerous environmental consequences of the hydal project can only see a faint glimmer of hope in the recommendation of the FAC, but the hope has little chance of materialise, because in the policy and decision making level in Dhaka neither any individual nor any agency has taken a firm stand, based on knowledge of the project’s environmental consequences like the FAC of India has done. But FAC’s recommendation has given credence to the outcry of environmentalists and some opposition political leaders and parties here in Bangladesh. In the backdrop of a ‘comprehensive’ bilateral give and take of the last four years and a half between the two close neighbours, raising voice of opposition always risks being portrayed as obstructing good neighbourly relations if not directly termed as ‘anti-Indianism’. It is to be noted that the FAC recommendation has come at a time when the two neighbours are carrying out joint feasibility studies on the Tipaimukh Dam project after it had already been taken to the implementation stage by the Indian side. This is not to say that the Indian government has been pursuing the project out of enmity. The main driving forces behind it are the bureaucracy and the construction lobby. The bureaucracies everywhere in the world are yet to be fully sensitised to the requirements of long-term sustainable development, because they still count the values of water only in terms of irrigation and hydroelectricity potentials, on how much extra rice it can produce; and completely neglect the long-term environmental, ecological and social impacts of dam projects. The construction lobby is interested in the quick returns from huge investments in cement concrete structures. There are examples of failures of huge movements like the Narmada to stop the single-eyed bureaucracy and profit mongering construction lobby in India. An examination of the latest recommendation from India’s FAC shows, the learned body of experts confined its scrutiny to the devastation the Tipaimukh Dam may cause to forests in Manipur and Nagaland and the people living in and around those. The project has been proposed at a hill location on the borders of the two Indian states, to generate 1,500 MW of electricity and irrigate large parts of Lower Assam’s Barak valley region. It requires diversion of around 22,777 hectares of forest land in Manipur. Proposal for diversion of around 1,551 hectares of forest land in Mizoram is pending with the Indian Environment and Forest ministry. The FAC has said said approval must not be given for diversion of forest land sought to execute the project. The committee noted that the project requires “felling of over 7.8 million trees in Manipur alone. The area has over 27,000 bamboo culms as well and is also home to several endangered species of flora and fauna.” As reported, FAC has observed in its note: “Very high ecological, environmental and social impact of the diversion of the vast tract of the forest land will far outweigh the benefits likely to accrue for the project.” In Dhaka initial response from relevant high offices of the present administration to Tipaimukh was,”… it’s their affairs within their own territories, about which we have little to say.” But the awareness about the possible environmental consequences at the ground level has been high because adverse impacts of the barrage on the Ganges on the Southwest region of Bangladesh are now a days hardly unknown. There about thirty rivers have met with untimely death. Efforts to revive the Gorai, the main distributary of the Ganges to the region despite heavy investments in capital dredging have so far not given bright results. The Bangladesh side of the story regarding Tipaimukh remains to be packed with adequate data on possible economic, social, economic, ecological and environmental impacts to be pressed forcefully. During the last four years the people here have observed the organisation of two helicopter rendezvous, first one of some parliamentarians, and the second of some journalists over the Tipaimukh Dam site. The two groups did not land in Manipur where local activists were eagerly waiting to share their views and feelings. Statements from the members of the groups were by and large in the positives. The leader of one major political party organised a long-march against Tipaimukh but told its concluding rally that India should give Bangladesh share of electricity. The question is whether the FAC report will encourage them to give attention to a full in-depth study on the consequences of the large project which again is to be sited at a highly active seismic zone. What disturbs water experts and environmentalists in Bangladesh is that sustainability of this largest delta in the world is critically dependent on undisturbed flows of the same rivers that have created the landmass and sustained its flora, fauna, life cycle, ecological balance, life and livelihoods. Cut off from its lifelines – the rivers – Bangladesh will never remain the same green belt. In the event of adverse environmental impacts, if people fail to continue to grow adequate food to eat, are forced to change their professions; they have to relocate and look for livelihoods elsewhere. The effects of such a devastating consequence is bound to fall on neighbouring lands, no matter how high are the barbed wire fences. This needs to be communicated to decision makers in Delhi. Policy makers in Bangladesh should no longer shy away from talking freely on the Tipaimukh. For them it should not continue to be a taboo. The Indian FAC recommendation has at least given them this leverage. (A renowned journalist Mostafa Kamal Majumder is the Editor of Greenwatch Dhaka)
