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The Election Commission clearly needs to shape up before it can convince itself and the country that it can do its job. That job is of course putting things in place well before the next general election is upon us. Unfortunately the divisions which have kept Chief Election Commissioner M.A. Aziz at a distance from the two commissioners with whom he should have been coordinating work now threaten to push the EC into a chaotic situation. It is certainly regrettable that the methods the CEC has adopted in carrying out his responsibilities are turning out to be more obstructive than congenial for the body. When the Election Commissioners take it upon themselves to complain that they are either not being consulted by the CEC or are being over-ruled by him, there is a very genuine feeling that things are going badly wrong at the Election Commission. Matters should not have come to such a pass.
   But, given that the Election Commission is really in a sorry state at this point, it becomes the responsibility of the CEC to reassure the nation that he is willing and able to pull the organisation back to a state where people can have their confidence renewed in its ability to do its job. In the last many months, the flip-flops that have characterised the functioning of the Election Commission have clearly left the impression in the public mind that individual ego has overtaken the sense of public responsibility in its activities. The rapidity with which the pendulum has been swinging over such issues as a revision of the voters’ list or the making of a fresh new one has only been made worse through the rather public disagreements that the CEC and the two commissioners appear to have engaged in. The CEC’s unilateral moves toward going for a fresh voters’ list as also the recruitment of as many as 3,00,000 people to bolster the manpower of the EC for the next election have not been helpful in persuading people that the Election Commission is being run in a transparent manner. Mr. Aziz appears to have ignored his own earlier belief that trust, understanding and tolerance are necessary components of democratic behaviour. It was advice he gave the politicians when in July he organised what turned out to be a fiasco of a consultation with the political parties, with every significant party in the opposition giving short shrift to his call for dialogue. It is the same advice, say the Election Commissioners, that he has now turned his back on. There has hardly been any meeting between the three men, namely, the CEC and the ECs, to review the progress, if at all, so far made regarding the next election. The manner in which the timetable for a preparation of the voters’ list has been declared was not only arbitrary but also fraught with difficulties relating to questions of whether the objectives behind the move can be attained.
   There is a clear need today for the Chief Election Commissioner to take corrective measures about the way he and the commission have been functioning. The two Election Commissioners, being the senior officials they are, must be taken into confidence in everything that is done at the commission between now and the election. It is rather intriguing that while the Election Commissioners are being ignored, the secretary of the commission, who quite to our consternation ignored the last CEC by refusing to have any meetings with him, has been working closely with the new CEC. It is perfectly all right for the secretary to be thus employed, but when it is seen as a deliberate snub to the Election Commissioners, the signs cannot but be disturbing.

The minister speaks of failures

Is it not a bit late in the day for the minister for finance and planning to comprehend that poverty alleviation is essential to achieve other goals at the national level? Have not the saner section of society been saying repeatedly for the last four years that all unimportant projects and programmes, that ran into millions of dollars, be done away with in favour of pragmatic credit programmes for the marginalised population in order to alleviate the all pervading poverty in the country? It is unfortunate that no one had any time to listen to the voice of wisdom. Instead, if we look at the last four years’ budgets presentation by the same minister, we shall see how deliberately he put forward yearly budgets that were designed to make the rich only richer. The poor found no place in his budgets. Besides the country’s economists and social researchers, the whole world has been pointing at the glaring disparity between rich and poor in Bangladesh, which was only getting worse every year because of a biased politico-economic policy pursued by the government. It is ironic indeed that at the fag end of the term of the government, the supposedly most powerful minister in the cabinet has to philosophise that poverty alleviation would in a way contribute to securing political stability and curbing rising violence, and that unless the poverty shackle is broken the entire society would suffer from unrest and instability. We feel that because of the failure of the government in containing poverty, the country is already faced with all the ills he has mentioned.
   Interestingly, the minister has also discovered, once again belatedly, that the government has not been able to create a bribe-free environment for the resource-poor people of the country so that they could avail of micro credit in order to improve their economic conditions. Yes, if only the government could take timely and appropriate measures to rid this department of the heinous elements who suck on the blood of the poor, perhaps it would have earned a few points in its favour. It was not a tall order and yet there was none in the government to ensure that the poor would have bribe-free, hassle-free access to credit so that they could get involved in income generating activities and pay back loans in time. But the hyenas were everywhere looking for the kill while the politicians were going about doling out false promises to the people. Today, in the twilight hour, Minister Saifur Rahman tells us that the quantum of micro credit should be increased so that the borrowers can take up bigger projects. What the government has been doing in the last four years is a puzzling question indeed.

The Bangladesh authorities appear to have become adept in tripping over the water issues and exhibiting an enormously unprofessional, undiplomatic and, if I may add, unpolitical approach to when dealing with the fairly obvious problems that have been growing in all dimensions with the passage of time.
   Some of my previously published articles had touched upon the various aspects of the theme on water resources, their management and the related matters that require India’s attention and cooperation in a meaningful way and as a matter of urgency. We may recall the recent visit of the Indian Minister for Water Resources, Mr P R Dasmunshi. The visit promised so much more, as we presumed, than it could and in fact, had delivered. And that nothing of substance came through from the Indians is so much evident from the comments made by the Bangladesh Water Resources Minister at a seminar on ‘Water Resources Management and Flood Control in Bangladesh’ as reported in the press. The minister criticized ‘India for building dams and barrages on major rivers entering into Bangladesh’, and said “such construction causes floods in Bangladesh during monsoon and water shortages in dry season.”
   Let us at this stage recall that this minister had held a meeting with his Indian counterpart when the latter came on a visit to Dhaka in early October – barely 7/8 weeks ago. This also compels me to refer to my assessment that ‘The Indian Minister has thus set a perfect stage, in my view, for no tangible outcome to emerge from the JRC meeting, except that he was using the visit as a great PR exercise and creating an illusion that India is mindful of its neighbour’s positions on various issues’ (New Age, 18 October 2005 ‘Dasmunshi’s visit, water sharing and football.’)
   One can naturally ask the Bangladesh minister 1) whether he did actually raise all the issues of our concern with Mr Dasmunshi, including the one of dams and barrages that he publicly is lamenting about now, and 2) what, if any, were the precise responses from the visiting Indian minister? Despite a large number of articles containing highly competent analyses of the malaise in the water resources sector and a series of sensible suggestions for the authorities concerned to be guided by that have appeared in the media over the past several years, the official stance apparently has been poorly defined, ineffectively presented and as evident by the minister’s latest remarks, totally rejected by the Indian side. That has been the condition for a fairly long period of time. Meanwhile, India has been boldly going ahead with her mega-project for the inter-linking of the major rivers. As has been observed by many analysts, including this writer, India would never even go through the motion of consultation with Bangladesh, much less putting a halt to that multi-billion dollar project that would be totally to their benefit and almost totally to our detriment.
   That our concerned authorities have almost given up on the possibility of an agreement or arrangement with India in regard to our common rivers, the dams/barrages being built by the Indian side, sharing of waters in the Teesta and six other rivers and in regard to their own ILRP, is quite clear in Minister Hafiz Uddin’s further remarks at the seminar organised by the Franco-Bangladesh Association of Scholars & Trainees. He stated that “... we have to formulate our own strategy to manage our water resources”, stressing the need for building barrages on rivers like Meghna and Brahmaputra. These raise so many hitherto unanswered questions with the leading one being, ‘Have we not formulated our own strategy as yet?’ Have his ministry, the JRC, official water experts, related agencies been operating in a vacuum? We have been meeting the Indian experts and authorities without having formulated a comprehensive strategy. More importantly, we went into negotiations just about a few weeks back, without doing our homework and without designing our own fallback positions in our negotiations and deliberations. Does the minister want us to believe that that happens to be the situation in a vital sector he has been responsible for over four years or so?
   One does not need to wait for an answer. The minister, in a most incredible admission, also told the seminar that ‘Bangladesh has water sharing agreement with India for only one out of 54 common rivers and does not know how much water it gets from the remaining 53 rivers.’ And the tragedy in this context is that since the inception of Bangladesh, the Ministry of Water Resources (under various names) and a string of agencies, boards, commissions, committees and so on have been operating. Scores of projects, myriads of seminars, workshops and surveys have been undertaken. We do not seem to show much of an achievement at the end of the year 2005!
   Newspaper reports recently referred to the huge problems that heavy siltation, fall in water level and emergence of shoals in various rivers are causing to the movement of river transport. Launches, ferries and other river craft have to cover extra distances to avoid the ‘chars’ and ‘shoals’ and the resultant delays are causing suffering to the travelling public and are adversely impacting on riverine trade and commerce. A number of inland river ports are facing closure due to the decline in the volume and frequency of river craft movements. This problem and the huge reduction in the navigable routes in the country over the last decade have been analysed in one of my previous articles. Another new dimension is emerging in the form of a sudden and massive erosion by the major rivers; due to the unusually low water level river banks along the top are drying up and crumbling down much faster and on a larger scale. Both the Jamuna and Brahmaputra rivers are causing serious erosions with an increasingly larger number of families becoming totally homeless in Jamalpur and Kurigram.
   We are supposed to have a national water policy, with a national council and the rest of it. It reminds me that several years back when I had put the thesis that the way India was going about building water projects on Indo-Nepal borders on the five major rivers, theoretically there could be a situation when there would be zero or negligible water flow at Farakka and, obviously, Bangladesh would have no supply in dry season as a result, since the Ganges waters are to be shared as at Farakka. The then director general, national water board, had agreed with my observation. I was intrigued by his insistence that the national water policy that he was overseeing only related to the water sources and availability within the borders of Bangladesh. My obvious comment that such a policy would ab initio be useless, since 10 per cent or so of the waters Bangladesh needed at the time come from the 54 trans-boundary/common rivers and without taking that into consideration and without having an integrated policy to ensure continued flows from these rivers (and also to seek augmentation of these in the dry months), any national water policy would not be worth the paper it was written on, of course fell on deaf ears. Our unwillingness or perhaps our incompetence to comprehend the enormity of the current problems, not to speak of the wisdom to foresee the future, has been responsible for getting the country and the people into a position of utter helplessness and almost imminent disaster – in our economy, our agriculture, river navigation, environment, in our life and living across the length and breadth of these 54000 sq miles of land.
   Opinions have been expressed in a responsible manner, public protests and campaigns have been lodged, non-resident Bangladeshis have launched various initiatives, civil society activists in the capital have been agitating on all the relevant and related issues for years. And still we have the most laid-back attitude of the authorities concerned in terms of designing a sensible, multi-option approach in this crucial sector. And now the minister says ‘we have to formulate our own strategy.......’ I might add for good measure that such comments at ministerial level are sending wrong signals to the Indians and they would be only too happy to note that we have thrown in the towel and they do not need to bother to accept or even listen to our demands for water sharing and on other issues. I also have a feeling that the next meeting of the JRC would be long in coming, despite Mr Dasmunshi’s assurance that he would ensure its meeting at regular intervals (that is once a year at least). It may be of interest to note here that during the last 34 years only 36 meetings have been held under the JRC. 136 sessions should have taken place as per the JRC statute. Mr Dasmunshi had also started his visit by saying many things, one being he did not believe in rhetoric. But then Dasmunshi told the media, ‘India will not implement the Himalayan part of ILRP in two thousand years’. Somewhat of a mother of all rhetoric, I would have guessed.
   The following major points, in my view, need to be noted by our concerned authorities:
   It would be naive to assume that the Himalayan rivers component would not be implemented despite being an integral part of the vast IRL project, which has peninsular river linking as the other component. India’s strategy would be to go slow in the former due to the fact that necessary adjustments are to be made as demanded by the states of Bihar, West Bengal and Assam to safeguard their interests, Bangladesh’s claims have not been advanced and argued with the knowledge, skill and courage that is called for when talking to India. Ours could be, if we are fortunate, an after- thought by India.
   Strong indications exist that IRLP is an extension of the proposal of Jawaharlal Nehru’s irrigation minister K L Rao, through which the Farakka Barrage was constructed despite clear assurances at the time that it was ‘an experimental project’ only.
   As is well known by now, but perhaps worth recalling at this juncture is that IRLP envisages in its final form the linking of 36 rivers including the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and others. In the peninsular rivers component 17 linkages are planned. Among these are Mahanadi-Godavari and Godavari-Krishna links. On the other hand, among the Himalayan rivers component linkages, prominent are the Ganges-Damodar-Subarnarekha and Subarnarekha-Mahanadi. It is only logical to conclude that through such linking waters from the Himalayan rivers in the east would be drawn into the south western regions. Furthermore, Himalayan river component has a major project. Manash-Sankosh-Teesta-Ganges linkage through which Brahmaputra’s flow would be diverted to the upstream region.
   IRLP which was started on a Supreme Court-based order to alleviate the sufferings of drought-affected people in the north western region, has been used as a political card to win votes. And the almost dead or dying rivers in Indian peninsular part are now being revived through the diverted flows of the major international, trans-boundary rivers. We must realise that this mega-project is more politically-driven than anything else, of course yielding huge unilateral benefits to India, at a great cost and irreparable damage to the lower riparian Bangladesh.
   India has estimated that IRLP would allow approximately 37 million hectares to come under new and additional irrigation, increase power generation by 34000 million KW, control floods (in Indian territory) and improve navigation of a large number of smaller rivers in India. These would increase the riverine commerce, transportation and travels manifold. And these precisely are the benefits that would be denied to Bangladesh. The IRLP, started as a drought alleviation project, has gone into a multi-dimensional mega-project. The powerful and much more competent and effective Indian lobby is seeking out all avenues, including President Bush’s blessings to pressurize the World Bank to finance this project. It is conveniently being forgotten that there are clear, time-honored principles and conventions that the world has come to apply in respect of usage of waters of the international, trans-boundary rivers to protect the legitimate interests of the co-riparian states and especially, the lower riparian ones. In the present case, Bangladesh happens to be also an LDC, small and vulnerable to all kinds of natural disasters.
   Let me conclude by reflecting the general demand that there should be a) a detailed White Paper on these issues, b) a well-designed programme for briefing our friendly countries and donor institutions/agencies should be undertaken and c) a ministerial-level special envoy, capable, knowledgeable and articulate, should be sent to New Delhi to explain the rationale of our concerns and to urge India to act with wisdom and generosity that befits her as our good and great neighbour. The above, among many other practical steps, in our view, ought to be considered positively and with a sense of urgency.
   The writer is a former ambassador and secretary to the government