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Kathmandu Thursday March 07, 2002 Falgun 23, 2058.
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Barrage of
sorrow
The 12th Nepal-India
Standing Committee (NISC) meeting on river inundation concluded the
other day without resolving the issue of the Rassiyal-Khurda-Lautan
barrage built across the Danav river. Last year India built the
barrage just south of Marchawar on the Nepal-India border without
consulting upstream Nepal. Now India has tried to get away with the
construction of this structure so near the international border with
the argument that regulators would allow easy passage of water to the
Indian side. The harsh reality is that last summer the barrage had the
effect of submerging a large part of Marchawar area in Rupendehi
district, posing a grave threat to Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord
Buddha. And this is the second such barrage in five years that India
has built in violation of international norms. Earlier, India
unilaterally constructed the Laxmanpur barrage across the Rapti river
and as a consequence more than 33 villages in Nepal have been
submerged during the monsoons every summer. Both barrages fall within
300 meters of the Nepalese border. Nepal has always tried to resolve
such bilateral concerns through mutual understanding and sincere
dialogue. It has refrained from taking recourse to international law.
But it has also not been able to get the Indians to dismantle the
barrages. It has had to look on helplessly as thousands of hectares of
land is submerged and standing crops worth millions of rupees are
destroyed every summer.
India has no right,
without first consulting Nepal, to build any structure within eight
kilometres of the common border that directly or indirectly affects
the latter. Both Rassiyal-Khurda-Lautan and the fifteen-meter high
Laxmanpur are in clear violation of this principle. And bilateral
talks to tackle the issue seem to be getting nowhere. The Indian
position seems to be that inundation from the barrages is a problem on
their side also and the two countries should work together to resolve
it. They are rather dismissive of any suggestion that the problem is
of their making and that international law is not on their side. There
is reason to believe that the Indians knew perfectly well what they
were doing when the barrages went up and the intention was to present
Nepal with a fait accompli. In the course of time Nepalese ire would
subside like the monsoon floods. India’s domineering ways in matters
concerning its small neighbours are now standard practice. We have
already seen something of this in the just concluded trade treaty
talks. That is also the reason why New Delhi wanted to take a
bilateral approach even when something, such as the flow of the
Ganges, clearly concerns both up river Nepal and down river
Bangladesh. When it comes to its own interests vis a vis a weaker
neighbour India shows scant respect for the other’s sovereignty.
Nepal must now seriously contemplate dragging India to the
international court of justice at The Hague. This might even be a test
case for the other problems that will continue to crop up in Nepal’s
often troubled relations with its giant neighbour to the south. |
