Gunning for Kosi High

The dam era in the United States is now over," were the words used by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in a report of May 1994. It was the Bureau, together with autonomous bodies like the Tennessee Valley Authority, that had developed ´super dams´ such as the Hoover Dam, the first of its kind which converted vast desert areas of America into productive lands. It was the success of high dam building in North America which spawned similar massive exercises in concrete and steel elsewhere in the world. Subsequently, the World Bank, the Inter-American Bank, and other lending and develop-ment agencies took the assistance of the Bureau and the TVA in proposing and financing high dams as the harbingers of development for the countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia..Exactly a year after the era of dams was declared closed in the United States, there met in Kathmandu a planning group to look into the construction of the first high dam in the Nepal Himalaya. The meeting, in the first week of June, was sponsored by the Global Infrastructure Fund (GIF), an agency created by the Japanese government and business to build large infra-structural projects in developing countries..In attendance at Kathmandu ´s Holiday Inn were water experts from Bangladesh, India and Nepal. Although the programme called for discussion of the "Eastern Himalayan water As the river with the largest flow in the Himalaya a fter the Brahmaputra and Indus, combining as it does the streams of seven massive tributaries lying between Kathmandu Valley and Sikkim, it was natural for the Kosi to command attention. Indo-Chinese relations will have to thaw somemore before doing something on the Brahmaputra´s main channel can be contemplated..Kosi therefore provides the one opportunity for those who have the money and enthusiasm to build mega projects. The unannounced agenda for the Kathmandu meeting, in fact, was to lay the groundwork for building of the Kosi High Dam. The main ´interested parties´ were India (as promoter) and Japan (as investor)..Patna DesiresA group of journalists, who had toured Bihar a few weeks earlier as part of a Bihar-Nepal academic collaboration known as the "Patna Initiative" had found that Patna residents were aware of the Kosi High Dam. Now that is a structure, they all said, which will finally rid North Bihar of the sorrow visited it yearly by the Kosi, which is presently very unsatisfactorily re-strained by the Kosi Barrage and associated embankments..Patna´s water engineers and water bureaucrats say there is no alternative to Kosi High..Patna´s politicians have long sold North Bihar´s impoverished millions promises of the brave new world that will open up after the Kosi is finally tied up behind the high dam. The arguments are especially strident at election time.The water experts and bureau-crats of Patna are firm in their belief that the Kathmandu government is blocking progress on the Kosi High Dam..At the Irrigation Department Headquarters in Patna on 26 April, Chief Engineer Parmeswar Prasad Sinha urged the Nepali journalists to inform the Nepali public about the importance and advantages of the high dam project. The Patna belief was that the high dam could do no wrong: it would provide eternal peace and prosperity to Bihar without harm¬ing anyone else´s interests..This was also the refrain of each and every Patna professor, politician, journalist, and civil servant—other than one senior bureaucrat who asked that his identity not be disclosed because it would not do to live and work in Patna and yet be openly sceptical of the promises of Kosi High..While the demand for Kosi High rolled off the Bihari tongues as easily as one bites into fresh paan, the ques-tioning Nepali journalists found that these vehement proponents had actu¬ally done little homework on the tech¬nical aspects of their favourite future project. Carried away by the populist political advantages and career prospects that the project represented, and relying solely on easy assurances com¬ing from the direction of New Delhi, the Biharis were unable to respond to detailed queries on economic feasi-bility, seismicity, sedimentation and alternatives. Independent of the mer¬its of the project, it was clear that Bihar´s enthusiastic embrace of the Kosi High Dam was based on political and professional expediency rather than a clear appreciation of all aspects of a project as big and as important..River and DamThe Sapta Kosi, made up of seven kosis (the word is often used syno-nymously for ´river´ in East Nepal), is the larges t Himalayan river to descend to the plains between the Brahmaputra and the Indus. The Ganga´s flow becomes larger than the Kosi´s only when it collects the waters of several Himalayan tributaries in the plains.The Kosi´s water come from as far away east as the Panch Pokhari area northwest of Kathmandu Valley, and the southern watershed of Kanchen-junga to the east. Northwards, the main stem, that of the Arun, emerges from deep within Tibet..From the upper reaches north of the Himalayan divide to Kursela in Bihar where it meets the Ganga, the Kosi travels 720 kilometres. The Kosi watershed covers an area of 72,538 sq km, out of which 41,333 sq km falls within Nepal. The river carries about 50 billion cubic meters of water into the Ganga every year. The flow at Chatara where it emerges from the mountains is 1730 cubic metres per second during the rains and 280 cumecs in winter. According to one estimate, the river conveys on aver-age of 119 million cu m of Himalayan sediment down to the Ganga every year. Altogether, the entire Kosi sys¬tem has the potential of producing 10,860 megawatts of electricity..For good reason, the Biharis know Kosi as "the river of sorrow". As the flow of this Himalayan river slackens when it reaches the Bihar plain, part of its massive silt load settles down. The riverbed rises, which forces the channel to shift its course. This is the reason why the Kosi has been historically wayward, once upon a time having flowed all the way eas t-wa rd to join up with the Brahmap utra. Over the course of the last 200 years, the river has shifted in a 114 km arc westwards, away from today´s Purnea town and towards Saharsa. Since 1954, the river has been ´tamed´, even if temporarily—bound within 125 km long embankments built as part of the Kosi Barrage project which goes nearly all the way to the Ganga at Kursela..The Kosi High Dam is the engineer´s answer to the river´s unpre¬dictability and potential to devastate. It is regarded as the brainchild of A.N. Khosla, one-time Chairman of the Central Water Commission. Even as the Second World War ended, the Bihar Government put forward a IRs lOO million project whose goal was to guide the Kosi from where it emerges sion prepared the High Dam Feasibil¬ity Study Report in 1981. That report itself is already 15 years old. The Feasibility Study proposed a dam of 269 m height on the Kosi gorge at a site eight kilometres above Chatara, where the river enters the plains. (The site was moved slightly upstream so as to save the Baraha Chetra pilgrimage site from submersion.) The project would yield 3000 MW of electricity and irrigate 1.5 million hectares..It would hold back the monsoon floods and regulate the flow, while at the same time keep the sediment from reaching the plains, thus making the river more predictable. The proposal also calls for a conservation programme for the entire Kosi watershed to reduce erosion and runoff..The high dam, which would be double the height of Kathmandu´s Dharara tower, will create a reservoir of 256 sq km area up along the valleys of the Tamur, Arun and Sunkosi from where they meet at Tribeni (see page 23). Occupying about half the area of Kathmandu Valley, this reservoir would have a capacity {before sediment starts collecting) ofl3.45 billion cu m, holding back about a fourth of the river´s annual discharge. The impoundment would be 180 times larger than Indra Sarovar of the Kulekhani, the only reservoir project in Nepal..India, Nepal and BiharThe first Indo-Nepal discussions on the Kosi High Dam were held 49 years ago in Kathmandu, at which time Nepal had actually given the green signal to the Indian side. While India subsequently took the position that it was Nepal which has consistently blocked progress of the project, it is clear from available information that back then it was New Delhi which backed out, due to the high cost of the project. Originally estimated at about IRs 1 billion, the planners decided to give the project up after calculations showed the cost would come to IRs 1.77 billion..Unwilling to make the effort to raise the money for the high dam. New Delhi began to set up one committee after another, slowly weeding out the diehard proponents of the high dam. After a decade of dilly dallying, the high dam proposalgot converted to one for the Kosi Barrage. In order to under cut Khosla´s recommendation, the Government used his colleague in the Central Water from Commission, K.L. Rao, to argue that,with the Hwang Ho, the answer to flood control. the Kosi´s woes lay in embankments..Rao was used successfully by New Delhibureaucrats to undercut Khosla, but to this day Bihar´s engineering fraternity maintain that the Rao´s barrage was meant only to comple¬ment Khosla´s dam, not to replace it. As designed, the Kosi Barrage was expected to confine and channel the river´s sediment load effectively for no more than a quarter century— the apparent plan being to buy time with the barrage while the money was found to build the expensive dam..As it happened, the Indian side let the official lifespan of the Barrage to run out complete before it woke up—in 1981—to the need to brush up the high dam proposal. This was when the High Dam Feasibility Study Report was prepared. It does not appear that Nepal was consulted or involved in preparation of this study, whereas Nepalis had been part of the original field team back in 1946. The 1981 report put the estimated cost of the high dam at IRs 40.74 billion..Because Kosi is primarily a Nepali river and because the high dam would be built well within Nepaliterritory, the need to involve Kathmandu right from the initial discussions is obvious. In the days afterthe Kosi Agreement of 1954 on the building of the Kosi Barrage, Nepali ardour for adventure with India on the Kosi—including a high d am—had ebbed considerably. One reason is that the Barrage is widely believed in Kathmandu to have failed to deliver promised benefits to Nepal in terms of irri-gation and power generation. While New Delhi has for the last decade and half constantly pushed for the Kosi High Dam, enthusiasm is distinctly lacking among most Nepali planners and engineers..The Kosi Basin Master Plan, pre¬pared by the Japan International Co¬operation Agency QICA) for the Nepali government in 1985 and looking at the entire Kosi catchment area, also supported the concept of a high dam. The Japanese proposed a dam of 239 m height and their estimate for the project was more than double the Indian estimate ofl981, at U$ 2.77bill-ion in 1985 prices. The Master Plan differs from the Indian feasibility study in its support for the smaller Sunkosi Diversion Scheme, a proposal put forward by Nepal´s Irrigation Sec¬tor Master Plan Study of 1972. An idea that was first put forward by American geologist F. A. Nickle when hecamewiththeKhoslateaminl947, the Sunkosi Diversion today constitutes a major element in Nepali de¬mands in the Kosi negotiations..The Sunkosi is a major tributary of the Kosi that travels in an east-west direction through much of eastern Nepal with only a ridge of the Maha-bharat separating it from the plains to the south. The diversion scheme would build al6.6km tunnel through this ridge from a point known as Kuruley, and drop the Sunkosi waters into the headwaters of the Kamala River. In the process, 93 MW would be generated and 175,000 ha of land irrigated in the tarai districts of Siraha, Sarlahi, Dhanush a, Rautahat and Ba ra. Always having been saddled with barrages at the border from where the natural slopes take irrigation channels away from Nepali territory, the attraction of the Sunkosi diversion to Kathmandu planners is obvious..The Sunkosi Diversion does not hold much charm for the Indian side,however, which would rather control floods in North Bihar with the High Dam than irrigate the Nepali tarai. The JICA proposal was for reducing the Kosi High´s height in order to keep the intake point at Kuruley from getting submerged..The Nepali side has a strong promoter of the Kosi High in the person of Ananda Bahadur Thapa, the present Director of Government´s Water and Energy Commission Secretariat. While he supports the Kosi Diversion, Thapa believes that the height of the dam should not be reduced."Infact it should be increased to 350 metres or higher so that there are advantages in terms of power generation, irrigation and flood control." Thapa also believes in the navigation benefits to Nepal and Bihar, both of which are landlocked. "At an. additional cost of just three percent of the total project, it will be possible to build a 165 km-long canal from Chatara down to the Ganga..This will make it possible to lift cargo from as far away as Haldia and Calcutta ports."Thapa believes that the Kosi High Dam will have a catalytic effect on the economies of Bihar and Nepal, both of which will ultimately have to sink or swim together. Thapa´s views can also be said to reflect the policy of His Majesty´s Government. The Inception Report prepared by Kathmandu for the ongoing consultations with New Delhi calls for both the Sunkosi Diver¬sion and the Kosi Waterway..Rajiv to RaoDuring the 30 years that Kosi High Dam was in the backburner, Nepal had turned its attention and resources to Pancheswor and Karnali projects, the former to be built on the Mahakali river along the western border. On Karnali, Nepal spent about NRs 1 bil¬lion of its own money for an interna¬tional study. India went along while the study was being conducted, but ultimately withdrew its support from Karnali citing various objections it had, including lack of flood control and irrigation benefits, and that the power house would not be under Indian control. Nepali negotiators insisted on doing Karnali first, to be followed by Pancheswor and Kosi High, whereas the Indian officials wanted Kosi before any of the others..For nearly three decades, the Nepal-India talks on the Kosi had led nowhere. The High Dam came back into the picture in 1991 when then-Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala agreed to New Delhi´s proposal for a joint study. The Indian side had earlier chosen to regard Nepal´s proposal on the Sunkosi Diversion and the Kosi Waterway as preconditions for the talks, but it was now more amenable. With the political leadership having passed from Rajiv Gandhi to P.V. Narasimha Rao, there seemed to be a change of heart. Rao agreed during hisl992visitto Kathmandu to include Kosi navigation in the discussions. In December 1993, Indian Water Res¬ources Minister Vidya Charan Shukla agreed that any exercise on utilising the Kosi waters must give first priority to Nepal´s water needs. Finally, the Indian willingness to consider the Sunkosi Diversion was conveyed to Kathmandu only a few months ago..Cold WarriorsThe lack of progress that have marked the Kosi negotiations for nearly half a century could be ascribed to the undeclared cold war between Kathmandu and New Delhi. By the same token, the recent movement in negotiation may be put at the door of the change in leadership in India and a new political regime in Nepal. It is clear that there would have been even less progress had matters been left entirely in the hands of government bureaucrats. Nepali officials, even to¬day, suffer lack of expertise, and show extreme timidity. In India, even though the last Himalayan war was in 1962, South Block bureaucrats continue to look at Himalayan projects from a strategic rather than economic and humanitarian perspective. Take, for example, the issue on how to utilise the electricity to be generated by the Kosi High Dam..The Indian side has made it clear that India does not plan to base its power planning on the Kosi High Dam´s energy output. The millions of units to be produced will supposedly play only a supplementary role to India´s primary sources of power. No matter how reliable, cheap and abundant, India refuses to make the Kosi dam´s electricity output a mainstay of its grid for North India, which would be the obvious thing to do from a purely economic perspective..This position of New Delhi´s is regarded in Kathmandu with displeasure, if not suspicion. Kosi High´s primary benefit to Nepal would be from electricity sales and not from irrigation or flood control, and India´s unwillingness to give primacy to the High Dam in its power planning obviously means that it does not plan to pay the price Nepal expects..Adding 3000 MW of power into Bihar´s power grid would certainly increase the state´s {and thereby India´s) reliance on a dam in Nepali territory. It is likely that the Indian ne¬gotiators would have set more reliance on the high dam were they in a position to control its running, like they do the Kosi and the Gandak barrages.Speaking of economics, Nepal wants that in costing the benefits from Kosi High, the auditors should calculate the advantages other than electricity and irrigation, including flood control and the advantages of regulated waters. Nepal´s Inception Report argues that as things stand India will share in all the benefits of the Kosi High, while ill effects would all be Nepal´s to suffer. White thousands of hectares will be submerged in Nepal, Bihar will be able to reclaim vast stretches due to regulation of the flood waters..Taking advantage of the Indian recalci trance on this point, the Nepali side has been quick to try to drag New Delhi negotiators back to the Karnali. The argument runs thus: if you want to consider only irrigation and electricity benefits and do not regard flood control as a tangible benefit of Kosi High, why go for this project when the Karnali (Chisapani} dam is so much more attractive? The height of the Chisapani dam, at 270 m, is the same as that of Kosi High, but you are able to collect three time as much water in the reservoir, generate three times more electricity, and irrigate three times the area. However, the Indian side has not bought the argument..Buddhijibi vs. ActivistThe engineers of the Bihar Irrigation Department, the professors and poli¬ticians or Patna are all Kosi High fans. In discussion with Nepalis, the Bihar of¬ficials invariably divert conversations towards the need for the Kosi High Dam, at which point they become animated. How¬ever, the level of ignorance among those who argue so vociferously for the dam is astounding. The engi¬neers see no prob lems with the fact that the high sedi-ment-carrying capacity of the Kosi would severely cut short the life span of the reservoir. What would you do 40 years from now if the reservoir were to fill up completely? "Oh, then we would build another high dam," said one senior official nonchalantly..Within hearing of a dozen senior water officials at the Department of Irrigation´s meeting room in Patna, one engineer maintained that many check dams should be built in the entire Kosi catchment to block the sediments from getting to the main reservoir. "These small dams will trap the sediments and make the mountain slopes less severe, and hence there will be less erosion," he said, to an agreeable silence all around..Similarly, the water experts of Bihar had nothing to say about the devastation Bihar´s millions might face if there were to be a dam break in this seismic zone of the Himalaya. As for learning to live with floods, which is one of the major points of discussion in Bangladesh today, nothing could be further from the interests of bureaucrats and politicians. Simi¬larly, no one is willing to talk of alter¬natives to Kosi High, such as the pro¬posal that the Kosi´s flood waters be guided through its five or six former channels. This would diffuse the floodwaters in the plains without having to back them up with a barrage or dam..If the situation among the Patna buddhijibi who want the dam, and want it now, is marked by disinterest on the key details, in the Kosi floodplain of North Bihar, however, the question¬ing seems to have begun. This is particularly true in the region that falls under the "command area" of the east¬ern canal of the Kosi Barrage. In and around the towns of Saharsa, Purnea, Katihar and other towns, one hears a different tune than that which is heard in Patna meeting halls..Ranjeev, who as a member of the Ganga Mukti Andolan helped organise the fisherfolk of the Ganga, is sceptical of the promises made on the Kosi High Dam. The activist, who runs the Jayaprabha Research Centre in Madhupur, says, "All those who have suffered from the Kosi Barrage are going to oppose the Barrage are going to oppose the Kosi High Dam." Asked how this will happen, he replies staunchly, "We will. The dam is a conspiracy hatched by those who do not care for the people of North Bihar.".Ranjeev (who uses no surname) and his associates—journalists, teach¬ers, scholars—maintain that the Kosi Barrage has brought more sorrow to the command area inhabitants than benefits. They do not believe prom-ises of technical fixes and largesse from dams, and are convinced that Biharis should learn to live with floods rather than go for ever-more grandiose schemes whose fallout is unclear andlikely to be negative for the population of the immediate plains..Technological NeanderthalsHow could anyone be against a dam, one which delivers electricity, irri-gates land, controls floods, and provides navigation. That mega projects can invite mega problems rather than solutions is something that politicians and bureaucrats are inherently loathe to accept. The former is programmed to look only as far as the next elec-tions, and the first concern of officials is expanding their feif doms and stre¬ngthening their career ladders. The volume of money involved and the power one will enjoy, as well as the kickbacks that are part and parcel of building a large project, are further elements that make supporters of big dams so vehement. It is so easy to dismiss all those who would raise a cautionary finger as technological neanderthals, as anti-development cranks..In defence of the Kosi High Dam, it has been said that "big problems require big solutions". This was also the argument of Mao Zedong in the 1960s, when he was ordering his cadres to control the Hwang Ho. Mao directed the building of a series of dams on the river, one of which was the Sanmenxia Gorge Dam Project, which uprooted three hundred thou-sand people. Soviet engineers had predicted a life span of 50 years for the dam, but within two years the Sanmenxia Reservoir was all silted over, such was the volume of sedi¬mentation of the Hwang Ho. The 106 m high dam had to be dynamited..Closer to home, the Kulekhani reservoir has had its life span drastically reduced (it is said from 100 years to 15) mostly due to one extended cloud burst in the surround¬ing Mahabharat hills in July 1993. None of these examples, plus ex¬amples of recent cloud-bursts in the Kosi hills of eastern Nepal, seem to have made a dent on the Bihar engineers´ convictions as far as the Kosi High Dam is concerned..The Feasibility Study Report predicts that the reservoir will fill up in a hundred years, but it is more than likely that the reservoir could be an albatross within 25 to 50 years. When that happens, what is to be done with the flood problem, and what is one to do with the huge silt basin that will have been created behind the dam? This issue is yet to be discussed by anyone. While the entire opposition to the Tehri project seem to revolve around the issue of seismicity, it is enigmatic, to say the least, that it is hardly mentioned as part of the Kosi High discussions..It is possible that due to the high profile opposition to the Narmada and Tehri projects in India, and the West´s changing attitude towards high dams, lending agencies like the World Bank would be reluctant to fund a project like Kosi High, which would mean that the project would be limited for the moment to the drawing board.On the other hand, if there is a great flood-related disaster in Bihar, such as if the Kosi were to jump its embankments, the political pressure on the Indian Government to do something would be unprecedented..At that point, whichever government is in power in Kathmandu would not be able to withstand New Delhi´s pressures, and work on the Kosi High Dam would most likely begin. At that point, Kathmandu´s preference for Pancheswor or Karnali, geologists´ concerns with seismicity, activists´ concerns with social issues, and the planners preference for run-of-river projects would all be moot. The Kosi Barrage was built on the rebound as the Government of India felt the pressure after a massive and "historic" flood devastated Bihar on 23 August 1954. Similarly, might another similarly historic catastrophe force the Nepali and Indian government into constructing a Kosi High Dam, whether or not it is feasible, or desirable?.It is in the interest of both Bihar and Nepal to discuss, debate and decide on whether or not to go ahead with Kosi High at a time when political and populist pressures are still manageable. A decision that is pushed as a reaction to disaster might not be in the interest of either side, leas t of all the people of Nepal and Bihar.