economy and river linking

“The EU and Canada have inked an investment pact that has incorporated the contentious ISDS. At the meeting (of trade ministers of select countries held on the sidelines of the recently held World Economic Forum in Switzerland), they wanted theinvestment pact to be the template for a similar multilateral agreement. India summarily rejected such an idea,”Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman told reporters. Japan also opposed the idea on the grounds of the costs involved in international arbitration, she said.

“Only after all local options have been exhausted for settling disputes between a corporate and a government, do we want to permit issues to be taken up in international arbitration tribunals. Such provisions could be a part of bilateral agreements but they can’t be allowed in a multilateral agreement,” Ms.Sitharaman said.

She said at the recent trade ministers’ meeting held in Switzerland, India pushed for discussions on its proposal for a Trade Facilitation in Services (TFS) Agreement at the WTO-level. The pact, among other things, aims to facilitate easier movement of skilled workers and professionals across borders for short-term work.

The Centre is implementing Market Intervention Scheme (MIS) on the request of the states for procurement of agriculture and horticulture commodities that are perishable and not covered under Price Support
Scheme, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today said.

The MIS is implemented to protect growers'  interests to avoid distress sale in the event of bumper crop when prices tend to fall below the economic levels/cost of production, he informed the Lok Sabha during Question Hour.

The MIS is implemented to protect growers' interests to avoid distress sale in the event of bumper crop. Reuters

He said procurement under MIS may be made by NAFED as the central agency or by agencies designated by states. Losses incurred by the procuring agencies will be shared between Central government and concerned state government on
50:50 basis (75:25 in case of North-Eastern states), he said.

However, the amount of loss to be shared between the Centre and state governments is restricted to 25 percent of procurement cost. Profit earned by procuring agencies is retained by them, he said.

Environmentalists are drawing attention to the irreversible damage that reduced downstream flows would have on a river’s ecology and biodiversity. A change in the ecology of the River Ken on account of the Ken-Betwa link project in central India is expected to doom the already critically endangered gharial. Also, this project would submerge around 10 percent of the Panna Tiger reserve, reversing the huge gains of India’s tiger conservation project.

Experts have also challenged some of the assumptions on which the ILR is based. Questioning the concept of “surplus water,” for instance, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay and Shama Perveen maintain that there is no “‘surplus’ water, because every drop performs some ecological service all the time.” Others have pointed out that a river assessed to have “excess” water today may not have that “surplus” tomorrow.  This is important particularly in the context of climate change impacting glacier masses and water volumes in the Himalayan rivers, argues Ashvani Gosain, professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, pointing out that if these perennial rivers “don’t retain the character of donor basins,” the ILR plan would collapse.

There is concern too that the ILR program would add to India’s already long list of festering water-related conflicts. The ILR has many opponents; key “donor” states like Bihar, Odisha, Kerala, and the Northeastern states are not on board with the plan. Odisha, for instance, dismisses claims that its Mahanadi river has “surplus” water as over the half the state’s 30 districts are drought prone. Without Odisha’s participation and the Mahanadi’s “excess” water, the peninsular component of the ILR would be weakened. The Mahanadi-Godavari link is critical to eight other downstream river links.

Even if states get on board the project now, conflicts could emerge in future between donors and recipients should the former run out of “surplus” water. Such conflicts could manifest in violence targeting each other’s populations and ILR infrastructure, as is often visible in the ongoing dispute over sharing of the River Cauvery.

While the ILR program is about linking rivers in India, its neighbors are watching how it unfolds with apprehension.

The ILR program’s Himalayan component envisages construction of reservoirs on the principal tributaries of the Ganga and the Brahmaputra in India and Nepal, and involves transfer of water from the eastern tributaries of the Ganga to the west, apart from linking the Brahmaputra to the Ganga and the Ganga to the Mahanadi.

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