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Dam Controversy Thickens in Bangladesh

06/08/09August 6, 2009

India plans to build the Tiapimukh dam on the Barak River in the northeastern state of Manipur, just 100 kilometres from its border with Bangladesh. But many Bangladeshis believe that the dam will be an ecological disaster and will have an extremely negative impact on their agriculture, navigation and fisheries. They want Delhi and Dhaka to provide more information.

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Bangladeshis fear the dam project will create desertification in the country's east
Bangladeshis fear the dam project will create desertification in the country's eastImage: AP

A Bangladeshi parliamentary delegation recently came back from surveying the proposed site of the Tiapimukh dam in Manipur and said its mission had been a success.

Abdur Razzak, from the Water Resources Ministry in Dhaka, explained what they saw: “We went there and we saw that there was no structure there. They (the Indians) have thought about it and there are plans but they are still studying how much environmental impact there will be.”

Razzak met Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday to apprise her of the situation. After the meeting, Hasina said the information provided by the Indian authorities to the delegation on the Tipaimukh project would be thoroughly scrutinised by experts.

Not enough information for the public

But Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, a senior leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, and also a former water resources minister, complained that the information was not yet in the public arena.

“We have been requesting the Indian government to provide us with the data on this project -- we do not know whether it will be a hydroelectric dam or a barrage. They finalised the details a long time back but have never provided us with the data. And now the Awami League delegation that went to India says it has data but this has not been made public.”

Dip Azad, a journalist in Dhaka, agreed that MPs and the general public needed more information on whether the project is “a power project, a dam or a barrage and whether it will protect us from the floods or will capture all the water from the Barak River.”

Fears that Farakka experience will be repeated

Dip believed that the public had a reason to expect the worst because of the experience with the Farakka barrage that was constructed by the Indian government over the Ganges River in 1974.

Many observers believe the barrage wreaked havoc on the Bangladeshi side, raising salinity levels, contaminating Bangladeshi fisheries and hindering navigation.

But the Awami League government appears satisfied with India’s assurances that the experience will not be like that of the Farakka barrage.

“They assured us that there will be no irrigation project so it will not be a barrage,” explained the parliamentary committee chairman Abdur Razzak, who met the Indian foreign minister and the power minister during his recent trip. “No water will be drawn from the Barak River. It is only a hydroelectric project that will produce power -- nothing more than that."

Dip said that the political parties were playing power games: “The government did not play a good role for the people of Bangladesh with Farakka. The opposition now is playing a political game. When the BNP was in power, it did not play a positive role against the Tipaimukh dam or barrage.”

As the political game continues and Dhaka sets to analysing the data from the Indian government, discontent within the general public seems only to be growing.

Author: Pukhraj Choudhary
Editor: Anne Thomas