Pakistan bid to escalate water war worries PM

Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s biggest concerns about Pakistan’s intentions are not limited to terror and infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir. They now extend to water. In recent months, Singh has, with growing dismay, watched Pakistani politicians ratcheting up the rhetoric on the Indus Water Treaty of 1960.

Ever since the Baglihar dam was built to run a hydro-electric project on the Chenab in 2008, Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari, prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and several opposition politicians have raised the decibel count on the sharing of waters under the treaty.

An advisor to Gilani went to the extent of saying that the issue could trigger a nuclear war. In January this year, Pakistani foreign secretary Salman Bashir sent a demarche to Delhi on the issue. To cap it all, Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, a key conspirator in the 26/11 attacks, has threatened mayhem over the Indus treaty.

Singh, who has staked a lot of political capital in reviving the stalled dialogue with Pakistan, is concerned about this issue being dragged into an already complicated bilateral relationship. “The Indus treaty has stood the test of time,” he says, pointing out that even during the three wars we fought with Pakistan, the flow of water was not disturbed.

When Gen Pervez Musharraf was in power, he had raised concerns about the Baglihar dam. To reassure him, Singh agreed to have a Swiss expert play the role of arbitrator.

His ruling more or less upheld the Indian view. “I have satisfied myself that Pakistan has nothing to fear on this front,” says Singh.
Under the Indus treaty, Pakistan gets all the water from the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, while India gets to use the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas waters.

India, however, is entitled to irrigate 1.3 million acres and store 3.6 million acre feet of water for flood control and hydel generation within the state of Jammu & Kashmir. The addition of the water dispute to the usual rhetoric on Kashmir has worsened the climate for a successful dialogue. “I am clear that without a peaceful neighbourhood, India cannot aspire to be a world leader,” Singh told a group of senior editors at an informal interaction in Mumbai on Friday. But, “it needs two hands to clap”.

On the domestic front, Singh answered several queries on the economy. If he had his way, oil pricing reform would be one of his top priorities. “Due to wrong pricing, we have created an incentive for overuse of diesel. We have dieselised the economy to our detriment. We cannot afford to subsidise people forever. I am told that if we do not reform, the under-recoveries of oil companies will be over Rs 80,000 crore this year. This is simply unsustainable.”

So what should we expect? Says Singh: “I hope there will be a national consensus on reforming fuel pricing. If we don’t, it will upset the budgetary finances.” That means stoking inflationary pressures once again. If the oil pricing challenge is a big headache, it is still not Singh’s No 1 sleep-wrecker domestically. It is infrastructure. He believes that India has many things going for it, and double-digit growth is within reach. But if infrastructure - roads, airports, power stations, et al - is not improved dramatically, it will hold us back.

Isn’t agriculture a bigger problem than just infrastructure? Especially when we have just witnessed a year of high food price inflation after a monsoon failure? But Singh sticks to his guns. The other day he told a meeting organised by the Planning Commission that India needs $1 trillion (about Rs 45,00,000 crore) over the next plan period (2012-17) just for infrastructure.

That’s more than twice as big as what we may be spending in 2007-12. “If we get infrastructure right, agricultural productivity will also improve,” he says. While farm technology and improved agro-practices are important, rural road connectivity and investments in storage and transport are critical.