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Many women who used to work in the rice mills are now jobless Nahar, 35,
for example, is now a beggar in Meherpur town. "I was not a beggar," she
says, "I used to work in the rice mills. But then business was bad as
harvests were affected. There was not enough work for all the 20 women
working in the mills, boiling and drying rice. Farm work also vanished
as crops failed. I had no alternative but to go begging."
The water crisis originated
when the Farakka Barrage, located 19 kilometres from the Indo-Bangladesh
border, was commissioned in 1975. Since then the water flow in the Padma
has been reduced by about 40 per cent.
The two neighbouring
countries reached an agreement on Ganges water sharing in 1977 which
expired in 1989. Since then there has not been any fresh agreement
between the two countries making Farakka a blistering issue between
them.
According to available
statistics, Bangladesh recorded the lowest 9,200 cusec of water flow in
1993 which at present varies between 12,000 and 13,000 cusec in the dry
season. Before commissioning the Barrage, the water flow fluctuated
between 65,000 cusec and 70,000 cusec.
Meanwhile, as the water
flow dwindled, the G-K project failed to irrigate about 48,000 hectares
of dry cropland for high yielding crops last year. It is still uncertain
how much of the 350,000 acres of the project will be covered this year,
as the lean season starts. Government estimates put the loss due to the
failure of the G-K project at over $75 million.
Tampering with the
ecosystem which the Barrage has done, has had devastating effects on the
environment. One of them has been the gradual death of the River Padma.
From Charulia, under Mirpur thana of Kushtia; the once mighty Padma
looks more like a broad expanse of dwindling waterway, scattered with
shoals and sand dunes, conjuring unmistakable signs of desertification.
During the dry season, a
period becoming increasingly longer with time, an enormous amount of
silt is collected which remains even when the flood gates of the Barrage
are opened, says Hasna Moudud, an active environmentalist who has been
campaigning against the Barrage for years.
"This rise in siltation has
made the flood prone areas even more vulnerable," says Moudad. "The
after flood effects have also been strangely negative. Previously when
the floods ended, the earth would be replenished and ready for new crops
to be sown. Now the moisture evaporates so fast due to siltation that
the soil is left completely dry and unfit for agriculture. Natural
aquifers have also been destroyed in the process."
Already the north western
and south western parts of Bangladesh are going through a process of
desertification.
According to Bangladesh
Water Development Board statistics, around four million acres of land
have been affected by withdrawal of water resulting in irrigation loss,
moisture depletion and increased salinity endangering the lives of about
40 million people.
"There is a strong
misconception worldwide," says Moudud, "that Bangladesh is a country of
too much water. It is true we have as many as 52 rivers coming from
India. But we have absolutely no control over them and India has built
dams on practically all of them or is planning to do so in the near
future."
The continued evasion of
the Indian authorities and its failure to recognize the adverse effects
of Farakka has caused much bitterness In Bangladesh.
Other effects on the
environment are equally frightening. The Gorai, once a major river, is
almost dead and many others are in the process of drying up. About 17
per cent of the total Sundari trees of the Sundarbans, the world's
largest estuarine swamp, have already fallen prey to the top-dying
syndrome due to increased salinity, according to forest department
officials. This is threatening the survival of the few Royal Bengal
Tigers that are left.
While the ecological
balance of the rivers are threatened, the misery of an estimated 40
million people continues to increase. Due to the increased salinity a
newsprint mill and a power plant in the coastal Khulna region may have
to close down, throwing large numbers out of work.
Since the breeding areas of
fish have been affected and rivers dried up, many thousands of fishermen
and boatmen have lost their only means of livelihood. Many have migrated
to the cities and are now rickshaw-pullers or daily wage labourers,
earning only a fraction of what they did before. "Most of the fishing
villages in the Kushtia district of Khulna division in the south west
region have virtually disappeared in recent years," says Ashok Swain,
Assistant Professor, Uppsala University of Sweden,
estimating that around two million people from Kushtia and Rajshahi have
left without a trace. Two decades have passed since the building of a
barrage that has been sucking out the life of Bangladesh. In the busy
streets of capital Dhaka, Kafiluddin, 38, still dreams of returning to
his village in Bheramara while he paddles his rickshaw through the
impossible traffic jams and feels repulsed at the thought of going
'home' to the squalid slum he shares with his four-member family.
Three years ago he was a
farmer harvesting his own paddy fields. Kafil cannot let go of the hope
that someday the water will come back allowing him to return to his
village home. Like him there are many others waiting for such a miracle
to happen.
Inam Ahmed and Aasha Mehreen Amin are feature writers with the Daily
Star in Bangladesh. Inam Ahmed is also a contributor to Rivers of Life (Panos/BCAS,
London, 1994), which critically examines the Bangladesh Flood Action
Plan. |
