A review of the output of the techno- exuberant school of thought.
By the mid-1980s, it was already apparent that something was seriously amiss with the much-vaunted Himalayan hydro bonanza. The Farakka Barrage was souring relations between India and Bangladesh a s the impasse over lean se as on water sharing became more intractable. Nepal was wasting its available soft credit on the fourth feasibility study of a high dam on the Karnali with a multi-billion price tag, even though few really believed that the effort would bring India and Nepal any closer to meaningful agreement.
Within India itself, social and environmental activists were challenging conventional and official thinking on the Tehri and Narmada dam projects and highlighting hitherto hidden costs. It was obvious that the conventional school had failed to deliver, but what could be a new approach? There were two schools of thought beginning to develop: one (to which this reviewer belongs) said we need to try something different that is less centralised or bureaucratised, more sensitive to the grassroots farmers or consumers, and appreciative of the tremendous uncertainties in Himalayan waters and societies; the other said let´s move on the same track charted earlier, but faster, more massively.
It was at this moment of quandary that a three-country non-governmental study, funded by The Ford Foundation, was initiated on regional cooperation in harnessing what is now called the "Eastern Himalayan" rivers, namely the Ganga, the Brahmaputra and the Barak-Meghna.
Hopeful Waters
The output of this effort has been in the form of four books: three country perspectives, published or in draft form by 1993, and one joint synthesis volume in 1994. But in a conceptual sense, all four books present themselves as annexes to B.G. Verghese´s 1990 volume entitled Waters of Hope, {see Himal review May/Jun 1991). In that 446-page work, Verghese attempted an ambitious task of transcending national segmentation and departmental myopia to put forth a regional perspective—covering Nepal, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh as well as sectors such as electricity, irrigation, flood control, navigation, fishery, pollution, water laws, displacement and seismic hazards—that would highlight the limitless cornucopia in the waiting and simultaneously help overcome mistrust and fears of the regional riparians.