The acre feet fuss
in passing the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has defied the law of the land and taken on the Supreme Court and the Union government. The Act renders null and void all legal agreements and treaties forged till date regarding sharing the water of the rivers Ravi and Beas with neighbouring Haryana and Rajasthan. Singh heads a Congress government. This move is like a political boomerang to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (upa) at the Centre. Why has the seasoned politician opted for collision, with party bosses and the apex court?
"No part of Haryana or Rajasthan falls within the basin of Ravi and Beas and none of these flows through these States,' complains the Act. Yet both use the rivers, and Punjab, "a good neighbour', "has accepted this by sufferance'. But it can no longer play good Samaritan. As per the tripartite agreement signed on December 31, 1981, by the governments of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, once the construction of the Satluj-Yamuna link canal (syl) is completed, the amount of water allotted to Haryana will jump from its current share of 1.62 million acre feet (maf) to 3.5 maf. But Punjab cannot allow such large-scale inter-basin transfer. Realities have undergone a sweeping change in the interim. In 1981, the total amount of water available in the river basins was assumed to be 17.17 maf. But now, as per the flow series of 1981-2002, it has dropped to 14.37 maf. Therefore, diversion of water will have "permanent adverse impact' on the state's irrigation and render about 9,00,000 acres (about 3,64,218 hectares) of basin area "dry and barren'.
There is no longer enough water to share.
"Punjab argues that the Ravi-Beas basins are water-deficit. To gauge how legitimate its claim is one must know how much water is actually available for distribution. That is, in fact, the crux of the entire debate,' says A Vaidynathan, professor emeritus at the Chennai-based Madras Institute of Development Studies. The bone of contention is the surplus flow of Ravi and Beas. It has been doled out to the states at various times in various proportions. In 1955, Punjab and the then undivided Patiala and East Punjab States Union (pepsu) were allocated 7.2 maf. Later, in 1966, this region was reorganised into Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Punjab and Haryana were asked to work out a mutually acceptable settlement of the 7.2 maf jointly allotted to them. The two states could not agree on a figure; so began a bickering that's turned into a pitched battle. In 1976, the Union government stepped in (see: Raging inter-state war).
How much? And who tells? If the proportion of the water available in the basins is so hot an issue, how is this amount measured? It is calculated on the basis of the volume of water available in the reservoir sites
