We need to revisit history and learn a few things from Arun 3 to prepare for the future

Gopal Siwakoti Chintan
We are rich in water resources. We need electricity. We need projects. We also need foreign investment and technological assistance depending on the nature of the project. These are never issues of debate or controversy. But the problem is we have never learned anything that is useful and sustainable. We have all been happily engaged in a blame game, and we never have an interest to revisit the past and learn for the present. We have been doing exactly the same thing all along from the Arun 3 project to the West Seti project. There is not even one area of development that we can be proud of, including our water resources and hydropower development.

Back in the 1990s, no one in Nepal opposed Arun 3. The only “mistake” the advocates of an alternative approach to development and champions of human rights and democracy made was that they questioned the economic, financial and environmental aspects of this project. It was never to kill, but to improve so that Arun 3 had a long and healthy life! It was the non-transparent and unnecessary high costs that were opposed, and not the technicality of the project. It was the wrong financial arrangement that was questioned. It was the overall environmental mismanagement of the project that was challenged. It was never about saving some fish and butterflies by killing this project although they too are important for our ecosystem. But no one had any time, energy or patience to do a timely autopsy of Arun 3.

As concerned citizens, we did not plant any conspiracy against Arun 3. We thought democracy was about transparency and accountability, but we turned out to be wrong! Our leaders and political parties are still struggling to understand what democracy really means, let alone the application of values and norms of transparency and accountability in development undertakings. It was by accident that Dipak Gyawali had resigned from the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) over some differences about mismanagement of Arun 3. He did not oppose it totally. It was people like Bikash Pandey, Rajendra Dahal and Dr. Arju Deuba who had an alliance for energy who were asking that reforms be made in Arun 3 or the investment be diverted to other cheaper and better projects like Kali Gandaki A and Middle Marsyangdi.

Accidentally, my role was to question the project before the Supreme Court and the World Bank’s Inspection Panel for information disclosure by using the law. I was nothing more than an enthusiastic, young and high-voltage U.S.-returned academic-activist. To me, the main issue was of compliance with the existing policies, laws and procedures both of Nepal and the World Bank, the leading financier. The only strength on our side was that we all had come together at once and, as said by all, by accident! The most important accident of all was the birth of the Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post dailies and very bright and committed journalists who spread the news all over the world.

Fortunately, the problem of these new media icons was that they needed hot information regularly. Our problem was we needed such information to go out on a daily basis. For the old-time Nepali bureaucrats and the white-elephant-like World Bank, it became a “U” turning point for their mindset change and a “milestone” for the beginning of development debate during the first brand of the new Nepal of that time! But all our opponents thought we had formed an “Al Qaeda” to kill not only Arun 3 but also other projects in Nepal! It was all wrong! Totally wrong with full of falsehoods and nonsense! The World Bank withdrew from Arun 3 in August 1995 unilaterally.

We were worried about all these blame games thereafter. So we almost kept quiet on the Kali Gandaki A, Khimti, Bhote Koshi, Middle Marsyangdi and Melamchi projects. Very few of us remained alive after the accidental death of Arun 3, and many became mere consultants. It was mainly the operational failure of the NEA and the World Bank that caused the death of Arun 3, and none of us was responsible. We tried to help in the operation theatre as nurses, but we were completely ignored, rejected and thrown away. The doctors of this operation such as Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat, Pashupati Shumsher JBR, Dr. Binayak Bhadra and Dr. Janak Lal Karmacharya prevailed; but the patient, Arun 3, died of Jajarkot-type diarrhoea with the expert activists unable to provide any Jeevan Jal!

Their cries for help after the death of Arun 3 did not make any sense. But these guys never learned any lessons, and continued doing the same thing again and again which is now the West Seti fiasco! The lesson we activists learned was that, yes, sometime accidents are good! Arun 3 was a good accident, provided that we had visionary leaders and responsible donors afterwards.

Not to repeat the same accident, I wrote a booklet in Nepali in 1998 entitled West Seti Hydroelectric Project: All Benefits to India, All Profits to SMEC and All Losses for Nepal! Then the great Jhimruk activists, Lok B. Basnet and Yadav P. Gautam, travelled to the hills and valleys of the West Seti watershed in Bajhang and Doti with thousands of booklets on their soldiers like dhakre porters! Home to home! Door to door! This is how the seeds of change were planted in West Seti well in advance for better monitoring of its development outcome. By the time the Nepali version of Australian Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC) travelled to the project site to sell their dreams of development, the local people knew what to ask for and they did — which was benefit for locals and Nepal first before India!

Then several local people came to our contact out of which one innocent dam affected boy, Ratan Bhandari, has been the one leading the West Seti campaign on and keeping our Arun 3 spirit alive. He travelled from the gorges of his own rivers and streams and flooded the corridors of the Kathmandu, Sydney and Manila bureaucracies of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) — the leading financier in this project — with our genuine concerns and information. The ADB is one such institution that never learned a thing from Arun 3 to Khimti, Kali Gandaki A and Melamchi mess! We have said it many times before. Now the ADB is going to pay the price with the SMEC-West Seti scandal.

Bravo! Honourable Dr. Prakash Chandra Lohani, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee of the Constituent Assembly (CA), for taking up the issue of West Seti loopholes in the Legislative-Parliament. Your guts to investigate the Middle Marsyangdi hydro scandal was commendable. Your work of this kind shows we need some good and visionary leaders first. You are appearing to be one of the few now. Never too late, sir!

Additionally, in the past 12 years of continuous campaigns, we approached our “independent and democratic” Supreme Court twice asking for a parliamentary ratification of the West Seti deals first, but we “failed”!  Sadly, some of the brightest Hon. J. Anup Raj Sharma and J. Kalyan Shrestha of the court said West Seti was a private undertaking as agreed by the legitimate government, thus it was beyond any judicial scrutiny under article 156 of the Interim Constitution (article 126 previously). It further said that the SMEC-West Seti Hydro had every right to do business the way it wants, that is, to sell all the cheapest electricity to India but not to load-shedding-prone Nepal. Further, issues like flood control measures were none of its concern and the issue of lower riparian benefit for free surplus water benefit to India had nothing to do in business. Bravo! Supreme Court! Now we have to go somewhere else to seek justice for our rivers and people! Any contempt of court, please!

Let’s hope for the best! The investigation of all these issues by the Lohani Committee and the CA will be a milestone towards securing our disappearing riparian rights and a lesson for initiating good water and electricity projects for the future. Bring India or anyone else! Fine! But only according to our national interests, priorities and riparian rights! No rivers are for sale anymore at the time of the second brand of new Nepal! Let’s set some principles first before renewing the SMEC contract license made earlier by fishing in troubled rivers! Foreign investment is fine, but also on our terms and conditions, please!

Sopurce: The Kathmandu Post, 10 August 2009