1981 January Volume No XXVII NO 1 1995 CONTENTS Foreign Affairs Record VOL XXVII No 1 1981 January CONTENTS BANGLADESH Review Meeting of Ganges Waters Agreement: Speech by Rao Birendra. Singh 1 Bangladesh Minister's Speech at Review Meeting of Ganges Waters Agreement 6 HOME AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Message on 20th Anniversary of Belgrade Conference 13 President N. Sanjiva Reddy's Republic Day Message 14 India's Initiatives in Foreign Policy: A Review by Minister of External Affairs P. V. Narasimha Rao 15 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Inaugural Address at International Seminar on Islam's Contribution to Culture and Civilisation of the World with Special Reference to India 18 ITALY Indo-Italian Agreement on Avoidance of Double Taxation 21 JAPAN Japanese Grant Aid to India 22 MEXICO President N. Sanjiva Reddy's Speech at Banquet in Honour of Mexican President 22 Text of Mexican President's Speech 24 Programme of Cooperation Between India and Mexico 26 Indo-Mexican Joint Communique 27 MOROCCO India-Morocco Cultural and Scientific Agreement 30 NORWAY Indo-Norwegian Agreement Signed 30 POLAND Five-Year Indo-Polish Trade and Payments Agreement Signed 31 SRI LANKA Exchange of Radio and TV Programmes Between India and Sri Lanka 32 UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS Indo-Soviet Joint Commission Meets: Shri Nara- Simha Rao's Speech 33 Mr. I. V. Arkhipov's Speech 34 Minister of External Affairs P. V. Narasimha, Rao's Speech at Dinner in Honour of Soviet First Deputy Prime Minister Arkhipov 36 Press Note on Indo-USSR Joint Commission Session 38 UNITED KINGDOM Fourth Meeting of Indo-British Economic Committee: Agreed Minutes Signed 39 NGLADESH YUGOSLAVIA INDIA ITALY JAPAN MEXICO MOROCCO NORWAY POLAND SRI LANKA USA Date : Jan 01, 1981 Volume No XXVII NO 1 1995 BANGLADESH Review Meeting of Ganges Waters Agreement: Speech by Rao Birendra Singh Following is the text of the speech by Rao Birendra Singh, minister (Agriculture, Rural Reconstruction and Irrigation) at the Review Meeting of Ganges Waters Agreement held at New Delhi on Jan 07, 1981: Your Excellency, I have great pleasure in welcoming you and the members of your Delegation to this Second Inter-Governmental meeting for the First Review of the Indo-Bangladesh Agreement on sharing of the Ganga Waters at Farina and Augmenting its flows. I hope your stay will be fruitful, pleasant and comfortable. Excellency, in the earlier round of the Review talks held in Dacca last November, it was agreed that each side would submit reports on Parts A and B of the 1977 Agreement. The two sides accordingly furnished to each other these reports on the 19th December, 1980. Apart from considering these reports, in our present round of talks, we have to decide the dates for the third and final round of Ministerial discussions. AS the Indian delegation repeatedly emphasised in the last round of talks, it is incumbent on us to bring the review to a conclusion as early as possible. In our Review Report, we have taken great care to be strictly objective and have attempted to furnish all the relevant data to enable a proper assessment to be made by the two Governments on the working, impact, implementation and progress of the arrangements contained in the Agreement. We have demonstrated how Indian interests have grievously suffered by the operation of Part A of the Agreement while adverse effects in Bangladesh have at worst been marginal. We have also demonstrated the factors responsible for the failure to implement the provisions of Part B of the Agreement. Permit me, Your Excellency, to deal briefly with the approach reflected in Part A of the Bangladesh Report. BANGLADESH REPORT The Bangladesh Report on Part A dwells at some length on the so- called historical rights of Bangladesh to the Ganga waters and an assertion of the right to so called natural flows. In fact, continuance of historical flow amounts to a total denial of beneficial development and the principle of equitable sharing of waters for beneficial uses enshrined in international practice. Assertion of a right to so-called natural flows amounts to claiming a veto on the rights of the upper riparian to a reasonable and equitable share of the waters of e common rivers. Its acceptance would obstruct the rights of other riparians to implement development plans designed to u e the water resources of the basin, thus perpetuating economic stagnation, accentuating human suffering and impeding progress to which, I am afraid, India cannot agree. India, in any view, is by far the major riparian country for the Ganga waters; in terms of catchment area - 99 per cent, population - 94 per cent, and area dependent on waters - 94.5 per cent. India is thus entitled to an equitable and proponderant share of the Ganga waters taking into account relevant factors such as the geography and hydrology of the basin, economic needs, population, availability of other resources, avoidance of waste, past use, current needs and the comparative cost of alternative means and other factors. There can be absolutely no obligation to leave intact the existing quantum of flows. INDIA'S CASE For 90 per cent of its length -1,925 km - the main channel of the Ganga <pg-1> flows through India, with its principal tributaries it flows through 8,000 kin of Indian territory with a catchment area in India of 777,000 sq km. The geographical area in India dependent on the Ganga is 211 million acres (84 million ha) with a population of over 250 million. In 1971 more than 40 per cent of the country's total population and cultivable area of 1.50 million acres in the basin and large areas elsewhere were dependent on the Ganga waters. Com pared with this, the length in Bangladesh is a mere 141 kin (excluding the common boundary of 112 km.) The total length of the Ganga and tributaries in Bangladesh is hardly 173 km, the area in Bangladesh is hardly 0.7 per cent of that in India. The area is blessed with heavy rainfall avid has the possibility of being served by the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. The relative rights and needs of India and Bangladesh on the Ganga waters could well be imagined by any objective and well accepted criteria In fact, the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna is one large international drainage basin of which Ganga is just one part. Instead of perpetuating shortages of the Ganga flows, our attempt has been to optimise the development of the flow in the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna as available to India. and Bangladesh for meeting the needs of both countries. It was in this context, that the Agreement af 1977 was entered into by India in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation at great sacrifices of her legitimate interests and rights and in the expectation that it would be possible to evolve with the cooperation of Bangladesh a scheme for the cooperative development of the abundant water resources in the region available to the two countries to meet the requirements of both countries in full measure. We are disappointed at the sweeping assertions made in the Bangladesh document without any supporting data. For example, it has been alleged that salinity in the Khulna, area in Bangladesh had a direct relationship to the flows at Hardinge Bridge. It has been stated that Gorai flows had been affected causing problems, without indicating the basis on which an assessment has been made. It is said that agricultural production has gone down without analysis of the causes, the trend of these activities in the rest of Bangladesh and the importance of various other relevant factors etc. The data available to us clearly demonstrates that the salinity in the south-west region, in and around Khulna, is affected by local runoff and monsoon rainfall and is independent of the discharges flowing in the Ganga. Even otherwise, it is well known that waters with electrical conductivity of 5,000 microhms or more are being used in various parts of the world for irrigation particularly paddy, with or without suitable agronomic practices. There is massive evidence based on officially published data in Bangladesh that the performance in the agricultural, fisheries and other sectors in the areas in Bangladesh claimed to be dependent upon Padma waters since the operation of the Farina barrage has been in line with the trend of these sectors in the rest of Bangladesh and has been even better in certain respects. It flows from it that the monetary values assigned by Bangladesh of the losses suffered in these sectors due to the withdrawals of water by India at Farina are without any factual basis and hence misleading. It is quite clear that no adverse effects were in fact caused at all in Bangladesh as a result of the withdrawals at Farina. It is our considered opinion that no useful purpose would be served by entering into such extravagant claims and extraordinary charges in the report, totally unsupported by data, that the withdrawals at Farina have given rise to increased incidence of hypertension, have resulted in change in rainfall pattern, temperature change and wind movement and have led to the monsoon behaving in an erratic fashion. PRESERVATION OF CALCUTTA PORT We are also disappointed to note that the Bangladesh document by innuendo casts doubts on the very purpose of the Farina, Barrage project. I should draw the attention of your Excellency to the comprehensive data supplied to the Bangladesh side ever since 1960 including clarifications. Whatever additional information they had needed at every stage was also furnished. Your Excellency would recall that in 1974 <pg-2> the results of the latest studies made were also furnished to Bangladesh side.