PAKISTAN government’s invitation to the entire leadership of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) to visit Pakistan is a development of far-reaching significance as it will prepare the ground for the Kashmiri involvement in the ongoing Pakistan-India peace process. The APHC leadership, expected to travel by the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus on June 2, will hold the first intra-Kashmiri dialogue on the Kashmir dispute with Azad Kashmir leaders, besides holding discussions with the government of Pakistan.

The APHC leadership’s visit to Pakistan has been awaiting New Delhi’s green signal for more than four years. Indian home minister L.K.Advani rejected the Kashmiri leaders’ request to visit Pakistan in March 2001 on the ground that they would not be allowed to act as a “mediator” between India and Pakistan. But this time there is going to be no objection from the Indian side as the APHC’s visit was mutually agreed upon during President Musharraf’s discussions with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April in New Delhi.

It is no secret that there are moderates as well as hardliners within the APHC which is after all a loose alliance of as many as 23 political parties and groups. During his April visit to New Delhi, President Musharraf held a four-hour meeting with Hurriyat leaders. He also met Yasin Malik (JKLF leader) and Shabbir Shah (Democratic Freedom Party leader). In his interaction with Kashmiri leaders, he told them that India’s invitation to them for talks could also be considered as a first step for their inclusion in a trilateral dialogue.

Asserting that the bus service was agreed to after gauging the popular demand, President Musharraf said he could not understand the logic behind the opposition to the bus service. To a question about the demand of Kashmiri groups for inclusion in the dialogue process, President Musharraf said that as India was not accepting trilateral talks they should hold talks with India and Pakistan separately. He, however, made it clear that without their (Kashmiris) wishes there could not be a solution.

Two points raised by the Kashmiri leaders deserve serious consideration by New Delhi. Their first grievance related to human rights violations by the Indian army engaged in “anti-terrorist” activities. The other grievance related to the almost total denial of political space to APHC which is detrimental to a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir issue because this will compel Kashmir freedom fighters to remain underground and resort to violence.

President Musharraf has rightly observed that efforts should be made to withdraw the Indian army and make life better for the Kashmiri people. In view of the situation that prevails now in Kashmir, the Indian army engaged in counter terrorist operations, like the Rashtriya Rifles, should be withdrawn as that would help push the peace process forward. New Delhi and Islamabad have to realize that they will never be able to resolve any bilateral issue, let alone the complicated Kashmir dispute, unless they start trusting each other and making sure they don’t abuse each other’s trust.

The most interesting — and perhaps the most significant — feature of the Musharraf-Manmohan Singh interaction has been that, for the first time in more than five decades, the top leadership of the two rival nations has started to speak more or less the same language or in the same tone indicating that they have begun thinking along converging lines. Each one has been positive and upbeat to describe their talks, using sometimes the same or similar words or phrases.

At the Jakarta summit, President Musharraf said: “Pakistan and India could be jointly proud of showing sincerity, flexibility and courage that could lead to the bilateral achievement of peace and harmony”. In turn, Prime Minister Singh said in Jakarta: “The breathtaking pace of change in our times gives us an opportunity and a responsibility to act decisively.” He also told the Indian reporters accompanying him, “I really believe that if this process is allowed to go forward it will create a climate conducive to the final settlement” (of the Kashmir dispute).

That the two leaders have not only been able to keep the peace process on track but have also made substantial progress towards the final settlement of bilateral disputes is a remarkable achievement. But their real task, a daunting one, has just begun: they have to carry their respective peoples along with them. They have to create a national consensus on the policies being followed by them. Both will have to fend off “bouncers” and “beamers” from the boisterous anti-peace lobbies in both the countries, as one analyst has graphically put it. Keeping in view the democratic traditions firmly established in India, Prime Minister Singh’s task appears to be comparatively easier than the one being faced by President Musharraf who may run into rough weather.

The peace elements in Pakistan have no problem with President Musharraf’s broad contours of the Kashmir policy and wish him well in his efforts to secure an honourable peace with India. But his insightful supporters and observers of his policies are getting concerned over the sustainability of those policies without the involvement of various stakeholders and constituencies created and maintained by the establishment over the years.

The nation has been fed during the past five decades on the slogan of “Kashmir banega Pakistan” (Kashmir will become Pakistan). Any departure from that prospect is bound to lead to bewilderment and frustration. No one yet knows how they will ultimately react to pronouncements like Kashmir cannot be resolved on the basis of religion or that borders have to be made irrelevant for the ultimate solution. It is incomprehensible that no effort has so far been made by the policy makers or their officials to explain the logic and rationale of the policies being followed or the pronouncements being made. In short, nothing is being done to educate and prepare public opinion to accept a viable Kashmir solution.

It is over two years since the peace process began and yet the Pakistani parliament has not so far had an opportunity to have even once a full-fledged debate over the issue. It is not, therefore, surprising that the gap in the thinking of the policy-makers at the top and the various tiers of the administration is widening. The time has come to remove all these anomalies for the sake of creating as wide a support for the policies being followed as possible.

As was to be expected, the All Parties Conference on Kashmir, organized by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) has rejected the Kashmir policy of the government and declared that no solution to the dispute would be acceptable that did not reflect the aspirations of the people of Kashmir and the sentiments of the people of Pakistan. The APC was attended by the representatives of some 50 political parties and different organizations of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, including the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Jamiat-i-Ulema-Islam (JUI-F), Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).

As is customary with opposition parties in Pakistan, the APC has taken a rejectionist stand without providing an alternative and viable Kashmir policy. The PPP and the PML-N, being mainstream political parties, should act more responsibly on Pakistan’s Kashmir policy. In India, there has been a consensus between the government in power and opposition parties on the salient features of Kashmir policy. We should try to evolve the same process in Pakistan and create a consensus on a viable Kashmir policy.

It is an irony of history that President Musharraf is following almost the same policies which Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif tried to follow in relation to India. Benazir Bhutto’s formulation on soft borders and her policy to have a sustained dialogue with India were condemned as anti-national. Nawaz Sharif’s Lahore process was a similar attempt to solve bilateral problems with India through a peace process. The only “missing link” in the Lahore process was the Pakistan army and that was the undoing of the peace process.

The Kashmir issue should remain above party politics or personal enmities. This is a national issue of utmost importance and should not be exploited for petty political or personal gains. Since the religious extremists have their own agenda, they are not likely to support any compromise formulation on Kashmir. President Musharraf should, therefore, take mainstream political parties into confidence and seek their support for a viable Kashmir policy. If the president succeeds in evolving a national consensus around his Kashmir policy, it will immensely help him in his negotiations with the Indians.

The writer is a former ambassador.

I DO not understand why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken certain decisions at the end of his one-year rule — decisions that do not fit in with his style of functioning. Nor are they part of his make-up. They do not bring him any glory. If anything, they confirm the general impression that he is not his own master.

Take the appointment of Navin Chawla as election commissioner. He may be an efficient officer. But he carries the taint of atrocities committed during the emergency. His name is mentioned several times in the report of the Shah Commission which went into the excesses. That Chawla is close to the dynasty — he was Sanjay Gandhi’s Man Friday — is all the more objectionable because, by sheer seniority, Chawla will be the chief election commissioner in 2009 when the general election is due.

In his farewell remark, the outgoing chief election commissioner Krishnamurthy woefully said that he feared the politicization of the commission. Maybe, he had Chawla’s selection in mind.

I do not see any difference between Chawla’s appointment by the Congress and that of Sharma by the BJP as member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Chawla has been rewarded for his proximity to the dynasty and Sharma for his assistance to former home minister, L.K. Advani, to untangle himself from the charges in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

Chawla was nearly appointed home secretary but kept back intentionally because he had only a few months left in service. As election commissioner, he gets five years. For Sharma, the vacancy in NHRC was kept unfilled for six months until he retired from the CBI directorship. His tenure is for six years.

Again, political considerations seem to have weighed with Manmohan Singh when his government decided not to accept the Phukan commission’s exoneration of former defence minister, George Fernandes, from allegations of corruption in defence deals. No doubt, Fernandes wrongly allowed Justice Phukan and his wife to go on a junket using a defence aircraft. But this is an act of indiscretion for which Fernandes can be asked to pay and cannot be the basis for rejecting the report which is categorical in its pronouncement.

Justice Phukan says in his report that after examining the records of each of the past transactions and the evidences, both oral and documentary, “it has found that there was no illegality or irregularity” in the 15 defence transactions referred to the commission.

The government did not want to make the report public. It was the Lok Sabha speaker who directed the government to lay it on the table of the house.

Strange, Manmohan Singh should have agreed to hold back the release the Nanavati Commission report on the 1984 riots. Even after 21 years of riots in which 3,000 Sikhs were killed on a single day in Delhi alone, the government is not willing to face the truth, only a part of which has come out. Is it because the Congress government was in power then? If wounds have not healed for more than two decades, the delay of a few more moths will not matter.

I talked to Justice Nanavati after he submitted the report. He had no words to describe the tragedy. He said that the murder and rapine were deliberate, planned and fomented by certain Congress leaders. The party may have a problem of dealing with those named in the report, but the question that the party should ask itself is: should such people be permitted to stay in the Congress?

Politics or convenience is not the word which I associate with Manmohan Singh. Why didn’t he put his foot down and dismiss all pleas against the release of the report? As a member of the Rajya Sabha, I have watched his performance for six years. I could never imagine that if he were ever at the helm of affairs, he would let petty party considerations prevail over what was legally and morally right.

What should I make out from what has happened in Bihar on the eve of his completing his one-year rule? The prime minister announced one day amidst applause that the bane of the administration was the frequent transfer of district magistrates and superintendents of police. But within 24 hours, the Bihar governor, Buta Singh, the centre’s instrument of power, sent on leave two district magistrates, who had challenged Shahabuddin and the second Sadhu Yadav, the known tainted persons.

Politically placed as Bihar was, there was probably no escape from another election. But it is obvious that the exercise began when Ram Vilas Paswan’s men started moving towards Nitish Kumar, an important functionary in the BJP-led NDA. The governor should have gone over the exercise of inviting different political parties to assess their strength before recommending the assembly dissolution. The centre has betrayed unnecessary haste.

It hardly matters that the left kept away from the UPA celebrations of the one-year rule. The left cannot thus wash its hands off the responsibility for failures of the government. After all, the left is part of the UPA apex body, presided over by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. It is also privy to the common minimum programme (CMP) and joins in the occasional exercises carried out to assess what went wrong and why.

By openly expressing unhappiness over the government’s lack of performance the left leadership may placate the cadres but not the people. Even the rare threat that the Congress cannot take the left for granted has become a cliche. My worry is that the left is beginning to enjoy the limelight it gets because of the association with the government. Comrades are being taken in by the “importance” that both Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi are giving them. The prime minister calls them for breakfast and reportedly takes them into confidence. Sonia Gandhi invites them to her residence and often agrees with their point of view. Has the left assessed the government performance in terms of the common man’s lot?

The cost of living is going up practically every week. Weavers, cobblers, ironsmiths or people of similar professions have been without job for months. Unorganized labour, whose amelioration is included in the CMP, is only receiving dose after dose of promises. And there is no well thought-out programme to provide drinking water.

Probably, one year is too short a period for the results to fructify. The left could have at least ensured that the Congress did not hijack key appointments. Manmohan Singh has not shown any less nepotism than the Vajpayee government. But I am told that the comrades have also recommended the name of their “men” to positions in the government and its committees. I never imagined that the left would become a part of the furniture so soon.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.

AT a time when America, one of the world’s biggest proliferators of dams, is busy tearing down what it can to save and rehabilitate the country’s badly-mauled environment, Pakistani proponents of big dams are clashing with those already suffering inadequate water supplies in fear of further shrinkage and the death of their agriculture. Today in America, dam removal outpaces dam construction.

Low, usually temporary dams designed to operate with nature to leave minimum negative impact while drawing maximum benefit from it have been part of history in much of the world, especially South Asia, although the Sumerians who built an irrigation-based economy made some serious mistakes so that severe salinization still plagues present-day Iraq 8,000 years later.

The average life of the modern, concrete dam is 50 years (40-45 years in the US), and tends to get silted up much quicker. Built to outlast utility by hundreds of years without taking into account the soil, and deeper geological and biological considerations, the big dam has proved to be the most damaging and the least cost-effective invention of the 19th and 20th centuries for both humans and the environment. US data shows operating costs soar after 25 to 35 years because of increasing need of repairs.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt hired the brilliant educator-engineer-philosopher and visionary Arthur Morgan as the first chairman to set up and head the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency charged with producing hydroelectric power and water supply. Morgan did not merely focus on dams but concurrently on conservation, forestry and soil erosion programmes. But TVA never became a viable economic entity and survived on heavy subsidies, much as similar dam-oriented institutions do all over the world.

Incorruptible to the core, Morgan clashed with senior official and vested interests so that he was forced to resign after five years. But he continued to struggle against the mindless mega-dam-building that had gathered steam. He wrote the compelling book, “Dams And Other Disasters” in which he spelt out from first-hand experience why big dams should not be built. So it was not as if the South did not have ample advance warning.

But the South Asian governments took no notice. In 1948, when he was invited to be an economic development adviser by the Indian government on the basis of his innovative work with the TVA, he shocked them by advising against mega-projects. But the leaders were already hypnotized by the modern-day equivalent of a sphinx to showcase their country with, and went ahead anyway. They didn’t listen to Fritz Schumacher either (of ‘Small Is Beautiful’ fame) who gave them the same advice in the 1950s. The message was just as lost on Pakistan.

In the past 80 years, the US has removed over five hundred dams — about 180 in the past decade alone. None of them were mega-dams which are impossible to demolish without causing unacceptable destruction to life and property, either because heavy metals and other toxic contaminants from agriculture have accumulated in the reservoirs, or urbanization has taken place in the path that billions of tons of released water would take if they were demolished. But the step rehabilitated the environment and restored fish and wildlife back where they belonged. By 1982, the US army corps of engineers found almost 9,000 dams to be ‘high-hazard’. Twelve years later, 1,800 dams were still unsafe.

The world built at a frantic pace around a thousand dams a year for the next four decades before the pace slowed. By the mid-1990s, the era of big dams in the US was over. In Europe, dams have been completely rejected. They were opposed so strongly that they cannot be built any more except very small ones in special cases, especially in countries that have specifically legislated against further dams.

This is exactly why European as well as American dam-building companies look to a gullible South to continue their business. Without the Third World, dam-builders would be bankrupt. An in-depth report on the track record of he twelve major European dam-builders by the UK-based Cornerhouse Institute is revealing.

There is something ridiculous about countries relentlessly adding to dams when the total world capacity has reached around 10,000 cubic kilometres which is already five times the volume of the entire world’s river water. In other words, the world’s 40,000 large dams (including 300 mega-dams) — even if the 800,000 medium-sized and smaller ones are excluded — are never full to capacity except perhaps briefly because there isn’t that much of water to go around. Every year half to one per cent of the world’s reservoir storage capacity is lost because of siltation. It’s just a matter of time when all the world’s dams will be capped by sediment.

Whatever the perceived gains from dams, what they destroy amounts to many times more in terms of human habitation, the flora and fauna, economies, and even people’s values. The closest in purpose and scale to the Indus irrigation system is the Aswan Dam in Egypt. Before the Aswan Dam was built, the flooding Nile River would carry some 125 million tons of rich silt to the sea, and deposit a million tons of it each year on the floodplain and delta, en route, and never cost a cent.

Today 98 per cent of that precious silt is trapped behind dam walls. To compensate, Egypt has become hopelessly dependent on expensive chemical fertilizers which they have to spread over 25,000 square kilometres of farmland — 175 kg per hectare. Egypt didn’t even need a dam for irrigation, and by controlling the floods, they lost free fertilization of the soil. Fertility and productivity have fallen while volume and cost of inputs have inexorably risen.

The value of losses to the displaced — about two million people uprooted each year — and damage to ecosystems is never counted. Builders invariably start off with inflated assessments of output, and as invariably, construction costs much more and takes much longer to complete.

One of World Bank’s own studies of 70 of the dams they funded revealed costs to rise by 30 per cent on average above estimates; and the bigger the dam, the worse it is. This comes to five times higher than the cost overruns of coal and thermal power stations. The Kalabagh Dam, if built, is estimated to cost $20 billion dollars. Comparable in cost of it was the Itaipu Dam straddling the river between Brazil and Paraguay, said to be the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam (next only to the Three Gorges in China now under construction). The cost overruns never seemed to stop and it took 18 years to complete.

Tarbela is known as the world’s most problem-stricken dam. Patrick McCully, acclaimed as the world’s final authority on dams and river systems, has revealed how the layer of silt and gravel to prevent seepage under the embankment cracked and subsided and suffered several sinkholes. Although the dozen European companies that designed and built the dam knew that the rock at the bases of the spillways was soft, they strangely assumed — or hoped — it would erode almost as slowly as hard rock which takes thousands of years. The repair to stabilize the dam took an extra three years and doubled the cost of the dam.

Coincidence or not, wherever in Third World countries a big dam has been or is going to be built, it is almost invariably accompanied by human sufferings. Big dams involve the removal of vast numbers of people from the site against their will, especially the area that will be flooded into a reservoir for which resettlement and compensation are promised by the state but seldom honoured in full if at all. Very rarely do destroyed lives make a recovery even to their earlier state. There are still 2,000 families (approximately 20,000 people) from Tarbela who have not been properly rehabilitated yet.

Nor are dams needed for food security. Half the world’s dams were built for irrigation but produce only about one-seventh of the world’s food. The rest are for flood control and hydropower, but generate only 19 per cent of the world’s electricity. Loss of water stored in vast open reservoirs is very high because of evaporation. Trees and other vegetation submerged in the process are worth a fortune in timber and usable biomass. That contributes to greenhouse gases. In most countries, half the water from canals is wasted anyway through seepage in transmission.

Actually the best place to store water is in the ground which is what nature does; only the technology applied is different. Underground water can’t evaporate and never floods villages or destroys crops. In Rajasthan, for example, by reviving and modernizing the ancient system of supplementing natural recharge of groundwater, almost three-quarters of a million people benefited, with enough water for both farming and household use.

Groundwater-irrigated farmland is far more productive than dam-canal irrigated land because farmers can ensure and control the flow water under their feet moving from their own wells to the farms. While small dams are not the solution everywhere, where the alternative applies, designs are refined to eliminate negative environmental effects, avoiding disrupting the local ecology, to be more efficient, and to be safely removable after they have outlived their utility.

The World Bank has unfortunately ignored its own internal reviews and the recommendations of the World Commission on Dams which it had itself initiated to find out about the impacts of many of the big dams it funded following worldwide protests and criticisms, and continues to fund huge dams. Alternative technologies do exist for boosting water supply while spreading it out widely where needed, but what goes against them is that they are more site-specific to suit local or regional ecologies, are more economical and affordable, and may not elicit the necessary interest in them.