The collapse of two gates of the Madhopur Headworks on August 26 reflects what is congenitally and chronically wrong with bureaucratic decision-making in India; either taking things for granted and not expecting the unexpected to happen, or letting things run on autopilot mode.
As long as nothing goes wrong, there are people to claim credit and get rewarded for doing nothing. But once something goes wrong, there is a blame game and a search for scapegoats, who are not difficult to find, like some poor officials at the bottom of the pyramid.
And the unexpected did happen when two of the 54 gates of the Madhopur Headworks crashed. In the process, one official was washed away and is presumed dead. His body has not been recovered so far.
Had some of the gates been opened on time, while visualising the situation due to heavy rains in the upper catchment areas of the river Ravi in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, the gates might not have collapsed as there would have been no water blockade and no massive pressure on the gates that gave in and collapsed.
But that is easier said than done. Opening up the floodgates ahead of actual floods would have meant allowing the flow of water from Ravi to Pakistan, which is unacceptable. Because, according to the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan has no right over the Ravi and other Punjab river waters, including the Satluj and Beas. With such a complex situation and that too in the immediate aftermath of recent skirmishes, nobody would have dared to open the gates when there were no floods.
Hypothetically assuming, had some of the officials on duty opened some of the floodgates in advance in anticipation of the floods, and in case there were no floods afterwards, those officials might well have been prosecuted and persecuted. That is how the bureaucracy works.
And when everyone felt the need that the floodgates must be opened, these apparently did not work, as they were jammed. The floodgates are still operated manually and have not been motorised. This is probably because there was hardly any need to open the floodgates as no water was to be allowed to flow into Pakistan.
‘Madhopur Headworks’ was built exactly 150 years ago by the British between 1875 and 1879, diverting the water from the river Beas to large parts of united Punjab through the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC). The UBDC canal network was upgraded during the Green Revolution after the construction of the Ranjit Sagar Dam with a total length of about 3200 kms, with seven branches and 247 distributaries irrigating a massive swath of about 50 lakh acres of land.
While it is a well-known fact that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru used his influence with Lord Mountbatten to prevail upon Sir Cyril Radcliffe to keep district Gurdaspur with India for having direct road access to Kashmir, the other lesser-known fact is about the Madhopur Headworks. If the Gurdaspur district had gone over to Pakistan during Partition, the Madhopur Headworks would also have gone to Pakistan. This would have caused the risk of an entire swath of about 50 lakh acres of land in the Indian part of Punjab going dry.
During Partition, Gurdaspur comprised four tehsils — Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Batala and Shakargarh. While the first three were allotted to India, Shakargarh went to Pakistan.
It is often claimed that India, Pandit Nehru in particular, traded off Lahore, a politically, historically and culturally important city for the Sikhs and Hindus, for Gurdaspur, despite it being a Muslim-majority district, just because it wanted to have direct access to Kashmir and Madhopur Headworks. However, this claim is often disputed.
Given Madhopur’s geographically strategic location, it was not the British who originally planned the canal network from here. The first canal at this site, named the Hasli Canal, is believed to have been constructed during the reign of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.
The canal was expanded and extended during the regime of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. The British finally built and upgraded the network from 1875 to 1879, exactly 150 years ago, as part of the Upper Bari Doab Canal project.
After the signing of the Indus Water Treaty, India obtained exclusive rights over Ravi, Satluj and Beas waters. The Headworks were remodeled in 1955. Since no water was to be released towards Pakistan, the gates mostly remained closed. Nor was any need felt to motorise these for possible floods because nobody visualised such a situation.
Not that Pakistan, at this point of time, would get any benefit from receiving the water from Ravi; rather, parts of the country, including Lahore have been flooded. But repairing the gates will take time and till then, water on which India has exclusive rights will now flow into Pakistan.
Given the hostilities prevailing right now between the two neighbours, there is a possibility that Pakistan might even blame India for deliberately causing the gates to crash to flood and inundate large parts of Pakistan, although large areas in India have also been flooded because of it.
But the crashing of the ‘Headworks’ gates has once again brought into focus some of the congenital problems that India and Pakistan will have to face simultaneously, although not necessarily together. Floods are among these problems. The recent one should serve as a reminder.
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