China building 24 new projects on Brahmaputra

Within days of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's India visit, intelligence agencies have reported 24 new projects along the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries on the Chinese side. These are believed to be hydro-power projects.

The National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), had till over a year back, identified only a half dozen sites of potential hydro-power projects along the Chinese side of the river.

According to intelligence reports, the latest identified projects are relatively small in comparison with the Zangmu project, the biggest identified project so far on the Chinese side. In the absence of reliable means of verification, Indian officials are only hoping that these are small run-of-the-river projects that will serve local populations.

The issue came up for discussion today at a meeting of the Committee of Secretaries monitoring the diversion of Brahmaputra waters, under cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar, where officials stressed the need for constant monitoring of the situation.

While flood-season data is covered under a sharing agreement between the two countries, no such agreement on sharing information related to projects on the river exists. India has to, therefore, rely on its own sources to gather information on such project activities. In fact, the Zangmu project came up before the Committee of Secretaries only after intelligence agencies brought it to the notice of the government.

This is unlike the case pertaining to the Indus River basin, where project data is regularly shared by both sides under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty between Indian and Pakistan.
Though, during Wen's visit, India and China renewed a pact under which the two sides would share flood-season hydrological data on the Sutlej River, there was little exchange of information on the projects on its side of the Brahmaputra.