By Dr. Nazrul Islam

This year’s flood has already evoked a number of Op-Ed pieces. However, in most cases these have been in the style of speaking past each other, and the discussion therefore has not crystallized into a debate. Yet it is necessary to have an open public debate on the appropriate approach to be followed to confront flood. Also, flood is a multidimensional issue, requiring input not only from engineers but also from experts of other disciplines, including social sciences and humanities. In this context I would like to thank Engr. Md. Amirul Hossain for appreciating my article on “A Permanent Solution to Floods” (The Daily Star, August 10) and writing a response to it (The Daily Star, August 13). It will be nice if this current exchange leads to a productive national debate.

 

 Many of the points raised by Engr. Hossain seem to have arisen because of the cryptic nature in which the arguments were presented in my article. Space constraints of a newspaper article do not usually allow for details. However, such details are available elsewhere, both in my writings and in the writings of others. For example, interested readers can see a more detailed argumentation for the Open Approach and against the Cordon Approach in my journal articles (i) “The Open Approach to Flood Control: The Way to the Future in Bangladesh,” (Future, 2002), (ii) “Flood Control in Bangladesh: Which Way Now?” (Journal of Social Studies, 1999), (iii) “Let the Delta Be a Delta!” (Journal of Social Studies, 1991), and also in my book “The Development Problem of Bangladesh” (Jatiya Shahittyo Prokashoni) published in 1987, that is before the deluge of 1988. Another good source of these details is the report titled “Flood Plans or Floodplains?” authored by Prof. Shapan Adnan and his associates written after the 1988 flood. Prof. Khalequzzaman, Prof. Anu Muhammad, and others have also provided extensive argumentation against the Cordon Approach and for the Open Approach in their writings, although they might not have termed the approaches the same way as I have done.

 

 Let me now briefly reply to the points raised in Engr. Hossain’s response. First of all, he mentions that if Cordons were bad then the people within the Cordons would themselves have destroyed them. Ironically there indeed have been instances when local populace actually cut down ill conceived Cordons. One only needs to scan newspaper reports to see such examples. Second, Cordons are generally foisted on localities by the central government. The entire State power stands behind them. Hence it is not easy for the local populace to destroy a Cordon even if they wanted to. There have been many instances where law enforcing agencies were brought in to resist people from cutting down Cordons. Third, and this is the more important point here, there is a difference between “Group Interest” and “Overall National Interest.” From the point of view of their narrow group interest, the people within a Cordon may feel benefited in some respects. However, that does not mean that Cordons are good for the nation as a whole. This is the “Fallacy of Composition” mentioned in my article. Take the example of the DND project. Apart from the original capital costs, the government is spending millions of Taka each year in maintaining the Cordons, the inside canals, the outside canals, and in pumping out the water gathered from precipitation inside the project area. In many years the government now has to incur the additional costs of deploying army to protect the Cordons. All this money is coming from the national budget and not from revenues generated from the DND project. This spending had some justification when DND area was agricultural, and it could be argued that the project was boosting crop output. (Even this argument is tenuous, as we will see.) However, DND has now become mostly residential, and hence the crop-output-boosting justification no longer holds. If the Cordons were not there, people settling inside the DND project would have followed the appropriate, “dig-elevate-dwell” pattern of settlement. Unfortunately the Cordons created an artificial dry situation, and thus fostered a “below-flood-level” settlement inside the DND project. Now the national government has to bear the recurring costs of protecting and servicing this below-flood-level settlement. Obviously, the people inside the DND project will not want to cut down the Cordons! However that does not mean that DND project is serving the overall national interest. Thus the fact that the people inside the Cordons are not destroying them is not an argument for constructing more Cordons. 

 

 The second point that Engr. Hossain makes is that the physical relationship between volume and surface and height is too “simple” to describe the flood problem because dynamics are involved. Two things may be said in response to this point. First, dynamics do not negate the basic physical fact that volume is the product of surface area and height. This relationship holds both in static and in dynamic situations. Second, consideration of dynamics actually makes the Cordon Approach even more unappealing, because Cordons slow down the pace at which flood water recedes to the sea, thus forcing the country to face a larger volume of water for a longer period of time. The flood level thereby gets higher at every point of time! One beauty of truth is that it is generally “simple.” The simple truth is that in an active delta like Bangladesh, the river channels and floodplains form one organic whole. It is therefore counterproductive to separate the two forcibly through construction of Cordons. No obfuscation can negate this simple truth.

 

 The third point that Engr. Hossain raises is that Cordons have been helpful in raising crop output. This is a contentious claim. We have already noted the experience of the DND project (once the showcase of the Cordon Approach), which now has very little agriculture left in it. In a convoluted outcome and defeating its original purpose, DND has now become entirely an unproductive burden on the government exchequer, so far as agricultural production is concerned. The other project that finds mention in this regard is the Ganges-Kobadak (G-K) project. It needs to be noted that the G-K project is not a classic Cordon Project. It is rather a surface water irrigation project which depends on pump-lift for head source of water and gravity flow for its subsequent distribution. The agricultural output boosting impact of even the G-K project remains highly controversial, particularly relative to its huge capital and annual maintenance costs and in view of the very poor record of cost recovery through collection of irrigation rents. Much of the irrigation expansion and the associated crop output augmentation in Bangladesh in the recent decades has been the result of explosion of the number of ground-water based pumps (the deep tube wells and in particular the shallow tube wells). The Cordon Projects did not have much role in this explosion. Ironically, ground water based pumps are extensively used for irrigation even in the areas nominally under the G-K project and in other Cordon Project areas!

 

 The limited contribution of the Cordon Projects to agricultural output boosting is not difficult to understand. Cordons clearly cannot be of help in the dry season, when rivers recede to their channels. In fact in the dry season the Cordons become an additional barrier to surface water irrigation, because the water from the neighboring river channels now needs to be carried across these Cordons, requiring higher pump-lift. In the rainy season, Cordons can keep the project area from getting inundated and thus allow cultivation of the High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of aus and boro crops. This has been the main rationale for such Cordon Projects as the Barisal, Chandpur, and Meghna-Dhonagoda Projects. However time has shown how fragile this rationale was. Scientists at IRRI and BIRI soon came out with HYV of both transplanted and broadcast aman, thus negating the agricultural rationale of the Cordon Projects. The fact that Cordons are not the way to boost agricultural output of Bangladesh should have been clear to anybody who wanted to learn from the country’s local heritage. Farmers of Bangladesh over the ages have tried to boost agriculture output not by constructing Cordons, but by breeding crop varieties that can withstand and take advantage of the river inundation. In this effort, they produced such miraculous varieties of bona aman whose stalk can just float in water and can grow about a foot long in twenty four hours just to keep pace with the rising level of floodwater. Our ancestors could do this without having the modern crop-breeding technology at their hands. With the modern crop-breeding technology at hand, it is now possible to progress further in this direction. Thus the proper route to boosting agricultural output in Bangladesh is through harnessing the potential of flood-based agriculture and not through artificial separation of floodplains from the river channels by constructing Cordons.

 

 The effort to have flood-free agriculture on floodplains also creates a conflict between “short-term interests” and “long-term interests.” This is because Cordons deprive the soil of the project areas from silt and other nutrients that floodwater brings to it annually. Thus the quality of the soil within Cordons deteriorates with time, and increasing amounts of chemical fertilizer and other chemical inputs become necessary to sustain productivity. At the same time, runoffs of these chemical inputs also devastate the fresh water fish stock. Thus even if Cordon Projects appear to be of some agricultural benefit in the short run, they prove deleterious in the long run.

 

 The fourth point of Engr. Hossain’s response concerns dry season irrigation potential of the Open Approach. He thinks that flood water retained in the floodplains through adoption of the Open Approach will not be enough to supply water during March and April, which are the flowering months of the boro crops. It is strange to hear this complaint from someone favoring Cordons, which would prevent floodwater reaching floodplains altogether! Whether or not floodwater retained in floodplains will prove sufficient for dry season irrigation depends on how extensive (area) and intensive (deep) the water bodies for retention are (the supply side or the retention capacity) and how much and what type of boro and rabi crops are grown (the demand side). Given the demand, the higher the retention capacity the more will it be possible to meet the demand. Thus it depends on us whether or not retained water will be sufficient to meet the irrigation demand of the driest months. The important point of note is that while the Cordon Approach reduces the dry season irrigation potentiality, the Open Approach enhances it.

 

An additional benefit of the Open Approach is that it will reduce Bangladesh’s current dependence on ground water for dry season irrigation and thereby help the country confront the problem of arsenic contamination of ground water. The current dependence on groundwater for irrigation has led to lowering of the groundwater level in many parts of Bangladesh. According to the Oxidation Theory, lower groundwater level has allowed pre-existing arsenate compounds to come in contact with air and thus get oxidated into soluble arsenic. From this point of view the Cordon Approach is contributing to Bangladesh’s arsenic crisis by restricting the spread of floodwater over floodplains, thus obstructing seepage of water to the groundwater table and hindering its recharge. The Open Approach can ameliorate the arsenic problem, because, first, it enhances the recharge of the groundwater table by allowing the floodwater to spread further across the floodplains. Second, it reduces the dependence on groundwater for irrigation. Thus the Open Approach can facilitate a long-term solution to Bangladesh’s arsenic problem.

 

 Engr. Hossain’s fifth point is that all development projects involve social conflicts, and hence the fact that Cordon projects generate social conflict should not mean that these projects are technically infeasible. As he put it, “A project leading to a conflicting situation does not mean that it is technically failed.” There is some confusion here. My article did not say that Cordon Projects are “technically failed” because they generate social conflict. What it said is that in addition to being technically infeasible, Cordon Projects are prone to generating social conflicts. The exact words were: “Thus the Cordon Approach is infeasible on technical grounds and it is indefensible on the grounds of social justice, both vertical and horizontal.”

 

 It is true that even technically feasible development projects often lead to uneven distribution of its benefits, and this unevenness can be a source of social conflict. However, this unevenness per se cannot disqualify a project from being undertaken as long as the sum total of benefits stays positive (relative to the costs of the project). In economics this requirement is expressed through the concept of Pareto Optimality. Simply put, a project may create ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’ but it may pass the Pareto Optimality criterion if the sum of gain of the winners is greater than the loss suffered by the losers, because in that case ideally the losers can be bought off by part of the gain of the winners (though this rarely happens in practice) and still having some gain left. Unfortunately, instead of being “win-lose,” the Cordon Projects are generally “lose-lose” propositions. As noted earlier, the people outside these projects “lose,” because they now have to suffer more intense flood. The people inside the projects may perceive some “gain” in terms of the possibility of "below-flood-level” settlement (for urban Cordons), and the possibility of producing HYVs under controlled irrigation conditions (for rural Cordons). However, residents of urban Cordons now have to face new problems of water-logging, collapse of the sewage system, unhealthy and dying water bodies, unbalanced moisture conditions, etc., in addition to the perennial panic of the possibility of Kiyamaat-like deluge resulting from breaches and other failures of the Cordons. The residents of the rural Cordons have to face deterioration of the soil quality, increased dependence on chemicals for fertilizer and nutrients, damage to fisheries, increased difficulty in dry season irrigation, lack of recharge of surface water bodies and underground water table, in addition to severance of water transportation and deprivation from the general cleansing effects of river inundation. Thus the perceived benefits are transient and often chimerical and in the ultimately analysis the residents of Cordon Projects “lose” too. The nation as a whole loses, because huge outlays on the Cordon Projects ultimately prove to be counterproductive. Cordon Projects therefore end up being “lose-lose-lose” undertakings.

 

 A final argument that Engr. Hossain makes in favor of Cordon Projects is that these projects generate a lot of employment for the rural people and provide improved communication network. The point regarding employment generation is not serious, I must say. Any project implemented in rural areas will generate employment for rural people. For example, a river dredging project is also capable of generating similar level and type of employment. Thus employment generation per se cannot be an argument for Cordon Projects. The question is whether a project is going beyond current employment generation and enhancing the country’s productive capacity in the long run. In this respect, the Cordon Projects have proved to be very disappointing indeed. The increased intensity of floods of recent years has shown that the Cordons have not enabled the country to cope with the floods better either.

 

The point concerning “communication network” can also be easily dispensed with. As I mentioned in my article, embankments do not necessarily have to be Cordons. With enough breaks in them embankments can also serve as structures to regulate the timing and volume of water passage between river channels and floodplains, and these embankments can also serve as roads and highways. A pertinent example is the proposed Eastern Bypass Project of Dhaka city. This Bypass can be constructed as a Cordon (as is proposed now) in order to seal off Dhaka city from its eastern rivers, such as Balu. On the other hand, it can also be constructed with enough breaks so that the link of Dhaka with these rivers is not severed. In either case, the project can serve as a highway for the north-south traffic to bypass Dhaka city. In taking these decisions, the authorities can look at the example of such cities as Amsterdam. Even though the Rhine delta is much tamer than that of Bangladesh, Amsterdam did not try to seal itself off from the Rhine. Instead it enhanced its connection with the Rhine through an extensive network of canals, which contribute so much to the life of Amsterdam. It is quite tragic that the Bangladesh authorities are moving just in the opposite direction.

 

 It is unfortunate that many engineers of Bangladesh Water Board and other water related agencies of Bangladesh think that their prosperity is tied only with construction of Cordon Projects. That is not the case. As I mentioned in my article, implementation of the Open Approach will require a huge effort, and civil and other engineers will have to play a prominent role in this implementation. They however need to examine the flood issue with a more open mind. An open mind will lead to a better appreciation of the Open Approach. Flood is a complicated, multidimensional issue. It is not simply an issue of engineering. It is connected with production, settlement, communication, health, population, environment, culture, etc. Grappling with the flood issue therefore requires deep and comprehensive thinking. I hope that the authorities and all concerned will engage in and promote such thinking before embarking on some new flood control projects.

-------------------------- 
Prof. Nazrul Islam teaches at Emory University at Atlanta, Georgia, USA.  He is now on a Sabbatical leave serving as a  Research Professor at ICSEAD, Kyushu, Japan; he is also the Vice-Chairman, Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA)