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The Nepal government has never addressed the issues at the diplomatic level,” says Jagdish Bahadur Singh of a local committee formed to protest the construction of the embankment. Singh says India has gone ahead with a plan to save its territory from being submerged by shifting the floods on the Rapti River to the Nepal side, and using its water for irrigation in the dry season. Six years ago, India started constructing a 1,750 km road along the India-Nepal border, citing security reasons, but in reality the roads are embankments to preventing flooding of Indian territory, and act as a gigantic dam that impounds water on the Nepal side. The Nepal side of the border called on Kathmandu to take matters up with New Delhi. After negotiations between the two governments, the project was stopped. Fifteen years later when the embankments started to be rebuilt the villagers knocked on the government’s door again. However, this time Kathmandu couldn’t be bothered. Between 1999 and 2000 the Indian side built a 22 km-long embankment to save the villages on its side from floods, disguising them as new roads. “Even though India constructed the infrastructures against the international law and treaties between the two countries, the protest has only been from the local level.
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