Water has the same popular appeal as justice, freedom, equality, representation and power. There is also something elemental or inherently wicked about water because searching for solutions to manage and cope with water issues creates a set of different problems that are political, emotive and divisive.
As the most shared resource in the world, competition among various uses in trans-border river basins precipitating into conflict remains a concern. Yet, while the outlook for water is challenging, it has the ability to create breakthroughs compelling different users to cooperate, rather than allow confrontation to jeopardise water supplies.
Regions are now increasingly viewed as hydrological units and no region with shared water is exempted from water-related controversies and disputes. A stable supply of water is critical for regional stability and any economic and geopolitical forecasting has to factor the water resource.
South Asia is a region of multiple crises where water is connected to many of the challenges of development, security and economic growth. Described as a crowded, hot, hungry, and a fast evaporating region, South Asia occupies about five per cent of the world’s land mass and has about four per cent of the world’s annual renewable water resources that flows through several river basins. Almost 90 per cent of water is consumed by the agricultural sector. By 2025 the region will be home to about 25 per cent of the world’s population. About three-quarters of South Asia’s population live in rural areas and one-third live in extreme poverty (less than a dollar a day).
Societal challenges are compounded by the fact that the region is highly vulnerable to climate change particularly the retreat of Himalayan glaciers and the changing precipitation which affects the flow pattern of the perennial rivers such as the Indus, Ganges, Sutlej and Brahmaputra. These great rivers, in turn, are the lifelines of tens of millions of people in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan.
The mountain democrat
Many of the Himalayan rivers are intimately tied up with the issue of territory, as the rivers enter areas where there is contestation over the demarcation of borders. For example, the Indus flows through parts of Kashmir that is labeled as “disputed” territory. For Pakistan, laying claim on Kashmir in effect means claiming the waters of the Indus river system. Similarly, the Brahmaputra is linked with the Sino-Indian border dispute in the eastern Himalayas, where China claims the territory of Arunachal Pradesh, where the Brahmaputra enters India.
Since most of the rivers originate from, flow through, and drain into territorially defined boundaries, it will not be easy to ignore the competitive nature of water and the significance of the Himalayan watershed, from where the shared rivers originate, as the hydrological fault line. South Asian states have developed along river systems that are intricately connected from the source (the glaciers in the mountains) to the mouth (the deltas). This interdependence has been less understood when the focus of policymakers has remained on borders and territorial disputes.
That said, it is also important not to ignore that all the transboundary rivers in South Asia cascade from the towering heights of the Himalayas, and therefore, there is enormous hydro-potential, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir, Nepal and Bhutan. The various assessments of climate change on the glaciers suggest that there is going to be, in the short-to-medium time, an increase in melt-flow resulting in increased flow and flooding.
Construction of facilities to store this excess water and release it during dry periods bedevils planners, given the temptation to generate benefits on the one hand and on the other dangerous spin-offs. This is in particular relevant to the Indus basin as glaciers roughly account for 45 per cent of the flow. Beyond the economics of water management, including the need for dams and water storage facilities for economic development, there is the political reality of fear among lower riparian states, especially over such structures. Clearly, the hydrology of the region is not only tied up with economic development but also with security and misperception.
Hydropolitics
With water assuming centrality and increasingly becoming both a bilateral and regional agenda, South Asia is now a ‘hydropolitical security complex’ in which states are simultaneously part ‘owners’ and part ‘users’ of rivers. This framework has opened up various levels of analysis on how riparian states behave (hydro behaviour), upstream-downstream contestation (hydro-competition), prior use issues, and clashes of priorities. Given that states are rational egoists interested in maintaining relative capabilities, water now has a political sharpness and power attribution.
Water relations can never be permanently settled since flows in rivers are not constant. The flows in turn are determined by seasonal variations and usage particularly those that are non-consumptive in nature. Also, interventions and diversions on rivers impact the flow. Political relations can easily be impacted by the changing quantitative and qualitative nature of the river. Varied interpretations of the use of river water have resulted in claims and counter-claims. There are, however, accepted legal norms of ‘equitable utilisation’, ‘no-harm rule’ and ‘restricted sovereignty’ that riparian states work through and frame negotiations and treaties to overcome such differing positions. These have been reflected in many of the water treaties in South Asia.
Given India’s riparian linkage, whether upstream or downstream, and given its diplomatic investment in a number of treaties with its riparian neighbours, hydro diplomacy will be a vital component of its neighbourhood policy. It adds greater complexity now that China is a hydro-heavyweight in South Asia’s hydrography.
Reconfiguring hydro-setting
German poet and philosopher Goethe said that “water is a friendly element for those who are familiar with it and know how best to treat it”. Risks and vulnerability over the growing knowledge on hydrological variability is driving new thinking and reconfiguring South Asia’s waterscape and, hopefully, in the process debunking some water myths and shibboleths.
The first is to rethink internal water management policies. Water-related social risks are higher and can easily lead to internal/societal conflict, which can then impact external water relationships. Transboundary water management cannot be successful without an efficiently functioning national water management policy of South Asian states that includes good water strategy, a legal framework, implementation standards, and feedback. The South Asian states need to relook at their respective national water policies.
The second is respecting the river treaties. Some of the water treaties that have evolved in South Asia have been the by-products of a settlement of a larger political dispute. The Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 that partitioned the rivers between India and Pakistan was the result of the territorial partition of 1947, while the Ganges Treaty with Bangladesh in 1996 was a water-sharing treaty based on mutual accommodation and in the mutual interests of the peoples of the two countries. The fairness or the effectiveness and the implementation of such treaties are always subject to the politics of the time. While these treaties are formally expressions of consensus, states’ interests and power calculations leave them to various interpretations. However, these treaties, in the midst of various contestation, offer the political space for dialogue and engagement.
Third, the idea of revisiting treaties/mechanism follows on the upward knowledge curve of the region’s understanding on water. The existing water treaties in South Asia are being tested by a growing demand for water, competing needs, and the backlash of the ecosystem. New upper-lower riparian dynamics are challenging the existing agreements with increasing pressure to relook, revisit and reconsider the frameworks and strengthen them in the context of the hydrological changes. Pressures are also growing to reinforce some of the effective clauses of the water treaties, such as the role of the ‘neutral expert’ as defined in the Indus Waters Treaty. Some of the existing treaties lack joint initiatives for collecting and analysing data and executing prescribed mechanisms and this can be strengthened. Since all the South Asian treaties have been bilateral, a movement toward joint basin management with co-basin countries is a riparian rationality though often political intractability hinders progress.
India’s hydrodiplomacy
Critical for India is the fact that diplomatically it has to articulate strongly its middle riparian position, first to change the perception in the neighbourhood that India is an upper riparian ‘water hegemon’, as often expressed by Pakistan and Bangladesh, in spite of the roboustness of the water treaties with them. Also importantly, in an emerging federalisation of India’s foreign policy with the increasing involvement of the river-border provinces, the leadership at the Centre will have to play a consultative role with State leaders. It is here that India’s hydrodiplomacy will have a new avatar — a challenging prospect in times of coalition politics.
Second is to draw China into the South Asia water equation through multi-lateral basin approach, thereby sensitising China to downstream concerns and upstream responsibilities. Hydrodiplomacy has to be well-nuanced and not always framed in the legalistic terms but managing and engaging China. This has significant political value when dealing with China over the Tibetan water resources. By raising the question, however contested it might be, that China alone cannot be the stakeholder to the waters in Tibet, gives India the opportunity to articulate an ecological perspective and resource conservation principles.
China the ‘hydraulic empire’ and a supreme upper riparian has, through its promotion of large-scale and capital intensive water projects on some of Asia’s mighty rivers, beleaguered a crescent of lower riparian countries from Central Asia, South Asia to South-east Asia. Far from restraining itself, Beijing plans to resurrect more hydroelectricity dams on the Nu (Salween), Lancang (Mekong) and the Yarlung (Brahmaputra) river basins. These are not only internationally shared rivers but are also in ecologically and seismically sensitive areas. China’s blueprint is a reassertion of an aggressive ‘supply-side hydraulic’ approach of increasing storage capacity by building dams and reservoirs, water transfer, and prospecting and extracting groundwater.
China will use its riparian advantage as a response to the political temperature, what in the strategic circle is described as ‘non-confrontationist aggression’. It suits Beijing to be ambiguous and work on bilateral understandings rather than multilateral arrangements with its lower riparian countries. While it has recently upgraded and extended hydrological information to India, it still needs to be verified on its timeliness and correctness. On the Brahmaputra, India’s concerns, now with some hydrological facts emerging, are not so much about water scarcity as it is about flood water release in the monsoon. The solutions for Indian planners are essentially two-fold: To consider, after careful cost-benefit analysis, building storage dams at scientifically assessed locations and effectively put in place flood mitigation programmes.
With Pakistan, its other major water irritant, water issues are constructed on misinformation and misperception. India’s diplomacy should be to win the war of perception rather than actually abrogating the Indus Waters Treaty. With many of the water projects on the western rivers in Jammu and Kashmir constantly being dragged by Pakistan to the court of arbitration in The Hague to thwart India’s commitment to the development of Jammu & Kashmir, there will come a stage when India will have to take a call and seek some modification of the IWT. Modifications of the provisions are crucial in case of the western rivers.
As a responsible upper riparian as it is a concerned lower riparian with China, India certainly has responsibility and would continue to ‘talk’ to Pakistan but not ‘negotiate’ on water issues since the IWT is done and dusted. The talks should be about Pakistan’s ‘water needs’ and ways possibly to deal with water management issues and not about ‘water rights’, which has been settled in the treaty. India equally needs to respect the treaty that it has signed by building its own storages under the provisions of the treaty. Plenty of water goes easily to Pakistan (about 2-3 MAF) owing to poor maintenance of existing barrages or construction of additional diversion structures on the eastern rivers. India cannot afford to be casual on harnessing and utilising its water resource.
And finally, we know very little about water and never have learned to manage it efficiently. Every time we interact with water, we change it, redirect it, or otherwise alter it. While the territorial perspective of South Asia’s hydrology is a reality, a better understanding could be gained by viewing South Asia as a scientific enterprise building on past and present water knowledge and technical reaches which allow the region to sustainably share the benefits more than just the flow. India’s riparian position will be critical and crucial to this.
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