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Resolving our water wars

THE Supreme Court’s judgment on the Cauvery water dispute has the potential to become the benchmark for resolving India’s river water-sharing disputes with its neighbours. The court has set the template by calling rivers national assets and holding that being in a state of flow no state can claim exclusive ownership of river waters or assert a prescriptive right to deprive other states of their equitable share.

Resolving our water wars

The Brahmaputra, as fabled as the Cauvery and Indus, also needs a settlement.



Sandeep Dikshit

THE Supreme Court’s judgment on the Cauvery water dispute has the potential to become the benchmark for resolving India’s river water-sharing disputes with its neighbours. The court has set the template by calling rivers national assets and holding that being in a state of flow no state can claim exclusive ownership of river waters or assert a prescriptive right to deprive other states of their equitable share. This is how it should be rather than upper riparian countries leveraging their advantageous position to bear down on their lower riparian counterparts.

The urge to copy-paste the Cauvery formula is tempting because the court’s approach is in synch with the Helsinki Rules, 1966, that recognise the equitable use of water by each basin country after taking into consideration not just technical factors such as the geography and hydrology of the basin and past utilisation of waters, but also the economic and social needs of the dependent population and the availability of resources. This approach has the potential to meet the water-related demands of populations in a much more humane manner that could negate attempts by usually-marginalised politicians to vitiate political ties over real or imagined grievances on sharing of inter-country river waters.

Contrary to popular perception, India is not alone in harbouring concerns about the sharing of Brahmaputra waters with China. Bangladesh, in turn, makes demands on India for a monitoring and consultative mechanism for the region’s entire basin of rivers. Bhutan and Nepal also harbour similar concerns. 

The Cauvery judgment fulfils the lack of an institutional model for implementing inter-country water disputes. The core of the Cauvery dispute is also the essence of the contest over Brahmaputra waters between China, India and Bangladesh. There is a conflict of interest between a downstream state and an upstream state, all of whom want to make rapid progress in irrigation and hydel-power development.

The state with the advantage of being an upper riparian (greater control over the waters) tends to adopt an overbearing approach. Just like politicians of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka raked up the Cauvery dispute for their partisan ends, their counterparts in India and Bangladesh resurrect the unresolved water issue to shore up their political capital. In the process, the dissonance over water begins having an adverse impact on bilateral ties in other areas.

The Chinese government has been reticent about dams being constructed on trans-border rivers. That is not an isolated case. Even India has been coy about sharing river flow information with Bangladesh when both had an acute deficit of political trust. 

Water disputes are currently not the flavour of the season. But the rapid pace of construction projects on common rivers to meet the increasing demand for irrigation, hydel power generation, and domestic and industrial water supply has the potential to once again raise misgivings that can have a deleterious impact on bilateral relations.

The Supreme Court’s basin approach, if applied to common rivers between China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, will not just revolutionise regional cooperation but perhaps create the right atmosphere for joint endeavours in other sectors.  

But for a workable compromise formula to work, politicians need to take the first plunge to create a spirit of goodwill and cooperation. During the Manmohan Singh years, China had softened its attitude on sharing data on Brahmaputra waters because of the frequent interactions with the top leadership. Dr Singh, it may be recalled, had met the previous Chinese Premier Wen Jia Bao nine times before China relented.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has since set the clock back by holding the Damocles’sword over the Indus Water Basin Treaty after a dip in political relations with Pakistan due to the militant attack on the Pathankot airbase. 

But for bandying this threat, PM Modi has singularly failed to pick up the threads left behind by the previous UPA regime. Just before the 2014 general election, Bangladesh, Nepal and India were beginning to discuss an alliance in river water sharing, an emotive issue in all three countries. The expectation was for a tri-nation meeting that could be expanded to include China and Bhutan.  

The way forward for a basin-wide arrangement on sharing of common rivers can only be by sustained and patient dialogue. And the route will be long and the lack of initial progress dispiriting. In case of Cauvery, for instance, the culture of conversations among the riparian states began in 1871. In contemporary times too, it has taken 27 years and there is no closure even now because the Cauvery Management Board is still taking shape and the formula remains to be tested in the crucible of a rain-deficient year. But the talks did open the path for resolution by encouraging the involved states to exchange daily data on daily rainfall, inflows and out flows. The Indus Basin Treaty, 1961, and the Indo Bangladesh Joint Rivers Commission, 1977, are testimonies of successful international cooperation. India has also experience of collaborative projects on inter-state rivers such as the Bhakra Nangal, Tungabhadra and Damodar Valley.

Luckily, the Brahmaputra waters issue has not yet become so vexed that it gets confounded with each attempt at resolution. As the Sino-Indian border issue is unlikely to be settled soon and the areas of disputation with China are growing, it makes sense to initiate a move towards limited cooperation on water. This first step towards building up political trust may come in useful for narrowing differences or work towards resolving divergences in other areas.

However, a common basin sharing approach can work only if no country wields water flows as a political weapon over the lower riparian state. PM Modi may have erred in bringing into the vortex of live Indo-Pak disputes a well-settled basin approach on sharing the waters of Indus and its tributaries. He can now make amends by restarting talks with the eastern neighbours as a way out of the diplomatic cul-de-sac  imposed on India by ceding diplomatic and political space to the South Block’s security wallahs. As a self-confessed aficionado for out-of-the-box solutions, this is one possibility that PM Modi  needs to explore.

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