Water Security

Lower riparian countries must develop sound strategies to bring China to the negotiating table with a view to stopping it from further damming or diverting the waters of the Brahmaputra or any other river originating in Tibet and flowing into South Asia.

• Hari Bansh Jha
• August 09, 2011
• IDSA Comments

Rivers are more than what Samuel T. Coleridge poetically expressed in Kubla Khan: ‘meandering with mazy motion’ and falling into the ‘sunless sea’. Rivers are life-givers, carrying a mystic and sacred quality about them. That they are oft described as being ‘mighty’—the mighty Amazon; the mighty Nile; the mighty Brahamaputra; the mighty Murray; the mighty Mississippi and Missouri—is hardly mystifying. Civilizations have grown around it and flourished. In contemporary politics the salience of rivers cannot be overlooked both in terms of being drivers of cooperation and conflict.

• Uttam Kumar Sinha
• September 2010
• Strategic Analysis

Like in the 1950s, the word ‘riparian’ is back again in the India–Pakistan lexicon, becoming this time intensely political, emotional and divisive. This development is both instructive and unsettling. It is instructive to note how the current water realties of the two countries, which have changed significantly since the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in 1960, will now determine the treaty's future. With growing populations, inadequate water management techniques and the impact of global warming, water resources are under pressure.

• Uttam Kumar Sinha
• July 2010
• Strategic Analysis

Though the Indus Water Treaty apportions 80 per cent of the waters of the Indus River Basin to Pakistan and only 20 per cent to India, Pakistan is engaged in baseless allegations to inflame public opinion and project India as its number one threat.

• Arvind Gupta
• March 29, 2010
• IDSA Comments

Dam building in Arunachal Pradesh should not be perceived as an insurmountable irritant, but rather as a sign of a vibrant Indian democracy.

• Medha Bisht
• February 01, 2010
• IDSA Comments

The issue of water allocation and water rights of Bangladesh, India and China could form the basis of a framework on which joint cooperation among the three countries can be formulated.

• Medha Bisht
• November 11, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Water may not become a catalyst for a direct conflict, but China could leverage Tibet’s water as a politico-military tool vis-à-vis other riparian states. As the economies of India and China grow, both are bound to treat water as a strategic commodity.

• P. Stobdan
• October 23, 2009
• IDSA Comments

That there is a freshwater crisis today is an irrefutable fact. That there is also a water policy that is in perpetual crisis is an equally undeniable fact. Continued population growth and the impact of global warming along with over-consumption, inadequate conservation, and wastage are putting enormous pressure on water resources. Water covers most of the planet but only 3 per cent is fresh water, of which a mere 1 per cent is readily accessible for human consumption. What it means is that less than 0.007 per cent of all the water on earth is available to drink.

• Uttam Kumar Sinha
• July 2009
• Strategic Analysis

In a surprise move, Pakistan has once gain spawned the water issue on a political fast-track against India.

• P. Stobdan
• February 13, 2009
• IDSA Comments

• Uttam Kumar Sinha
• November 2008
• Strategic Analysis