Indus Divided

Title: Indus Divided - India, Pakistan and the River Basin Dispute

Author: Daniel Haines

Publisher: Viking Penguin, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9780670089628

Pages: 264

India and Pakistan cut the umbilical cord separating them in an orgy of violence and bloodbath. The territory was divided, the assets partitioned, populations were exchanged and the minds alienated from each other. The rivers that flow across the countries became a point of contention as nature knew no man-made boundaries. The Indus river and its major tributaries, the rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – thefive rivers that made the name of the province through which theyflowed eponymous. While India claimed sovereignty of the river basin and by analogy full rights of the water through it, Pakistan rooted for perpetuating the established practice of using water from the river. A trilateral negotiation in which the World Bank mediated, took place between the neighbours.The World Bank promised adequate funding for the hydrological projects planned by both countries after the deal was signed. After several gruelling rounds of discussion, the team reached a deal in 1960 and both the states’ leaders signed the treaty. Rather than sharing water, the pact divided the rivers among themselves. Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – theWestern rivers - werecompletely allotted to Pakistan and the three eastern rivers, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej went to India. Being the upper riparian party, India had no compelling reason to enter into a formal agreement with a downstream country. Intriguing geopolitical considerations prompted India's then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to finally accede to a water sharing treaty highly detrimental to India's interests. This book examines the political background of signing the treaty and how it materialized. Daniel Haines is a lecturer in environmental history at the University of Bristol. He has previously taught at Quaid e-Azam University in Islamabad. He has also authored several books.

Not just confining to the story of the division of water flowing through a few rivers, the book is also about the politics of the Indus dispute: how and why it arose, the impact that it had on state-building in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan, its effect on their relationship to the international community and the dispute’s apparent resolution in the Indus Waters treaty of 1960. Haines claims this to be an original attempt to situate the Indus dispute as part of the concurrent processes of South Asian state-building, global decolonisation and shifting Western intervention in the region after independence. However, even without this undue preoccupation with the concepts of political science, the book can be enjoyably read by general readers.

The crucial importance of water in the Indus and its tributaries to life in India and Pakistan is quite plain. 145 million Pakistanis and 83 million Indians lived in the Indus river basin. Roughly 61 per cent of the basin’s irrigated area lies in Pakistan, constituting 90 per cent of Pakistan’s agricultural land. Irrigation canals built in the 1880s in Punjab transformed the thinly populated wastelands into rich, agricultural tracts. When Punjab was divided in 1947, the integrity of this canal was questioned. Pakistan suddenly found two types of people within their frontier. One of the apparent contradictions of Pakistan was the contrast between the location of its strongest supporters and the national geography that emerged. Muslims from north India, where Hindus dominated numerically, had most consistently supported the Muslim League and Pakistan demand. The people of Punjab, who were not in the forefront of the campaign for the new nation, bore the brunt of water disruption that was so essential to their farms, society and even their lives.

The governments of both countries were intent on development which would bring material benefits to their citizens and hoped to obtain legitimacy through it. Since water control was at the heart of development in a predominantly agricultural economy, tension over water sharing surfaced from the very beginning. The irrigation canal projects in Punjab favoured the western part which went to Pakistan. Even though these canals took water from the three eastern rivers, India inherited only three out of the sixteen canal systems. The dispute arose when India claimed sole ownership of river water flowing through its territory. Pakistan put forward the idea of prior appropriation. This meant that the first user to begin drawing a particular quantity of water from a river had a continuing right to use the same quantity in the future too. Pakistan always cried hoarse even at the slightest use of Indus water by India which is granted by the treaty. The hue and cry raised by them in response to India's construction of the Baglihar dam on the Chenab (since 1999) and Kishanganga hydroelectric project on a Jhelum tributary (since 2007) may be remembered here.

Division of the Indus waters was the apple of discord between India and Pakistan right from partition. Compounded by tension on the Kashmir issue, the two neighbours were on the brim of war. The US wanted to keep the situation normal in a cold war strategy to keep South Asia peaceful. Haines presents a decent narrative of how a suggestion made by a technical expert was taken seriously by the US administration and given institutional credibility. David Lilienthal was a water management expert of the famous Tennessee Valley Authority in the USA. In a published article, he appealed to view the entire problem as a purely technical one to be resolved by the engineers in both countries. This was nothing short of naivety in its purest form. He urged the technical community to move away from their new orientation towards the separate states. Lilienthal nostalgically invoked their shared past in the colonial irrigation service. Their friendships and professional ties that predated partition cut across the Radcliffe Line. World Bank tookon the task of formalizing a treaty in 1952. Two years later, it was clear that the bank plan establishing the principle of allocatingentire rivers rather than organising joint development of them was a better idea. The talks almost failed in its intent due to the intransigence displayed by both sides. The author’s identification of the reasons that guided them to ink adeal in 1960 is admirably researched. The military coup in Pakistan that brought Ayub Khan to the helm and the China crisis in India impelled the feuding parties to finally conclude the Indus Waters treaty.

We have heard arguments from many circles that claimNehru's rule as a disaster for India. The role of Nehru in the Industreaty discussions seen in this book confirms this hypothesis further. India was the upper riparian state and there was no need for her to sign a pact with a lower riparian state to ensure the supply of water to its crops. Nehru exploited this chance to enhance his reputation as an international statesman by agreeing for concessions at the cost of India's national interests. Most favourable terms which are usually accorded to an intimate friend was treacherouslyconceded by Nehru to a bitter enemy. Out of the three western rivers surrendered to Pakistan, the Chenab flows entirely through undisputed Indian territory before it enters Pakistan. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is denied the right to use the water flowing through its territory for agriculture. In practice, the treaty limited India's sovereignty in Jammu and Kashmir. The heavy restrictions on Indian uses of the western rivers substantially limited possibilities for economic development there. It could only maintain, not extend its irrigation provision from those rivers. The state government has developed only 2,500 megawatt of the region’s estimated potential of 20,000 megawatt. Even though the number of rivers allocated to both countries is three, there was a wide disparity in the quantity of water flowing through these two groups. In the end, Nehru settled for 20 per cent of the total quantity of water for India flowing through the three eastern rivers and gifted the remaining 80 per cent flowing through the three western rivers to Pakistan. Moreover, India also agreed to pay $174 million to Pakistan for building link channels to decouple its existing canal network from the eastern rivers and then to connect them to the western rivers. Nehru thought of himself as having a stature larger than the country’s. In my opinion, he was playing for a Peace Nobel, but the Nobel committee saw through his game and did not entertain that notion even for a second. Haines argues that the reasons for Nehru's capitulation was the Indian government’s need to maintain good relations with the sixty million Muslims who lived within its borders and the fear of the reasonable fight Pakistan was expected to wage with American-supplied weapons in the case of the treaty discussions failing (p.152).

The book is fairly interesting to read. In addition to a somewhat long introductory chapter, each individual chapter is provided with a separate introduction and conclusion that repeat the plan of the chapter. The excessive attention to detail exposes the text’s original incarnation as an academic paper, even though it is not mentioned assuch. A lot of quotes are specifically mentioned in the main text with the name of its contributor, in the time-honoured tradition of academia. Even though the author had worked a part of his career in Pakistan and has his spouse there, the treatment is admirably balanced, even though with a slight inclination to Pakistan and the West.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star