Prasenjit Biswas
The Statesman
May 25, 2015
southern China. An estimated 206 billion cubic metres of water could be transferred as China has completed channels through the Tsangpo’s tributaries, such as the Dadu, to droughtprone region of north-west China. To add to India’s woes, China has commissioned the 500-MW Zangmu Dam on the 1,700-km channel of the Yarlong-Tsangpo before it enters India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s just-concluded visit to China did not see any progress in trans-boundary river management and cooperation centering on the Brahmaputra. The diplomatic row surrounding Chinese claims over Arunachal Pradesh constrained the Indian side to raise this contentious issue of diversion and damming on the Brahmaputra unilaterally by China.
The global power asymmetry between China and India, created by the former’s rapid rise to a $60,000-billion trading economy in the last half a decade casts its shadow on the lower riparian countries like India and Bangladesh. However much one feels comfortable at a configuration such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the power over natural resources, supplanted by rising economic and military strength of China, takes away India’s fragile breathing space in South Asia. India’s Look East Policy (now Act East Policy) gets dislocated into seeking Chinese investment on tansnational projects. Far from being comfortable with regard to its border with Myanmar, India faces security threats from regrouped rebels of the Indo-Burma Revolutionary Front. The geopolitical scenario does not match with India’s rising aspirations towards Asian powers for finance and trade. In this context, India remains vulnerable on securing its most important river system from Chinese control , as things have moved beyond the aura of diplomacy and shared responsibility.
Modi’s bilateralism, without addressing issues of territorial sovereignty and water security, leaves a gap in both bilateral and domestic policies of India as a country and a nation-state. The domestic need for peace building in the North-east now gets directly related to India’s China policy, which assumes an intricate slant in this country’s disengagement on securing its lower riparian rights. Located at a geographical and geopolitical disadvantage with its domestic North-east and Myanmarese non-cooperation, India has no other way but to wait for China’s recognition of its lower riparian rights.
The question is to what extent will China recognise the lower riparian rights of its neighbours? Historically, China engaged itself in a bloody clash on the Sino-Soviet border over sharing of the water of the Amur river, on which China is the higher riparian. Although the fight has ended, China continues to use three times more water of the Amur in its northern China what Russia uses. This water crisis in northern China remains a root problem for that country’s ambitious plan to take water of the YarlungTsangpo to the northern province. China entered into many joint river and aquifer management treaties bilaterally in Southeast Asia and Russia, yet it is reluctant to do even one with India on this very important Brahmaputra river system. More than hydro-hegemony, existing recalcitrant issues of the Line of Actual Control and the boundary dispute with India leaves it brooding over sovereignty and border supremacy. This nonchalant attitude of China creates the most often bragged about and misunderstood claim on Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin.
Within this complex non-negotiable issue of state sovereignty, India has to articulate its lower riparian rights in terms of “navigability” of the “natural” river course of the Brahmaputra. It is for this purpose that it has to augment its shipping and transport services on the Brahmaputra to assert its rights. On a more recent Kyoto protocol on sustainability, India has to persuade China not to trade on the equity of riparian rights between them. Especially the future of Himalayan hydro-geological strata could arise as a major concern for both the states, as all the major river systems such as the Tsangpo, Yangtze, Salween, etc, are fed by Himalayan glaciers. A common agenda for preserving the fragile underground glacial depositions, as well as overground water ecology, could turn out to be a major area of trans-boundary river cooperation between the two major Asian powers.
India’s own track record for upholding lower riparian rights figured in China’s attitude towards the Brahmaputra. Considering that there is a raging conflict over water sharing between India and Bangladesh in the case of both the Ganga and the Teesta, China enjoys the diplomatic upperhand, as Bangaladesh invokes this aspect of India’s supposed folly in its bilateral understanding with China. Another possible thaw is India’s non-commital position on not building a dam on the upper catchment of the Barak river that flows into the north of Bangladesh. Modi’s visit brings to the table all these unresolved issues of trans-boundary river management involving China, India and Bangladesh. The sooner it is negotiated to result in common treaties, the better for the Himalayan ecosystem. Especially for Assam and down below Bangladesh, the unobstructed flow of the Brahmaputra is the only source of sustenance of agriculture, fishing and other nature-based livelihood. How India ensures this gift of nature from China remains a major challenge.
On a more secular plane, China’s launching of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in which India is one of the partners, also creates an enabling condition for joint thinking on a sustainable future for agriculture in both countries. As China faces a water crisis in its northeastern belt and India the threat of changed rainfall pattern in the North-east, a strategic rethinking on preserving river basins should emerge right at this point. Looking at the Brahmaputra only from the point of view of hydro-power endangers the quality of the ecosysytem, which in turn creates an unsettling diplomatic row between India and China. Both the diplomatic ecosystem and the river ecosystem must now converge in the ongoing Indo-Chinese dialogues along with all other trade, finance and intellectual cooperation that both countries are striving for.
