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157 11 Water Resources Development and Water Conflicts in Two Indian Ocean States radha d’souza Introduction The political relations between India and Pakistan remain consistently adversarial in the Indian Ocean Region. Yet the Indus Treaty signed in 1960 between India and Pakistan has endured despite the unabashedly hostile nature of the political relationship between the two states. There are other paradoxes. The World Bank and the United States played a strong mediatory role in the treaty negotiations and mobilized bilateral and multilateral organizations, and a consortium of Western governments to back its mediation with large infusions of aid to “stabilize” the conflicts over the waters of the Indus. If the Indus Treaty mediation is a success story, it is significant that the World Bank has not extended that experience to other states and conflicts elsewhere. Finally, for well over a century science and development policy circles have unequivocally advocated that the river basin is the natural unit for water resources development and planning. The Indus Treaty went against the grain of the unity of the river basin thesis, at a time when the prestige of the view was unchallenged. The rivers of the Indus were divided between India and Pakistan, with India getting exclusive rights over the three eastern tributaries on her territory: the Ravi, Beas, and the Sutlej, and Pakistan getting the three western rivers on her territory: the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab. Partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan in August 1947 and the signing of the Indus Treaty in 1960 represent key moments in the contemporary politics and economics of the subcontinent. In the unfolding of the two events, national/internal factors played out in response to dramatic changes in the global world order at the end of World War II. It is important to contextualize the conflict and cooperation over Indus waters to understand what drives both processes between two influential states in the region. Analysis of both conflict and cooperation needs to be anchored to wider geo-historical and structural processes of colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism in the region. The Imperial Logic of Water Resources Development: Early Colonization The political boundaries of the British Empire in Asia were the result of the outcomes of colonial wars in the region between Britain and other European powers on the one hand, and between Britain and native rulers and populations on the other. The conclusion of the Anglo-Russian war (from 1807–1812) in favor of Britain during the Napoleonic Wars played a decisive role in securing the northern borders of the British Empire in South Asia. Thereafter, Britain could concentrate on reigning in and subjugating native rulers and peoples to secure the territorial limits and develop new forms of imperial governance in the region. Important events that secured the northern boundaries of the British Empire were the outcomes in the Anglo-Afghan Wars,1 the Anglo-Sikh Wars,2 and the Anglo-Persian War.3 The Afghan Wars and the Persian War carved out the territorial limits within which the writ of the British Empire could run; and the Sikh Wars consolidated colonial rule within the Indian sub-continent. These territorial and geopolitical regimes endured until the World Wars, which brought new instability, new wars, and a new post–World Wars regime. The politics of water complemented militarism and colonial wars in important ways to secure imperial governance. Although British penetration of the Indus basin began in 1809, its consolidation occurred after the annexation of Sind and Punjab in the 1840s. The Sikh army in the Punjab was defeated in 1846. In 1848 there was the second Anglo-Sikh war, where the Sikh army was once again defeated. In 1849 the English East India Company disbanded the Sikh army. The disbanded soldiers let loose on the countryside posed a serious threat to the security of the East India Company. The success of the military campaigns forced attention to administration and governance to consolidate the annexations. The East India Company deployed its military engineers to construct the Upper Bari Doab Canal works in the Indus basin, primarily to give employment to the Sikh army veterans and to settle them in agriculture in the canal colonies established after the construction. Fear of famines too played an important role in the decision to undertake the Upper Bari Doab Canal projects (Michel 1967, 60–66). In South Asia, famines are invariably followed by periods of political instability. Since then, water resources...

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