Suchergebnisse

The Ganges River Treaty, one of the world's successful examples of a peaceful resolution to a long-drawn river water dispute, has completed half of its tenure. This provides an opportunity to evaluate the variables of its success and further understand how both India and Bangladesh are going to deal with emerging challenges.

Pattanaik, Smruti S. (ed.), Four Decades of India Bangladesh Relations: Historical Imperatives and Future Direction (New Delhi: IDSA, 2012). Pp. 292.

India and Bangladesh have signed the Ganga/Ganges River Water treaty in December 1996. The Ganga Water treaty is cited as one of the important examples of peaceful negotiations between upstream and downstream neighbours in South Asia. The present article revisits the Indo-Bangladesh Ganga Water politics and understands the political dynamics which led to the signing of the treaty between the two countries. The reading of the negotiation process since beginning to the present time suggests that though the technical nature of the problem remains the same, a change in domestic politics facilitates or obstructs the negotiation process. Since India and Bangladesh share another 53 rivers, it is important to learn a successful mechanism from the negotiation of 1996 which can be applied to other river issues. The article is based on primary as well as secondary sources.

The article underlines the importance of water as a resource which is very unevenly distributed on Earth. Asia is a water deficit region in which 36 per cent of Earth's water is available for 60 per cent of the world's population. The disturbing aspect is how water's unequal distribution, spatially as well as temporally, engenders different kinds of conflicts in the region. In some cases, water becomes a latent factor in causing other conflicts. The conflicts over resources, particularly over water, are couched in different dimensions of politics. The article discusses various types of water conflicts and argues about the limitations of the managerial approach to the understanding of water conflicts. There is a need to deconstruct the social dimension of water usage and the politics behind its sharing at all levels.