A water conflict in Kashmir

Sometime in the summer of 2002, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) held a meeting to review the deployment of Indian soldiers along the Line of Control (LoC), where they were almost touching noses with the Pakistan Army.

The heat outside was nothing compared to the heat in the room. Op Parakram""the deployment that had been ordered soon after the terrorist attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001""had been in force for five months.

Indian soldiers never tire, but all they were doing was standing on the LoC. So either the ante had to be upped or they could be allowed to be given leave, it was suggested.

The implications of the suggestion were lost on no one. What India had on its hands was a classic foreign policy stalemate. How was this to be broken?

Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani had an idea. "Why not prevent them from getting water?" he thought out aloud. The idea finally did not find favour with the CCS. The Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan is the one agreement that has survived all vicissitudes in the fractious relations.

To use that as a catalyst in Op Parakram would be inadvisable. But Advani did not know that he had struck upon what the Strategic Foresight Group considers the core of the internal problems of Pakistan and the next issue on which there could be an India-Pakistan war: not territory, not identity, but water.

The book is divided into three sections, drawn somewhat unoriginally, from the Deepa Mehta films: "Fire", "Earth", and "Water". "Fire" deals with the ideological motivations that drive Pakistan and Pakistanis to become terrorists, and pathologically anti-Indian at the very least, whether they are representing their country at the United Nations or the WTO.

"Earth" talks about the nitty gritty of differences and disputes between India and Pakistan""the possibility of a realistic institutional solution to the Kashmir issue, given that there are people on both sides who don't want azaadi but can't live in the countries they are forced to call their own ""India and Pakistan.

However, it is the section "Water" that is the most interesting and that gives fresh, new insights into the subaltern struggles going on in Pakistan.

The problem, the book says, is the divide between Sindh and Punjab. That Punjab is the source of wealth and large land holdings is well known.

However, the book says Pakistan's annual per capita water availability has declined from 5,600 cubic metres at the time of independence to 1,200 cubic metres in 2005. Both groundwater tables and the capacity of the hopelessly silt-laden Indus to carry water to Pakistan's storage facilities is dropping alarmingly. About 50 per cent of the water is expected to be lost by 2010. This will make it hard to support cotton sowing and wheat maturing.

"While all the provinces are suffering from a shortage of water, there is a tendency to force Sindh to bear a disproportionately high share of the burden than Punjab. The Army leadership is keen on ensuring water supply to Punjab at the cost of Sindh," the book says. It adds that in 2004-05, Sindh's share in irrigation water was cut by 25-40 per cent.

When explained in these terms, it is not hard to understand why Pakistan is so exercised about the Baglihar project, which it has recently referred to the World Bank for arbitration, despite India's repeated assurances that it would follow the Indus Waters Treaty in letter and spirit.

The book says Sindh has, as a result, launched massive agitations. And anticipating a serious threat of secessionist movements, Pakistan's interest in Jammu and Kashmir is not land, but""you've got it!""water. It wants physical control of the Chenab basin""the valley and parts of Jammu""to build dams to divert rivers for Punjab's benefit.

The book suggests that attributing the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir to political reasons may be only part of the story. Pakistan wants Kashmir as well as those districts of Jammu that form part of the Chenab valley so that it can build dams upstream and regulate river flows to both Punjab and Sindh. This is the so-called Chenab formula, which has been in wide circulation on the Track II circuit.

The book highlights incendiary quotes from various active and out-of-work politicians and leaders to buttress its point.

Mahmood Khan Achakzai, president of the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party, is said to have commented: "Sindhudesh zindabad, Balochistan zindabad, Pakhtoonkhwa zindabad and Seraikistan zindabad".

All these are small struggles qualifying for the subaltern tag, but all arise from socio-economic deprivation caused by lack of water.

So if we've identified the cause, according to the authors, of the India-Pakistan conflict, which is water, how must we treat the symptoms, which are terrorism, militarisation, and the growth of fundamentalism?

The book discusses all these issues but from the perspective of a people who can see their land becoming a desert before their eyes. Another picture of Pakistan emerges from this that cuts through the swathe of Islamic babble, freedom fighter rhetoric and the politics of Corps Commanders.

The book does not pretend to be even-handed. It speaks with irritating complacency about a theme popular with bureaucrats, the India "obsession" of Pakistan.

Is India less guilty of this charge? Loss of territory is always a trauma. Sino-Indian relations after 1962 are testimony to this. India divided Pakistan into two. So can Pakistan be blamed for wanting to avenge that humiliation?

But for all that, the book does manage to go beyond well-trodden paths and venture into new ground in trying to understand the tortured India-Pakistan relations. That in itself is enough reason to read it.

THE FINAL SETTLEMENT
RESTRUCTURING INDIA-PAKISTAN RELATIONS

Strategic Foresight Group
Price: Rs 250, Pages: xvi+110