The Phantom of Cooperation

Abstract

This chapter examines the Indus Waters Treaty’s problematic reputation for symbolising India–Pakistan cooperation. Even though the treaty failed to resolve broader geoplitical tensions in South Asia, the principle of river basin-scale negotiations reappeared in American and World Bank proposals for resolving an India–Pakistan dispute over the Farakka Barrage on the River Ganges in West Bengal and East Pakistan during the later 1960s and 1970s. The spectacular failure of basin-scale negotiation in Bengal, due to Indian policy-makers’ determination not to “compromise” their river-development plans in the face of external pressure, contrasted with the relative success of negotiations over the Indus Basin. The strange afterlife of the Indus Waters Treaty, in which Indian politicians used it as a warning against further cooperation, further demonstrated its historical peculiarity. The treaty is not a model for improving bilateral relations.