Transboundary Water Management of the Indus River: A Repetitive Cycle

Abstract

The Indus River plays an important role in both India and Pakistan’s food and energy security through irrigation and hydropower. Despite the presence of an international agreement, the Indus Water Treaty, tensions between the two states over the river have persisted since partition. As such, the Indus has come to be governed along nationalistic and technocratic lines, with little coordination or cooperation between the two dominant riparian countries. This approach has resulted infrastructure construction and engineers being prioritised over environmental or social considerations on both sides of the border. By taking a discourse based approach, the transboundary water governance of the Indus River is unpacked to demonstrate how actors in both India and Pakistan utilise discursive tactics to maintain this policy approach. As such, discourse is shown to be ‘stuck’ in a state termed as discourse inertia. This inertia prevents the introduction of new actors and management approaches into the discourse, allowing both states to seek to control the river through an infrastructure-orientated and technocratic approach. Such an approach tends to results in negative social and environmental externalities as well as increased regional tensions.