The Indian and Pakistani sides of Jammu Kashmir and a few districts in Pakistani Punjab are facing a grim situation due to a late monsoon that is causing floods. More than 400 people from both sides of the border have been killed, a large number have been displaced and standing crops worth millions of rupees have been destroyed. According to media reports, even in such a ghastly situation, one that demands mutual assistance, till a few days back in certain sectors intermittent firing was going on between the border guards of the two countries. Who is provoking whom and who is fittingly responding is like a chicken-egg riddle that nobody can crack. A positive development in this sorrowful situation is that the two prime ministers have talked about flood aid and assistance, though no concrete decision has been taken by either side.
All floods are not bad and many are not natural. A few are created for socio-political reasons while some occur due to the mismanagement of rivers. The present flood in Jammu Kashmir and parts of Pakistani Punjab is mainly a result of torrential rainfall but the human design element to it cannot be fully dismissed. Due to the presence of a large number of hydro multipurpose projects on both sides of the border, silt gets deposited even near run-of-river projects or at the bottom of canals. This large-scale siltation leads to the non-absorbance of river water that, in turn, makes the region vulnerable to floods.
Secondly, as Usman Qazi, a humanitarian relief worker writes, during British colonial days, floods were managed by picking up parts of the right bank of one region and left bank of another in the same catchment areas and designating them as breaching sections that used to be blown up whenever there was an increase in water level. This always resulted in damaging less important water infrastructures that were repaired after the monsoon. This sort of water management was a reason behind what Imran Ali mentions in his book Punjab Under Imperialism: “transformation of six million acres of desert into the richest agricultural region of Asia”. This old practice of managing floods is not being used in the present day because of pressures from various socio-political stakeholders in hydrological structures. Finally, after partition in 1947, most of these projects, especially in Pakistan, were constructed without having environmental clearance and taking long-term concerns into consideration. The result of these hurried constructions is in front of us.
There is no specific provision in the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) to manage the present flood situation in the Indus River System (IRS) catchment areas but a few provisions in Article IV and Article VII can be used for common purpose. Any progress towards this direction is possible only when the two countries are at least on talking terms with each other. Recently, India cancelled the anxiously awaited foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan for unconvincing reasons. It has been proved time and again that talks between the two countries are not going to yield any results unless their political leadership becomes determined enough to make certain adjustments and compromises, yet continuous engagement is a must for having at least a working relationship. This helps in the effective management of common cross-border challenges like what has occurred at present.
Not only the floods but the post-flood situation also needs systematic management. In both situations the marginalised groups suffer more than others; they are the first victims of the floods because of the geographical location of their hamlets, they are given almost last preference by the agencies engaged in rescue operations, they lose whatever little they have and they are being discriminated against during post-flood relief operations. Aoun Sahi, in a small piece in the magazine Tanqeed, has highlighted the behaviour of government agencies and other groups engaged in the distribution of relief materials after the 2010 and 2012 floods in Pakistan. He writes that hundreds of districts in Punjab and Sindh, untouched by the 2010 floods, were given relief. He further mentions that the model houses built after the 2010 floods in Punjab’s Bhakkar district were allegedly allotted to undeserving people merely because they had backing from the right politicians. Pakistan is not alone in practicing this; it is like a contagious disease. P Sainath, in his book Everyone Loves a Good Drought, has aptly discussed the behaviour of Indian agencies during and after calamities. Post-calamity works also benefit some groups to spread their intoxicated ideology and increase their strength.
The present challenge, as in the past, has many lessons to be learned to avoid such disasters in the future. I hope some of them will be learned and implemented by the managers of the water policy from both countries. The most important lesson out of many is that, as India and Pakistan share many common rivers, they have to understand the nature of these rivers and design supply side structures suited to them.
The writer has a PhD in South Asian Studies. He specialises in Indian internal security and foreign policy as well as regional water conflicts