River Indus, the Bargaining Chip

Even though irrigation in Pakistan surpasses the country’s creation in 1947, dating back to 6000 years, ’modern’ canal irrigation was introduced during British colonization (Rahman, p. 364, 368). The partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan fractured this irrigation network that spilled over on both sides.

The drawing of borders was a rushed affair, resulting in a flawed final boundary that exacerbated the split of water headworks, a hydraulic structure that diverts water from a river to a canal (“Canal Headworks”). The infamous Radcliffe Award, which drew the border between India and Pakistan, granted the Ferozepore headwork to India even though it belonged to a Muslim majority tehsil, an administrative division (Michel, p. 178). As a result India could control the flow of water to Punjab. This worked greatly in favor of India and its certain leaders who viewed Pakistan as a temporary entity, which they were determined to bring back to India by wrecking its economy and making it vulnerable in any way possible (Michel, p. 223). While there are plausible justifications behind this grant, attention needs to be paid to a strategic alternative that was missed.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe who drew this partition line had never been to India and was hardly familiar with the geopolitical realities of the region. He was chosen for the task because of his intellectual reputation and because his lack of familiarity with the subcontinent made him an unbiased decision maker. While it is true that he was impartial toward both the new HinduMuslim nations, he did have a bias in favor of the British interests. His loyalties with the British government were deeply embedded through his experience during the war as the director general of the British Ministry of Information. This former position had explicitly exposed him to the goals and interests of the British crown (Chester).

Thus it is arguable that Radcliffe deliberately left the former British colony in an unstable position. He could have awarded the entire Ferozepore headwork, which admittedly served India as well, to balance the Indian control over water flowing from the Madhopur headworks into Pakistan. Such a scenario would have given both countries an equal bargain tool of control of water flowing to the other’s land (Michel, p. 181). There may never have been the need for the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, which pushed forward mega-dam projects for the development of Pakistan’s storage facilities, in order to offset its reliance on Indian controlled water

However with all headworks granted to India, Pakistan as a downstream state came to be dependent on Indian goodwill. This proved to be unreliable as early as 1948, when the river flow was breached by India. On April 1, 1948 the Indian government disrupted the flow of water from canals on its side, cutting off water to 5.5 percent of the sown area and almost 8 percent of the cultivated area in Pakistan (Ahmad). This Indian control of canals that fed Pakistan was dangerous because according to William Iliff, the Vice President of the World Bank and International Development Association from 1956-1962: “‘[i]f Pakistan was deprived of her canal water from the Indus system, the whole of west Pakistan would really become a desert’” (Alam, p. 342).

At the occurrence of this incident, the Pakistani leadership realized the extent to which the country was dependent on the Indian controlled Sutlej River. The whole ordeal may have been avoided were it not for K.B Sheikh Abdul Hamid, the Secretory of Irrigation from Punjab, who withdrew the complaint against the Ferozepore headwork award to India, from Committee B. Committee B was an arbitral tribunal set up by Radcliff, with government officials from each department, one from both countries, to settle any problems that arose from the partition.

ies, to settle any problems that arose from the partition. Hamid, the Pakistani nominee for the Irrigation Department, was swayed by his former colleague Mr. Kanwar Sen, the Indian nominee, to withdraw the issue of water apportionment (Kazi, p. 25-26). In doing so, he deprived Pakistan of getting a chance to regain some of its control over water that flowed through the country but originated in India. The bargaining chip was lost. Hamid let his personal relations with Sen get in the way of his countrys interest.

India let the water flow to Pakistan till precisely the end date of the Committee on March 31, 1948. The next day the flow was blocked; Pakistan had been tricked into not only accepting Indian goodwill but also giving up its right to the water of rivers Sutlej and Ravi, at least according to Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister (Kazi, p. 26). He agreed to reopen the canals only on the condition of monetary compensation by Pakistan for what was now Indian waters. Pakistan disputed this claim, by stating that its payments were for the costs of operating and maintaining the irrigation works and not for the water itself (Michel, p. 202).

Nevertheless, this arrangement was a temporary solution that was reached on May 4, 1948 when Inter-Dominion Agreement was signed, whereby India agreed to open water supplies for irrigation in Pakistan until the later developed alternative water resources (Ahmad). It also called for continued talks between the two countries but these were largely unsuccessful (Alam, p. 344). These political developments, motivated by India’s national self-interest, thus contributed to the increasing need for storage facilities in Pakistan.

The water dispute came to the attention of the World Bank, when both India and Pakistan applied for loans to develop water resources on the Sutlej River. The Bank had to turn down these projects, despite their economic feasibility, due to the continued political dispute over the river (Alam, p. 344). In 1949, when India requested the Bank to finance the multipurpose Bakhra-Nangal project on Jhelum River, Pakistan objected by highlighting the late water controversy. Similarly, when Pakistan sought finance from the Bank for the Kotri barrage project on Indus River, India cited the same reason for its objection.

These disrupted projects hindered socioeconomic development hence obstructing the World Bank’s stated mission to “reduce global poverty” (“About Us”). More critically, this situation threatened the Bank’s ability to raise money from donor countries, which could become skeptical of the agency’s effectiveness, in the light of two of its largest potential customers caught in such a political deadlock (Mason & Asher, p. 612).

However, a closer examination of the World Bank’s intervention in the water dispute between India and Pakistan shows that it was driven by a prominent American public figure, David E. Lilienthal. He was the founding director of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and later the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. In the 1950s, he exported his ideas of development internationally, with the subcontinent serving as one of his first targets (Neuse, blurb).

Lilienthal toured the Indus Valley in 1951 as a private citizen, and soon published an article in the Collier, offering a solution to the dispute and emphasizing that the matter be dealt technically rather than politically. He suggested developing the Indus system as a single unit, modeled after the TVA, which would be operated by both India and Pakistan. He directly called the World Bank to attention by proposing that “perhaps” the Bank would help the two countries in jointly financing the project (Mason & Asher, p. 612). Lilienthal was a “good friend” of Eugene R. Black, President of the then World Bank (D’Souza, p. 165), whom the President along with Davidson Sommers, the general counsel for the World Bank, met with on August 8, 1951 to discuss his proposals. It was Lilienthal himself who suggested to Black to forward these proposals directly to Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan respectively (Michel, p. 225).

At this time, Lilienthal was transitioning from his public service career to the private sector by joining Lazard, an international financial advisory, asset management, and investment firm (Albinia, p. 49). He made it known to his new employer that it was a “must” that he “accumulate a substantial sum of money in the next ten years”. Lilienthal was not to be disappointed; by 1955 he earned a yearly income of over $110,000 in addition to $1.5 million worth of Lazard stock, in exchange for his economic development expertise and political contacts around the world (Phillips-Fei & Zelizer, p. 113).

Lilienthal’s prominence in the public sector, and influential contacts such as Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India with whom he stayed during his Indus Basin visit to India, added weight to his article. He was effectively using his Lazard partner’s advice to capitalize on his “brilliant name” to open new markets for the company (Phillips-Fei & Zelizer, p. 112). In September 1951, President Black endorsed his friend’s proposal by citing it in his letter to the prime ministers of Pakistan and India. He offered the bait of qualified staff and finance to gain the favor of the two bitterly opposed countries (Mason & Asher, p. 612).

It was in this context that the World Bank got involved in assisting talks between the two nations. The interim negotiations, however, could not maintain the envisioned focus on engineering and technicality nor the plan for an integrated Indus Basin Project. The latter would have required India to accept partition “as a final and permanent thing” as advised by Lilienthal. However, as previously mentioned, certain Indian leaders were not ready to accept Pakistan as a permanent entity and thus waited for the weak states implosion. Also, India could develop its water infrastructure at a much lesser cost on its own by focusing its energy on the Bhakra-Beas-Rajasthan Project (Michel, pp. 197, 223).

Pakistan was conscious of India’s attempt to derail the country out of its new existence. The whole movement for a separate state for Muslims was premised on the Muslim leadership’s mistrust of Hindu-dominated Indian politics in safeguarding the rights and interests of the minority population (“Jinnah”). In the late years of colonial India, the Muslims, who were now in Pakistan, were repeatedly betrayed or marginalized by the Hindu politicians. The Muslim experiences from the Cabinet Mission, Mountbatten-Menon negotiations, and the Partition massacres were deeply embittering. The canal closure of 1948 was the most obvious incident to convince Pakistanis that they could not trust India with their irrigation water, something a joint project would require (Michel, p. 223).

Consequently, the talks quickly spilled over to “identity politics” (D’Souza, p. 165), and led to the Indus Water Treaty of 1960, in which the project was split between the two rival countries (Iyer, p. 3140). The World Bank had essentially stepped in the middle of two countries’ governances by striving to establish a unified administration over their water resources, to which end it failed due to political mistrust between its subjects (D’Souza, p. 165).

Ben Orlove, an anthropologist at Columbia University, and Stephen C Canton, also an anthropologist, warn that the term governance obscures “the debates and conflicts over (the) goals and values of water (which) lead us to the sphere of politics” (405). A perfect case study of this phenomenon can be found in the political tension between Punjab and Sindh. It is assumed that the national governance of Pakistan negotiated and signed the Indus Water Treaty but a close examination shows that it was an act of a subset of the governing body of the country.

One of the main provisions of the Treaty was to allocate the three western rivers of Indus (Jhelum, Chenab and Indus) to Pakistan and the three eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas and Sutlej) to India (Iyer, p. 3140). The negotiations that led to this agreement were fraught with political tensions between Punjab and the downstream province of Sindh. The former was preoccupied with diplomacy and foreign affairs, while the latter feared losing water flow to India. The Punjabi delegators, assured of control over water for itself given its national upstream position, were full of “desperation” to come to an agreement (Kazi, p. 31). Meanwhile Sindh actively opposed allocating any of the Indus Rivers to India because it recognized the shortfall in flow that would follow such an agreement (p. 33).

The original Pakistani delegation had fair representation of all provinces, with their respective interests, but their bickering undermined and prolonged the negotiation process. The opposing voices were soon silenced when in October 1955 the four provinces were merged into one province despite strong resistance from Sindh. The One Unit now represented West Pakistan while present day Bangladesh was East Pakistan, under which a new delegation was formed, known as the Indus Basin Advisory Board (IBAB). The IBAB was fully appropriated by Punjabis, who were given all the seats. Sindh was therefore systematically excluded from the deliberations that took place henceforth. This was not the first instance of Punjab playing bully politics towards Sindh; it was a continuation of a historical pattern stretching back to colonial times (Kazi, p. 22 & 31).

When the British developed irrigation systems in colonial India, they anticipated water disputes between the provinces and hence set up an India Irrigation Commission (1901-1903). The commission made it mandatory for Punjab to seek the permission of lower riparian Sindh before undertaking any projects on the Indus Rivers. The following years, Punjab and Sindh went back and forth on projects through the British intermediary Viceroy of India, who often recognized the threat to the interests of Sindhis (Kazi, p. 22).

The repeated water disputes induced the British to set up Rao Commission in 1941, which sought to find a permanent solution between the two provinces. Sindh took this as an opportunity to file its complaints against completed and ongoing irrigation projects of Government of Punjab, on the Indus and its tributaries. These included the Haveli Project, feeders for water transference, and Thal Project that had formerly been rejected by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford (Kazi, p. 23-4). Unfortunately, the agreement that came out of the commission was lost in partition and never came to be ratified.

There were other grievances that Sindh held against Punjab. For instance, after partition Punjabi and mohajir (migrants) bureaucrats and military officers were allocated 1.32 million acres of agricultural land, almost half of the newly irrigated land created by various barrages. Sindhis were treated like second class citizens in their own province; they were continually under represented in services, business and law enforcing agencies. Karachi, a cultural and financial center of the province, was made a federal capital. The Urdu language was imposed on their higher education system, replacing the local language of Sindhi. This was viewed as an act of “Punjabi imperialism,” to borrow the words of Syed G.M (Waseem & Hayat, p. 729).