Hydropolitics intertwined with geopolitics in the Brahmaputra River Basin

Abstract

The legacy of the sub-continent has led to a complex geopolitical rivalry in the Brahmaputra River Basin, shared by China, India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Each riparian state has a varying interest and development agenda, hindering the identification of common interests for water cooperation. This article presents the intertwining of regional geopolitics with the basin hydropolitics, restraining positive interaction, thus, leading to a status quo in the BRB. While maintaining a purposeful status quo seems to be a prudent move by the riparians, the local communities continue to suffer due to the impasse.

Environmental Law With Non-Human Features in India: Giving Legal Personhood to the Ganges

“…Similarly, an Assamese ethnographer critiques the new government-led practice of worshipping the Brahmaputra river (Namami Brahmaputra) in Assam, which both nourishes and destroys local people. Emphasising that the river means different things to various communities, depending on the specific material relations they share with it across time and space, Baruah (2017) argues that promoting hinduised worship homogenises everything under the larger canvas of Hindu symbols and imaginations. Yet here, the specific politics of Assam intersect with this critique of saffronisation, which could also be directed at the commercialisation of 'religion'.…”