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Subject: Water Management

  • For Bihar flood problem, solution lies beyond

    Why in the News

    Bihar received 27 per cent below normal rainfall between 1 June and the first week of September, and large parts of the state are still under water. Six rivers, the Ganga, Gandak, Kosi, Budhi Gandak, Punpun and Ghaghra, have risen above danger levels in different stretches. The flooding therefore cannot be explained by how much rain fell on the state, which locates the cause in how its rivers and channels are managed. The state’s inherited answer has been containment, holding rivers inside defined channels behind embankments since colonial times. That method separates a river from its floodplain, and with silt raising the bed year on year it reduces the channel’s capacity to carry the discharge it is given. The contested question is whether flood works should keep aiming to hold the river in, or to give it space to spread safely.

    Why did rivers cross danger levels in a deficit monsoon?

    1. The rainfall record for the season: The state recorded 27 per cent below normal rainfall for the period from 1 June to the first week of September.
    2. Two causes acting together: High upstream river flows combined with erratic weather, meaning spells of heavy localised rainfall inside an overall seasonal deficit, pushed rivers over their banks.
    3. A tributary can flood because the main river is high: The unusually high level of the Ganga created a backwater effect in the Gandak and the Punpun, the condition where a high level in the receiving river obstructs the outflow of a river draining into it.
    4. What that effect did: Both tributaries drain into the Ganga, and its high level made their discharge difficult, so water backed up in the tributaries and added to the flooding.
    5. Danger level is a gauge based threshold: It is the level fixed for each gauge site above which a river threatens habitation and property, so six rivers crossing it in different stretches describes localised failures rather than one basin wide event.

    What does containment by embankment do to a river?

    1. It cuts the river off from its floodplain: Embankments separate rivers from the floodplains that would otherwise absorb and spread a high discharge.
    2. The bed rises inside the confined channel: Continuous silt deposition raises the riverbed and reduces the channel’s capacity to carry flow.
    3. A breach concentrates the damage: When an embankment breaches, artificially contained water rushes into homes and fields at a depth and force an unconfined flood would not produce.
    4. Each year of containment narrows the next year’s margin: A rising bed inside fixed embankments means the same discharge sits higher against the same defences, so the safety margin shrinks with no change in rainfall.

    Why will higher embankments not settle the problem?

    1. The premise needs revisiting: The state needs to reconsider the idea that higher or stronger embankments will by themselves contain floods, since the containment is what raises the bed against them.
    2. Maintenance remains an obligation: Existing embankments protect settlements and land that have grown up behind them, so the choice is not between maintaining them and abandoning them.
    3. The stated objective is the opposite of containment: Persistent monsoon floods point to the need to give the river space to spread safely during periods of high discharge, which a confined channel is designed to prevent.
    4. This is an execution problem, not a knowledge problem: The measures required are already identified in policy, and the flooding continues, which places the failure in implementation rather than in diagnosis.

    What must accompany embankment maintenance?

    1. Restoration of drainage channels: The natural and constructed drains that carry water off the land have to be reopened, since water that cannot drain stays on fields after the river level falls.
    2. Protection of floodplains: The land a river needs during high discharge has to be kept free of the construction and occupation that turns a spread into a disaster.
    3. Better land use planning: Where settlement, cropping and infrastructure are permitted has to follow the flood behaviour of the stretch rather than precede it.
    4. Restoration of wetlands: Wetlands in the basin hold and release flood water, and their loss transfers that volume to the channel and to the settlements behind the embankment.
    5. Deployment of early warning systems: Warning converts an unavoidable flood into an evacuated one, and it is the only measure on this list that reduces loss without altering the river.

    Why has an existing basin plan not changed the outcome?

    1. The imperatives are already on record: The Ganga Basin River Management Plan, implemented for more than a decade, acknowledges these requirements.
    2. The outcome has not followed: Persistent monsoon floods in Bihar show how much remains to be done to give the river room to spread during high discharge.
    3. One requirement sits outside the state’s control: Addressing Bihar’s concerns requires greater coordination between the riverine states on reservoir releases, since a downstream state’s peak is partly set by upstream release decisions.

    Where does the Farakka question sit in this argument?

    1. The state’s long standing contention: Bihar has argued that the barrage and the India-Bangladesh Ganga water sharing treaty compounded its river management challenges.
    2. The mechanism it alleges: Its case is that the barrage altered the Ganga’s flow regime, affecting the movement and deposition of the river’s sediment load.
    3. The causal claim is not settled: The extent to which this contributes to flooding in Bihar remains contested, so it cannot carry the whole explanation for the season’s flooding.
    4. The claim still belongs in the negotiation: Renegotiation of the 1996 treaty, which expires in December, should take account of Bihar’s concerns over silt accumulation and the state’s river management needs.
    5. The evidence base has to be current: Any new arrangement needs to be informed by updated data on river flows and climate change projections rather than on historical records alone.
    6. The principle extends past this treaty: In a period of erratic weather, states and countries sharing a river basin have to strengthen coordination to manage flows and reduce flood related distress.

    Challenges to embankment based flood control in Bihar

    1. The network is too long to maintain to standard: Bihar carries roughly 3,800 km of flood embankments, and every weak section of it is tested in the same few weeks each year. Eg. Breaches are recorded each season at several points across different river systems rather than at one predictable location.
      The Fix: Publish a stretch wise condition rating for the full embankment length before each monsoon, with repair funds released against the ratings rather than spread evenly.
    2. Containment creates waterlogging behind the line: An embankment that keeps a river out also keeps rainwater and local drainage in, so land behind it is lost to standing water rather than to flooding. Eg. Large areas in the Kosi and Gandak belts of north Bihar remain waterlogged well after river levels have fallen.
      The Fix: Build and maintain sluice and pump drainage at every point where an embankment crosses a natural drain, and treat the outfall as part of the embankment asset.
    3. People live between the embankments: Villages inside the embanked corridor are flooded every year by design, without the protection the structure was built to provide. Eg. Settlements between the eastern and western Kosi embankments are inundated annually while the land outside them is defended.
      The Fix: Fix a statutory resettlement and compensation entitlement for households inside the embanked corridor, separate from general flood relief.
    4. The decisive failure point can lie outside the state: The Kosi and the Gandak are regulated by structures in Nepalese territory, so a breach beyond Bihar’s jurisdiction can determine its flood year. Eg. The 2008 Kosi flood followed a breach at Kusaha, upstream of the barrage in Nepal, and displaced close to three million people in Bihar.
      The Fix: Establish a joint pre monsoon inspection and certification regime with Nepal for the Kosi and Gandak structures, with agreed repair timelines.
    5. Warning lead time is short because the catchment is foreign: Rainfall and discharge data from the upper catchments decide how much notice a district can be given, and that data is not generated within India. Eg. A peak on the Kosi can reach the Bihar plains within a day of heavy rainfall in its Nepalese catchment.
      The Fix: Extend real time telemetry sharing across the upper catchments and route it directly to district administrations rather than only to state control rooms.
    6. Silt removal has no funded programme: Reversing a raised bed is slow work with no annual budget head behind it, so the only measure reliably funded is raising the embankment. Eg. Dredging in the state is undertaken for navigation on specific stretches rather than for restoring channel capacity across a river.
      The Fix: Create a standing sediment management head in the state’s water resources budget, reporting channel capacity rather than embankment height as its outcome.

    Conclusion

    A flood season inside a rainfall deficit places the cause in the river system rather than in the monsoon, and that changes what a flood programme should be measured against. Protection built on confining rivers cannot hold once the beds inside those confinements keep rising. The question Bihar now faces is whether it makes channel capacity and floodplain space the stated objective of its flood works, or continues to judge success by the height and length of its defences. The water negotiation ahead is where the state’s sediment case will either become an operating rule or remain a grievance.

    Back2Basics: Ganga Basin River Management Plan

    1. What it is: A basin scale plan that treats the Ganga as a single hydrological unit, covering environmental flows and sediment alongside pollution abatement, rather than as a set of separate state level works.
    2. Why a basin frame: The Ganga basin covers about 861,000 sq km in India, close to 26 per cent of the country’s geographical area, spread across 11 states.
    3. Who carries the Ganga programme: The National Mission for Clean Ganga, under the Ministry of Jal Shakti, is the implementing arm of the National Ganga Council and was constituted as an authority under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
    4. What a basin plan can and cannot do: It sets requirements across the basin and depends on state departments and inter state coordination to execute them, which is how its imperatives can stand on record for years without changing outcomes on the ground.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2017, GS1, 15 marks] In what way can floods be converted into a sustainable source of irrigation and all – weather inland navigation in India?”

  • Farakka treaty nearing expiry, JDU revives campaign against barrage

    Why in the News

    Janata Dal (United), a partner in the ruling coalition in Bihar, has launched a campaign across 12 districts of the state along the Ganga demanding that the Farakka barrage be dismantled, and opposing any renewal of the India-Bangladesh Ganga water sharing treaty. The treaty it is targeting was signed in December 1996 and set a 30 year framework for sharing Ganga waters at the barrage during the dry season. That framework lapses this December, which converts a standing state grievance into a live negotiating question. The state government’s own position is narrower, that Bihar’s interest should be guarded in the treaty, with the Chief Minister stating in Munger that the state receives Ganga water for only four months of the year against a need for year round flow. A bilateral water sharing arrangement is the Union government’s to negotiate, and what is now being pressed is not a better share but the removal of the structure the sharing is measured at.

    What does the 1996 Ganga water sharing treaty do?

    1. Who it binds and what it covers: It is a bilateral agreement between India and Bangladesh, signed in December 1996, regulating the sharing of Ganga waters at the Farakka barrage in West Bengal.
    2. The season it governs: It applies primarily to the dry season, running from 1 January to 31 May, which is when the flow available at the barrage is least able to meet both countries’ requirements.
    3. Why a 30 year term was written in: The treaty established a binding framework for 1996 to 2026 to replace the earlier short term stopgap arrangements and give both sides predictable distribution.
    4. Where it now stands: That framework lapses this December, so continuation requires a fresh negotiation rather than an automatic rollover.

    Why was the barrage built, and what did it change on either side?

    1. The purpose it was built for: The barrage was built in 1975 to divert water from the Ganga into the Hooghly river, to flush out silt and keep Kolkata Port navigable.
    2. The downstream effect in Bangladesh: The diversion reduced downstream flow into Bangladesh, producing severe water shortages, increased soil salinity and ecological stress in the south of that country.
    3. The upstream effect Bihar reports: Heavy silt trapped behind the barrage has raised the Ganga’s riverbed, destroying the river’s natural storage capacity and driving seasonal floods.
    4. One structure sits behind both complaints: The diversion that sustains a port channel downstream is the same arrangement that holds sediment upstream, so the barrage is what both sets of grievances point at.

    What is Bihar’s stated grievance?

    1. A flood and parch cycle upstream: The state government’s position is that the barrage has created a severe flood and parch dynamic upstream of it, alternating inundation with shortage rather than steadying the flow.
    2. Four months of water against a year round need: The Chief Minister has stated that Bihar currently receives Ganga water only from July to October, and requires flow throughout the year.
    3. What the state asks of the Union government: Its stated demand is that the treaty safeguard Bihar’s interest, which places a riparian state’s claim inside a negotiation it is not a party to.

    What is the campaign demanding, and how is it being run?

    1. A demand to dismantle, not to renegotiate: The party is demanding that the barrage be dismantled, citing a stance its chief and former Chief Minister has repeatedly taken with the Union government that the structure causes heavy siltation and floods.
    2. Outright opposition to renewal: The party’s stated position is that it is completely against renewal, on the ground that the treaty fails to serve the state’s interests and remains a primary cause of flooding.
    3. Where it is being taken: The ‘Nitish Samvad’ campaign covers the 12 districts through which the Ganga flows in Bihar, and has so far covered four, Buxar, Bhojpur, Begusarai and Khagaria.
    4. How it is being conducted: It is led by the party’s national working president, a Rajya Sabha member, and carries recorded audio messages of the party chief, who is not travelling for it.
    5. The timetable it is working to: The party intends to finish the campaign well before the treaty ends in December, which places it ahead of any decision on renewal.

    Challenges to renegotiating the Ganga water sharing framework

    1. A riparian state has no seat at the table: Water is a State subject, and a treaty with a foreign country is the Union government’s exclusive power, so a state can press a claim and cannot block an agreement. Eg. The India-Bangladesh Teesta water sharing draft has remained unsigned since 2011 over West Bengal’s objections, without the state being a party to it.
      The Fix: Constitute a standing consultative mechanism with the basin states before negotiation opens, with their submissions placed on record as part of the Indian position.
    2. The sharing formula rests on historical flows: The arrangement was built on the average dry season availability recorded at the barrage over four earlier decades, and that baseline no longer describes current or projected flows. Eg. Its operation depends on how much water actually arrives at the barrage in each ten day period of the dry season.
      The Fix: Write the next arrangement on a rolling flow record revised at fixed intervals, rather than on a single fixed historical average.
    3. Sediment has no institutional owner: The dispute Bihar raises is about silt rather than volume, and no authority holds the power to order desilting or to set a sediment budget for the river. Eg. The approach channel at Farakka itself requires repeated dredging to stay open, which relocates silt rather than reducing the load.
      The Fix: Attach a sediment management protocol to the barrage’s operating rules, naming the responsible authority and the annual dredging and disposal obligation.
    4. The flood peaks are set outside India: The Kosi and the Gandak, the rivers that deliver Bihar’s worst flood peaks, rise in Nepal, so peak discharge is governed by catchments and structures beyond this treaty’s scope. Eg. The Kosi and Gandak barrages stand in Nepalese territory and are operated by India under the 1954 Kosi Agreement and the 1959 Gandak Agreement.
      The Fix: Pair the Ganga negotiation with a flow data sharing and release coordination arrangement with Nepal on the Kosi and Gandak.
    5. Removing the structure moves the problem rather than ending it: Dismantling the barrage would restore downstream flow and withdraw the diversion that keeps the Bhagirathi-Hooghly channel and the Kolkata port route navigable. Eg. The feeder canal at Farakka exists solely to carry that diverted flow into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly system.
      The Fix: Commission an independent flow and sediment study of the barrage’s upstream and downstream effects, so the dismantling demand is tested against measured alternatives rather than settled politically.

    Conclusion

    A dry season sharing arrangement is now being contested on grounds it was never written to address, since the demand from Bihar concerns sediment and flood behaviour rather than the volume of water allotted. That mismatch is what makes renewal harder than an extension of terms. The decision to watch is whether the Union government opens the negotiation with a stated position on siltation upstream of the barrage, or confines it to the dry season allocation. Confined to allocation, a new agreement settles the bilateral question and leaves the domestic one exactly where it started.

    Back2Basics: Farakka Barrage

    1. Where it stands: Across the Ganga in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, a short distance upstream of the point where the river enters Bangladesh.
    2. Its scale: The barrage runs about 2,240 metres across the river and carries a road and rail link over it.
    3. How the diversion works: A feeder canal roughly 38 km long carries water from above the barrage into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly, the channel the diversion was designed to sustain.
    4. Who operates it: The Farakka Barrage Project authority, under the Union Ministry of Jal Shakti, runs the structure and its regulating gates.

    Matching Previous Year Question

    “[2016, GS1, 12 marks] Present an account of the Indus Water Treaty and examine its ecological, economic and political implications in the context of changing bilateral relations.”

  • Two countries and a shared river: Mistrust is not inevitable

    Two countries and a shared river: Mistrust is not inevitable

    Why in the News

    India’s most important rivers rise in a region it cannot see into, controlled by China, which treats the data about them as an asset to switch on and off. The Brahmaputra rises as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet and enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang, and the Sutlej and the Indus rise there too. The arrangement that governs what India learns about them, a pair of flood-season memorandums, lapsed in June 2025. China broke ground in July 2025 on the Medog project at the Great Bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo, immediately upstream of the point where the river turns towards Arunachal Pradesh. The tension is that hydrological data on rivers India depends on is a discretionary favour rather than a treaty right, and India practises the same discretion on the rivers where it sits upstream.

    What is the India-China hydrological data arrangement?

    1. No water treaty exists between the two countries: The relationship rests on two flood-season memorandums, one on the Brahmaputra signed in 2002 and one on the Sutlej signed in 2005.
    2. India pays for the data it receives: India pays roughly Rs 1 crore a year for the flood-season information supplied under those memorandums.
    3. A consultative body that convenes at China’s convenience: An expert-level consultative mechanism sits alongside the memorandums and meets when relations allow.
    4. The instrument is seasonal by design: The memorandums cover the flood season, so hazards arising outside that window carry no notification obligation at all.

    Why is there no legal floor under the arrangement?

    1. Both states sit outside the governing convention: The 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses would oblige an upstream state to give prior notice of works and not to cause significant harm to those below. China voted against it and India abstained.
    2. A non-binding memorandum can be suspended without breach: Withholding data under such an arrangement carries no legal consequence, so there is nothing for India to invoke when supply stops.

    Why does shared data function as a lever rather than a right?

    1. Supply tracks the state of the boundary dispute: China stopped sharing Brahmaputra data during the Doklam standoff of 2017, blaming damaged collection sites, even as that summer’s floods killed scores in Assam.
    2. The pattern repeated and then ended the arrangement: Sharing resumed once relations thawed, dried up after the Galwan clash of 2020, and the memorandum lapsed in June 2025.
    3. Flood prediction data is not a neutral public good: It is released when ties are warm and withdrawn when they are not, which makes it a bargaining instrument rather than a technical input.
    4. Reassurances cannot be checked: Beijing attributes the stoppages to technical faults, calls the dam “fully within China’s sovereignty” and promises it will “prevent and mitigate disasters”. Those meant to be reassured cannot verify any of it, because the region is sealed and India, which hosts the Dalai Lama and the largest Tibetan exile community, is viewed with particular suspicion.

    What does the Medog project add to India’s exposure?

    1. The largest hydropower project in the world, at the worst possible point: The Medog project at the Great Bend will run to 60 GW, sited just before the Yarlung Tsangpo turns towards Arunachal Pradesh.
    2. It sits on the seam that generates the hazard: The site lies in one of the planet’s most seismically violent zones, the same tectonic seam that produces the outburst floods now hitting the border.
    3. Downstream states have been told nothing: Arunachal Pradesh’s Chief Minister has called the project an “existential threat” to the Siang valley. Bangladesh, at the river’s end, sought details in early 2026 and received none.

    Where does India’s own record cut against its demand?

    1. India settled for paid data instead of pressing for a right: Successive governments accepted the paid-data memorandum and did not push for the binding, basin-wide architecture that would make information an entitlement rather than a favour.
    2. India is an upstream withholder on its own rivers: It shares thinly with Bangladesh, and it has placed the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 in abeyance following the Pahalgam terror attack.
    3. The same logic runs in both directions: The reasoning India faces on the Brahmaputra is the reasoning it practises on the Indus, which removes the ground from which it could demand a rule of general application.

    What do the Senegal and Mekong models show is possible?

    1. Poverty is not the constraint: On the Senegal River, four of the world’s poorest African countries jointly own their dams as “common and indivisible property”.
    2. Nor is conflict: That joint ownership was sustained even through a war between two of the member states, so mistrust between riparian governments does not by itself prevent pooled sovereignty over a river.
    3. China’s absence is a choice, not a limitation: Its neighbours built the Mekong River Commission and China stayed outside it, which shows the refusal to enter a basin institution is political rather than structural.

    Challenges to a binding India-China river arrangement

    1. Forecasting depends on a single unverifiable supplier: Flood forecasting for the Brahmaputra rests on upstream gauge readings that no Indian agency can independently audit, so a stoppage removes the input rather than degrading it. Eg. Central Water Commission forecasts for the Assam valley are built on flows measured at stations India cannot access.
      The Fix: Fund independent satellite-based flow and precipitation estimation for the upper basin, so a data cut-off reduces accuracy instead of ending the forecast.
    2. The hazards that kill fall outside the covered season: Glacial lake outburst floods and landslide-dam breaches occur without regard to the monsoon calendar the arrangement is built around. Eg. The South Lhonak glacial lake outburst flood of October 2023 destroyed the Teesta-III dam in Sikkim and killed dozens, outside any flood-season notification window.
      The Fix: Negotiate a year-round hazard-notification obligation covering lake formation, landslide damming and reservoir release, separately from seasonal flow data.
    3. Water has no forum of its own: The boundary question runs through the Special Representatives channel, and water sits in a separate expert mechanism with no power to compel a meeting or an answer. Eg. An interruption in data supply has no body before which it can be formally raised as a breach.
      The Fix: Give the expert mechanism a fixed annual calendar and a standing agenda item on notification failures, so a stoppage produces a documented exchange.
    4. The lower riparians negotiate separately on the same river: India, Bangladesh and China each deal bilaterally, so the basin’s downstream users never present a common position. Eg. India and Bangladesh’s Joint Rivers Commission covers 54 shared rivers and has produced only two water-sharing treaties in five decades.
      The Fix: Raise the Yarlung Tsangpo-Brahmaputra as a joint India-Bangladesh agenda item so notification is sought by the whole downstream reach at once.
    5. India’s own counter-project is contested at home: Storage proposed on the Siang as a strategic answer to Medog is opposed by the communities it would displace, which weakens the case India makes about consultation. Eg. Survey work for the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project has faced sustained local protest in Arunachal Pradesh.
      The Fix: Settle consent and compensation on the Indian side of the border before advancing a counter-dam as a security argument.

    Conclusion

    India cannot compel China to open the plateau, and the question is therefore not about leverage but about design. What is missing is an architecture that makes hazard information an obligation owed to everyone downstream rather than a concession granted when relations permit. Building it requires India to accept the same obligation on the rivers where it sits upstream, since a rule it will not apply to itself is not a rule it can ask for. The unresolved point is whether a shared river is treated as a common lifeline or as a weapon held in reserve, and neither government has yet chosen.

    Transboundary River Water Sharing in India

    1. About: A transboundary river crosses an international boundary, and its use is governed by bilateral treaties and memorandums between the riparian states rather than by a single binding global law.
    2. India’s position is both upstream and downstream: India is the lower riparian to China on the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Indus headwaters, and the upper riparian to Pakistan on the Indus system and to Bangladesh on the Ganga and the Teesta.
    3. The dependence is agricultural: Around 45% of irrigation in the Indo-Gangetic plain depends on water from the Himalayan rivers, which is why control of the headwaters translates directly into food security.

    Laws and Agreements Governing Transboundary River Water Sharing

    1. Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 (India-Pakistan): Brokered by the World Bank, it assigns the Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India and the Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan, with run-of-the-river hydropower and limited storage permitted to India on the Western Rivers.
    2. Article XII: Termination is possible only through a ratified treaty between both governments, and the text carries no suspension provision.
    3. Ganga Waters Treaty, 1996 (India-Bangladesh): It fixes the sharing of dry-season flows at the Farakka Barrage and runs for 30 years, expiring in December 2026.
    4. Kushiyara River Treaty, 2022 (India-Bangladesh): It provides for withdrawal of an agreed quantum from the Kushiyara in the dry season, and is only the second water-sharing treaty between the two countries.
    5. Kosi Agreement, 1954 and Gandak Agreement, 1959 (India-Nepal): These provide for flood control, barrage construction and irrigation management on shared rivers, with India funding and operating the structures on Nepali territory.
    6. Mahakali Treaty, 1996 (India-Nepal): It covers the integrated development of the Mahakali river, including the Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project, which remains stalled over disagreement on benefit-sharing.

    Challenges in Transboundary River Water Sharing

    1. The customary principles bind weakly without a forum: Equitable and reasonable utilisation and the obligation not to cause significant harm are widely accepted in principle, and no standing tribunal exists to apply them to a river basin. Eg. The Mekong River Commission can review a member’s dam proposal and cannot stop it.
      The Fix: Build compulsory technical arbitration into each treaty at renewal, so a disputed project has a named forum rather than a bilateral stalemate.
    2. Treaties fix volumes that the climate then moves: Allocations negotiated on decades-old flow records become unworkable as glacier melt, monsoon variability and river morphology change the water actually available. Eg. Negotiations over the Ganga sharing formula are complicated by changing river morphology and by disagreement over water levels at Farakka.
      The Fix: Replace fixed quantum allocations with percentage-of-flow formulas carrying explicit dry-year and surplus-year rules.
    3. Domestic federal politics stalls bilateral agreements: A riparian State’s objection can hold up an agreement the two national governments have already negotiated. Eg. The draft Teesta agreement of 2011, providing for a 50:50 sharing arrangement, has never been implemented.
      The Fix: Include the riparian State in the negotiating delegation from the outset, rather than seeking its concurrence after a text is settled.
    4. Third parties build in the same basin without notice: A neighbour can bring in external financing and construction for a project on a shared river without consulting the other riparian. Eg. Bangladesh has re-engaged China on the Teesta River Management Project.
      The Fix: Write a prior-notification and joint-appraisal requirement for any new structure into every treaty renewal, applying to externally financed projects as well.

    [2016, GS1, 12 marks] Present an account of the Indus Water Treaty and examine its ecological, economic and political implications in the context of changing bilateral relations.

  • Jharkhand, Bihar sign pact on Sone water sharing

    Jharkhand, Bihar sign pact on Sone water sharing

    Why in the News

    Bihar and Jharkhand have signed a memorandum of understanding on sharing the water of the Sone river, allocating 5.75 million acre feet to Bihar and 2 million acre feet to Jharkhand.

    What has been agreed on the Sone, and what was in dispute?

    1. The dispute was over one inherited allocation: The 1973 agreement allotted 7.75 million acre feet (MAF), one acre foot being the volume that covers an acre of land to a depth of a foot, or about 1,233 cubic metres, to then undivided Bihar.
    2. Bihar takes the larger share: The formal consensus allocates 5.75 MAF of the river’s water to Bihar.
    3. Jharkhand takes the remainder: The remaining 2 MAF is allocated to Jharkhand.
    4. The route chosen is agreement rather than adjudication: The States settled by memorandum instead of taking the claim to a tribunal constituted under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956.

    What does the settlement change on the ground?

    1. A long-pending eastern India dispute closes: The agreement resolves a water dispute that had run unresolved between the two States since the bifurcation.
    2. Irrigation is the stated primary gain: It is expected to provide irrigation water to lakhs of farmers in rural Bihar and rural Jharkhand.
    3. Drinking water supply is the second use: It is also expected to supply drinking water to a large population across both States.
    4. It is the fourth such deal this year: This is the fourth water agreement concluded between States in the year, each intended to raise water availability for irrigation, rural development and drinking purposes.

    Challenges to the Sone water sharing agreement

    1. An executive memorandum carries no adjudicatory backing: A memorandum binds two governments politically and gives neither a forum to enforce it when a release is withheld. Eg. The Krishna and Cauvery allocations required tribunal awards under the Inter-State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 and were litigated for decades afterwards.
      The Fix: Convert the split into a scheduled allocation under a joint Sone board with a statutory review clause and a defined dispute reference.
    2. A fixed annual quantity assumes a fixed annual yield: An allocation stated in acre feet holds only in a normal year, and the Sone’s flow is monsoon dominated and highly variable. Eg. The Indrapuri barrage at Dehri has repeatedly failed to fill its canal command in deficit years.
      The Fix: Restate the split as a share of realised flow measured at agreed gauging points, with a separate lean season protocol.
    3. No joint measurement machinery is named: Neither State is committed to a common gauging point or a common data record, so each will compute its own entitlement from its own readings. Eg. The Cauvery dispute turned for years on the absence of agreed real-time flow data at the inter-State point.
      The Fix: Install telemetered gauges at the State boundary and publish daily flow and release data on a single public portal.
    4. Upstream storage decisions sit outside the deal: New reservoirs and diversions on tributaries above the boundary change what reaches the downstream State without breaching any allocation figure. Eg. Storage projects on Sone basin tributaries in Jharkhand alter the flow arriving at Bihar’s canal headworks.
      The Fix: Make any new storage above the boundary subject to prior consultation with a defined objection window for the downstream State.
    5. Delivery efficiency is untouched by the allocation: A larger paper share does not reach a farmer where the canal system loses much of the release before the tail end. Eg. Unlined and silted distributaries in the Sone canal command leave tail end villages dependent on groundwater in the same season the head reach is irrigated.
      The Fix: Tie the drawal of the agreed share to verified canal lining and command area development milestones reported annually.

    Conclusion

    Bihar-Jharkhand Sone water agreement is a positive step toward cooperative river management, improving irrigation and drinking water availability. With transparent monitoring, flexible sharing during droughts and joint planning, it can ensure long-term water security and regional development.

    Back2Basics: Sone River

    1. Source and course: It rises on the Amarkantak plateau in Madhya Pradesh, close to the source of the Narmada, and flows in the opposite direction to it.
    2. Status in the Ganga system: It is the largest of the southern tributaries of the Ganga, and it joins the main river upstream of Patna.
    3. States traversed: Its course runs through Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
    4. Principal structure: The Indrapuri barrage at Dehri feeds the Sone canal system, among the oldest large canal networks built in India.

    “[2013, GS2, 10 marks] Constitutional mechanisms to resolve the inter-state water disputes have failed to address and solve the problems. Is the failure due to structural or process inadequacy or both? Discuss.”

  • India is well endowed with fresh water resources. Critically examine why it still suffers from water scarcity.

  • In what way micro-watershed Development projects help in water conservation in drought prone and semi-arid regions of India.

  • Present an account of the Indus Water Treaty and examine its ecological, economic and political implications in the context of changing bilateral relations.

  • The effective management of land and water resources will drastically reduce the human miseries. Explain

  • In what way can floods be converted into a sustainable source of irrigation and all – weather inland navigation in India?

  • The ideal solution of depleting ground water resources in India is water harvesting system. How can it be made effective in urban areas?

    With nearly 18% of the world’s population but only 4% of its freshwater, India’s reliance on groundwater has reached a tipping point, making decentralized water harvesting not just an ideal solution, but a survival imperative.

    Depleting Groundwater Resources

    India is the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, extracting over 25% of the global total – more than China and the US combined.

    Over-Exploited Blocks-Roughly 14% of India’s 7,000+ assessment units are “Over-exploited”.

    Regional Crisis-In Gurgaon (2026), groundwater extraction reached 194.6% of its sustainable limit.

    The “Day Zero” Threat-21 major cities are projected to functionally exhaust their groundwater reserves by 2030.

    Northern India has seen water tables drop by an average of 1.5 cm per year over the last two decades.

    Deep-well samples in Delhi and Punjab now show Uranium levels exceeding BIS limits in 15% of cases due to over-extraction.

    Water Harvesting System as a Solution

    Bridging the Supply-Demand Gap-RWH captures monsoon runoff that would otherwise be lost to the sea.

    Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR)-Directs water into the ground to “bank” it for dry seasons.

    Improving Water Quality-Dilutes the concentration of nitrates, fluoride, and arsenic in the groundwater.

    Flood Mitigation-Reduces “peak flow” during monsoons, preventing urban drainage systems from overflowing.

    Energy Efficiency-Recharging local aquifers reduces the “lifting height” for pumps, saving significant electricity.

    Low-Cost Infrastructure-Decentralized RWH is cheaper than building massive dams and cross-country pipelines.

    Climate Change Adaptation – Enhances resilience against irregular rainfall patterns.

    Supplementing Domestic Water Supply – Eg- Housing societies in Pune use harvested rainwater for gardening and cleaning.

    Making Water Harvesting Effective in Urban Areas

    Incorporating rainwater harvesting in building by-laws. Eg- Tamil Nadu and Delhi mandate RWH systems in buildings above certain sizes.

    Revival of Urban Water Bodies – Restoration of lakes, tanks and wetlands improves recharge. Eg- Bengaluru lake rejuvenation projects

    Sponge City Infrastructure-Replacing asphalt with permeable pavements in parking lots and sidewalks.

    Borewell Injection-Using filtered rainwater to directly recharge exhausted private and public borewells.

    AI and IoT Monitoring-Using real-time sensors to track recharge volumes. Eg- Bengaluru’s 2026 “Digital Water Atlas.”

    Water Positive Incentives-Offering property tax rebates to societies that harvest more water than they consume.

    Restoration of Interlinked Lakes-Reviving historical drainage channels where one lake overflows into another. Eg- The Hebbal-Nagawara Valley project in Karnataka.

    Community Water Budgets-Empowering Ward Committees to map their local hydrogeology and manage “Ward Water Banks.”

    Wastewater Circularity-Using “greywater” for gardening and reserving 100% of rainwater for groundwater recharge.

    Hydrological Enforcement-Creating bodies like HYDRAA (Hyderabad) to demolish illegal encroachments on lake-beds and floodplains.

    Thus, water harvesting can significantly strengthen urban water security and climate resilience in India.