Today, Explained - Six rivers, three countries, one Kashmir

Episode Date: August 8, 2019

India is escalating its 70-year fight for Kashmir. The winner gets the water. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And this week, India decided to make things even more complicated. This is the deal. When this one part of Kashmir decided to become part of India, it did so with some serious exceptions. This is the territory known as Jammu and Kashmir. These exceptions are baked into the Indian constitution. Article 370 gives Jammu and Kashmir all sorts of autonomy from Indian laws. And Article 35A says that only Kashmiris can own land in Jammu and Kashmir. This has been the status quo almost as long as India's existed. And this week, India unilaterally decided, you know what, let's not.

India's government has made a significant move to take direct control of the state of Kashmir. It will try to revoke a part of the constitution which gives India's only Muslim-majority state the right to run its own affairs. Uncertainty amid a massive security build buildup and the government advisory asking all pilgrims and tourists to leave Kashmir immediately. Mobile internet has been blocked in many places and public meetings and rallies have been banned. In the days before the Eid holiday, these streets are usually crowded with two-wheelers, rickshaws, buses and commuters. But now the roads in India administer Kashmir

are mostly empty except for Indian soldiers. On Monday, August 5th, the nature of Kashmir completely changed. Manvi Kapoor is a reporter at Quartz India. She spoke to me from New Delhi. The government of India has repealed a section of the Indian constitution. It's called the Article 370 and Article 35A. These are two sections that pertain to the state of Jammu and Kashmir and basically define its relationship with the country of India, the nation state. Jammu and Kashmir had the right to have its own constitution,

have its own flag, create its own laws, how its residents were called permanent residents, even though they had citizenship of India. What it does is that it takes all of that away and puts just the Indian constitution in play. So Jammu and Kashmir is no longer an independent state. It now will be a union territory directly under the rule of the central government of India. With the Article 35A gone, non-Kashmiris can be permitted to permanently settle in the state, which was not the case before. Kashmiri women could not inherit property if they married out of Kashmir. This was basically done to maintain the demographic makeup of the state. The fear was that if outsiders were allowed to settle in, the only Muslim-dominated state in

India could perhaps be sidelined. With the Article 35A gone, all of that is now open. And how big a game changer is this in the region? Jammu and Kashmir has been a disputed state since the British rule ended in India in 1947. And it has, geopolitically, it shares the border with Pakistan on one side and China on the other. So it is really the epicenter of all the diplomatic ties that India has with its neighbours. For the people of Kashmir, when a law like Article 370, that basically gave it autonomy,

it gave it the right to declare its own constitution. When that law was abolished, the government probably anticipated a lot of backlash. And hence, there was a complete blackout in the state. There were no phones. There was no internet. There was no cable TV. Very few journalists were allowed inside the state beyond a point. Prominent leaders, including former chief ministers of the state, were put under house arrest. How are the people in Kashmir reacting to this? So there have been very limited voices coming from Kashmir, given the complete clampdown at the moment. The people who managed to get out of Jammu and Kashmir, or the few journalists in the valley who have been able to report,

they have all spoken of a very daunting military presence. Checkposts, monitoring movements every couple of kilometers. Kashmiris in other parts of India and the world are anxious because they have not been able to reach their families back home. The rest of India, I would say a large majority of it is pleased with the decision. There are a small number of opposition leaders from parties like the Congress who have fiercely protested this stance. The Home Minister has to be concerned about this because by locking up the democratic parties and their leaders, you're opening up a space for undemocratic forces. But the bill to change Article 370, rendering it toothless, was passed in parliament with a comfortable margin in both

houses. Constitutional experts right now expect this move to be challenged in the Supreme Court through probably a public interest litigation, but that is yet to be seen. And of course, I guess the elephant in the room is Pakistan. Has the Pakistani government spoken out about this? Yes, vocally so. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has been very vocal on Twitter as well as in the Pakistani parliament. He has said that it is now time to end the long night of suffering for the people of occupied Kashmir, that they must be allowed to exercise their right to self-determination

according to the United Nations Security Council resolutions. And also Shahbaz Sharif, he is the president of the Pakistan Muslim League. He said that Kashmir is the jugular vein of Pakistan and anyone laying a hand on our jugular vein and honour will meet a frightful end. In the region that India calls Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, there have been public demonstrations against this move. Pakistan also believes that it was not up to India to modify a space that is disputed. Pakistan's stance is that it is an international dispute and not up to India to decide. Why is this happening right now? It feels like such a complicated and controversial decision to make at such a delicate time between the two countries.

I would say that there are two major incidents from 2019 alone that have sort of led to this suddenly planned move, I would say. The first is the attack on CRPF forces in Kashmir. It happened in Kashmir's Pulwama region and it killed 40 soldiers. This had escalated tensions between India and Pakistan because India believed it was an attack orchestrated by terror camps within Pakistan. Pakistan, on its part, denied this. India had led a targeted airstrike operation earlier this year against these terror camps, and an Indian Air Force officer was also captured by Pakistan.

He was later released. This was the first incident. After the elections in India in May, and after the Bharatiya Janata Party came back to power, the second flashpoint came in the form of the US president's offer to mediate the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan. I was with Prime Minister Modi two weeks ago and we talked about this subject and he actually said, would you like to be a mediator or arbitrator? I said, where? He said, Kashmir. India vehemently denied these claims and it fervently turned down that offer. Experts say that India saw this as a diplomatic snub, especially when it considers Jammu and Kashmir an internal affair and not an international one. So what comes next? Is there going to be further escalation between the two countries? So that fear always remains, especially given that both India and Pakistan are nuclear capable powers. Of course, one hopes it doesn't happen. But India and Pakistan have gone to war before.

What happens next is a fear that is, I think, growing day by day. As of now, in India, both houses of parliament have voted in favor of the bill. It will now be signed off to be turned into a law. The only thing that might stop it is if there is a public interest litigation in Supreme Court. Again, that is yet to be seen. We covered this beef between India and Pakistan over Kashmir on the show earlier this year, and our guest talked about religion, nationalism, identity. But what makes this land so special? The other bone of contention between India and Pakistan is, of course course water. This is because there are six rivers that flow from India to Pakistan via Kashmir

and the Indus Water Treaty signed in 1960 between the two countries regulates this. Pakistan has often complained that India has been building dams across the rivers for Hyder Power but India on its part cannot deprive the people of Kashmir of water or electricity so it's a tricky situation. But both countries have thus far upheld this water treaty through three wars so it is an important peacekeeping instrument. That would be in jeopardy if an Article 370 or a 35A comes into question. It calls into question a lot of very, very finely balanced equation in Kashmir. the war for water next on today explained the quip people as i've mentioned want to be a part of your morning and evening brushes. But to me, that's kind of funny because I never brush my teeth in the evenings.

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which means you can bring your Quip along with you wherever you go to make sure the Quip is always part of your routine. They've got a website, getquip.com slash explained. You can even spell it out if you want, g-e-t-q-u-i-p dot com slash explained. And the Quip starts at just $25 there, and your first set of refills is free. Take a look, won't you? Jeff Nesbitt, you wrote a book all about climate change called This is the Way the World Ends, and you focus on water. Could you help us understand why the water in Kashmir is so important? Sure. So let's actually take a giant step backwards to understand what's going on there.

Maybe even go back in time 4,000 years ago. Once upon a time, the Indus River Valley, which is broadly speaking all of the tributaries around the Indus River, created an immensely fertile civilization. When the climate changed 4,000 years ago and things happened, that civilization started to collapse. So this situation where the water comes down from the Himalayas and creates these river deltas that flow through India and Pakistan have been around for thousands of years. But in 1947, it really started to come to a head

between the countries India and Pakistan as they were formed as independent countries. And right in the crosshairs was the Kashmir region. At the heart of all of this is water. Water is at the heart of what Pakistan especially is concerned about, but also what India's leaders are concerned about. Just look at the map and look at how centrally located the Kashmir region is at the northern end of India and at the northern end of Pakistan. And the way in which the Indus River begins its trek starting in Tibet and China, works its way through the Himalayas, and then flows down into Pakistan and into India. Most of what Pakistani

industry, Pakistani agriculture, and even Pakistani citizens, where they get their water from is from the Indus River tributaries, which begins its journey in the Himalayan mountains. It goes right through the Kashmir region that India controls. Per your instructions, I pulled up a map and I looked up Kashmir. And it's funny, it isn't exactly Minnesota or something. You don't see little lakes and bodies of water everywhere. All you really see is the river and maybe one other lake. Is there a ton of water there or is it just a very valuable river? There is a ton of water, an immense amount of water,

so much that the Indus actually breaks off into six different rivers. And under the treaty that was actually brokered by the World Bank that both countries honor, India totally controls three of the major arteries that come off of that river. Pakistan controls the other three. That region is so fertile that most of the agriculture that supports Pakistan is actually right there because of there's so much water. It's what supports all of their cotton farming. It supports all of their agriculture. That's even before it flows downstream to get all the way to Karachi

and supports the civilian population. So if India were to make a decision to abrogate their treaty or to build dams as China is building at the headwaters of the Indus, Pakistan would have no choice. They don't have anywhere else to go to get their water. And what about India? The truth is India actually also needs this water. Just take a look at Chennai. It's a true cautionary tale right now of what major cities in the world, including Los Angeles, including Beijing, and others are up against. The region is suffering a severe heat wave and seasonal

monsoon rains haven't arrived. Many reservoirs are almost empty. This is one of the four main ones in Chennai, a city of around 11 million people. This basically means piped water for drinking is available only once in three days. People have resorted to buying water as these water tankers come at a hefty cost. Over 12% of India's population, which is 163 million people or 1.3 billion, live under what's called day zero conditions with no access to clean water near their home. They've effectively run out of water. And people are panicking in that city in some respects, just like they were panicking in Cape Town

when they felt like they were going to hit day zero and run out of water. Chennai is a good example of what every major city that is facing water stress is likely to be up against at some point or another in the next 10 to 15 years. And, I mean, while India and Pakistan are basically already in a cold war, could there be an even greater escalation, some kind of water war? I hate to say this, but my prediction is there will probably be water wars there. They've been at the brink of a water war over the Kashmir region for years. And they've come right to the brink in several occasions with India threatening to just shut down the water treaty and take unilateral actions for which Pakistan would have no recourse other than to go to war with India over that. So not only do I think it's likely that there will be water wars, I think it's almost a certainty because if you look at the tropical countries and the subtropical countries around the band of the equator around the world, they're all already starting to experience water stresses.

And in many countries, water shortages. India and Pakistan and China and that region of the world fall squarely into that mix where climate change is already having an impact and causing real problems in that part of the world. So you've got that stress, you've got the shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas, and then you've got overuse of the river and pollution problems. All of that is creating a powder keg that's not just a military powder keg, but a natural resource powder keg, which is the guts of a water war. India and Pakistan have not yet abandoned this treaty, right? Just to be clear, neither side seems to be ripping the thing up. Correct. India has come very, very close on multiple occasions. But then when they come back to the table twice a year, where the commission that

administers the treaty looks at it, they don't actually pull the trigger, so to speak. They've said so yet again in relation to revoking Article 370. They said, we're going to look at the water treaty situation. So they haven't done that yet, but they've come so close so many times. In my view, it's probably just a matter of time before they make their own self-determination case and decide, no, we need to control the waters ourselves. If or when they do that, that's what triggers an actual water war. These two countries present a particularly cataclysmic example because they don't get along famously, because they both have nuclear weapons, because they both have these bell, because they both have these bellicose leaders. But how many other situations like this are we currently facing across the

planet? We've already seen the first example of a true water war in Yemen. Yemen is in that subtropical zone where climate change is having impacts right now. They started to run out of water. 14 of their 16 aquifers that supplied most of the water, which is a very arid country to begin with, effectively went dry, right about the same time that Saudi Arabia's aquifer went dry. But in Yemen, everybody was studying it, kept advising the ministers, you're out of water. And when you don't have water, the government collapses. You see civil society unrest, you see food riots. Everybody was advising them, you have to deal with this situation because otherwise the warlords who control, you

know, are hoarding this water, they'll be okay, but the rest of society won't. Two years later, that's exactly what happened. It created a wave of refugees. Right. Yeah, we covered that too. It's just bad news on bad news on bad news. Let me try to be a little bit hopeful. There was a really wonderful environmentalist, Anand Pramishra, in India who died several years ago, but people should go and look at his TED Talk where he talked about reclaiming water.

There are a number of techniques to harvest rain. This is a new world. It's a new program. But for the desert society, this is no program. This is their life. What Mishra talked about was India needs to go back to the way in which they reclaimed their water. Whenever you have water fall, make sure you capture it and hold it and store it. Every city in America, every city around the world that's potentially looking at this water stress should follow that rule. Capture your water, reclaim it, figure out a way to use it again. The other thing that you can do is what indigenous farmers in the

Sahel countries started to reclaim the desert by, when they would plant crops, they would put one tree in the center of their crops. And then they would put catchments around that individual tree inside of their cropland. And they would create this diverse plot of land with farming and with trees. And lo and behold, that part of the world became green again because the water captured at the tree would then be available for the rest of the cropland and greenery would come back. So sort of the old ways of capturing water and using it wisely is what we need to do in the short term. In the long term, because water scarcity is just

going to continue and to get worse and worse over time, over the coming decades, we're probably going to have to figure out a cost-efficient, extremely cost-efficient and effective way to turn saltwater into freshwater. Because we've got tons of water on Earth, it's just not available for widespread use. Jeff Nesbitt worked in the first Bush administration, as well as the National Science Foundation and the Food and Drug Administration. You can read about how the world might end in his book. It's called This is the Way the World Ends.

I'm Sean Ramos-Viram. This is Today Explained. Thanks again to the Quip Electric Toothbrush Company for supporting the show today. The Quip Electric Toothbrush people would like to be a part of your routine every day. They want to be with you through it all and they've got just the item. It's the Quip Electric Toothbrush. Starts at just $25.

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