Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin

Akhter, Majed

doi:10.1111/tran.12169

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The IWT, forged in the furnace of decolonization and Cold War developmentalism, provides an especially revealing vantage point. Moving forward, hydropolitical analyses should continue to examine the imperatives of downstream vulnerability and basin-wide development as they interact across and through multiple scales (Akhter, 2017). There is also room to explore how territorial and capitalist imperatives interact with nonhuman and nonstate processes.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, the construction of major dams and other hydraulic infrastructures in the upstream region of Punjab during a period of military rule and forced political centralization caused resentment and bitterness on the part of historically underdeveloped and downstream regions within the Indus Basin, namely Sindh. Far from being consigned to the Cold War past, these infrastructural politics have continued to inform debate around the nature of federalism in Pakistan, and especially debates around water governance and the construction of new dams (Akhter, 2017(Akhter, , 2015a(Akhter, , 2015bHaines, 2017;Mustafa et al, 2013). Thus, the IWT and the accompanying infrastructural program formed at the intersection of geographically uneven development at the scale of the state and the world economy.…”

Section: Indus After Independence: a Legal Geopolitical Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adjudicating infrastructure: Treaties, territories, hydropolitics

Akhter

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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In 2013, an international Court of Arbitration delivered a two-part decision on the legality of the Kishenganga Hydro-Electric Plant, located in the internationally disputed territory of Kashmir. The court was convened under procedures detailed in the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, a landmark international water treaty between Pakistan and India mediated by the World Bank in the 1950s. The Kishenganga case is part of the ongoing hydropolitical competition between Pakistan and India over the use of Indus waters and the development of new infrastructures on the river system. This paper draws on critical water geography and geopolitical theory to guide a close, critical, and contextual reading of competing interpretations of the purpose and objective of the Indus Waters Treaty made during the Kishenganga case. It argues that two specific geopolitical imperatives powerfully shaped the legal strategies of state elites: downstream territorialism and basin developmentalism. Pakistani lawyers drew on the treaty negotiation archives to argue that its primary objective and purpose was the protection of vulnerable downstream territories. Indian lawyers, however, drew on the text of the treaty and the archives to argue the primary objective was the maximum economic development of the Indus Basin. I also discuss the relationship of these imperatives with David Harvey’s influential understanding of capitalist states acting under the dual pressures of the “territorial” and “capitalist” imperatives. By analyzing how geopolitical imperatives shape strategies of treaty interpretation, the paper develops a legal and geopolitical contribution to critical water geography. The paper also makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how treaty negotiation archives represent a rich and underutilized resource for hydropolitical analysis.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Indus After Independence: a Legal Geopolitical Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjudicating infrastructure: Treaties, territories, hydropolitics

Akhter

2019

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…() term “hydrocracies,” continues to be analysed by contemporary scholars who customarily draw on Wittfogel's ideas (Akhter & Ormerod, ; Swyngedouw, ; Worster, ). Here, the physical and symbolic mobilisation of water infrastructure has been shown to facilitate processes of territorialisation and state formation in a broad range of social and ecological contexts (Akhter, ; Carroll, ; Kaika, ; Mukerji, ; Swyngedouw, ; Usher, ).…”

Section: Metabolism Geopolitics and The Hydraulic Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Desali‐nation: Techno‐diplomacy and hydraulic state restructuring through reverse osmosis membranes in Singapore

Usher

2018

Trans Inst British Geog

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A sea change has occurred in global water management over the last two decades as previously unconventional technologies such as reverse osmosis membranes have been integrated into national supply networks. State-led, highly politicised programmes of water resources development, characterised by large-scale hydraulic infrastructure, centralised monopoly control and diplomatic negotiations, have been transformed in many regions by integrated systems supported by private engineering companies, constituting a new "technopolitical regime." Desalination in particular has become an expedient solution not only to the chronic problem of water scarcity but protracted geopolitical disputes over shared infrastructure. Engaging with literature on geopolitical materialism, technopolitics and the hydraulic state, this paper will examine how desalination has been developed in Singapore to depoliticise the water supply network, bringing into relation a different constellation of actors and enabling an alternative form of techno-diplomacy. In the 1990s, imported water from Malaysia became increasingly vulnerable due to a worsening of diplomatic relations, therefore Singapore began to leverage on reverse osmosis to circumvent antagonistic, politically charged negotiations. The water authority was subsequently plugged into global industry networks, technologically and institutionally reconfiguring the state through integrated management, corporate intermediaries and strategic nodality. By 2060, reverse osmosis technology is expected to provide 85% of water supply, co-producing, it is argued, an alternative state ontology.

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“…The Indus River basin in Pakistan is one of the major water resources laboratories in the world (Akhter, ; Gilmartin, ; Meadows & Meadows, ; Mustafa, ; Yu et al, ). It belongs to a class of intensively studied complex river basins that have multiple scales of nested water management (Molle & Wester, ; Pulwarty, ; Reibsame et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio‐Hydrology of Channel Flows in Complex River Basins: Rivers, Canals, and Distributaries in Punjab, Pakistan

Wescoat

Siddiqi

Muhammad

2018

Water Resources Research

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This paper presents a socio‐hydrologic analysis of channel flows in Punjab province of the Indus River basin in Pakistan. The Indus has undergone profound transformations, from large‐scale canal irrigation in the mid‐nineteenth century to partition and development of the international river basin in the mid‐twentieth century, systems modeling in the late‐twentieth century, and new technologies for discharge measurement and data analytics in the early twenty‐first century. We address these processes through a socio‐hydrologic framework that couples historical geographic and analytical methods at three levels of flow in the Punjab. The first level assesses Indus River inflows analysis from its origins in 1922 to the present. The second level shows how river inflows translate into 10‐daily canal command deliveries that vary widely in their conformity with canal entitlements. The third level of analysis shows how new flow measurement technologies raise questions about the performance of established methods of water scheduling (warabandi) on local distributaries. We show how near real‐time measurement sheds light on the efficiency and transparency of surface water management. These local socio‐hydrologic changes have implications in turn for the larger scales of canal and river inflow management in complex river basins.

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Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin

Cited by 17 publications

References 41 publications

Adjudicating infrastructure: Treaties, territories, hydropolitics

Adjudicating infrastructure: Treaties, territories, hydropolitics

Desali‐nation: Techno‐diplomacy and hydraulic state restructuring through reverse osmosis membranes in Singapore

Socio‐Hydrology of Channel Flows in Complex River Basins: Rivers, Canals, and Distributaries in Punjab, Pakistan

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