What are the current issues in Brahmaputra River water sharing between India and China? (2019, 15 Marks)
The Yarlung Tsangpo runs east across Tibet, turns through the Great Bend around Namcha Barwa and enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang. The basin is a textbook case of hydro-hegemony in the sense of Mark Zeitoun and Jeroen Warner (2006): China is the stronger upper riparian, India a middle riparian above Bangladesh, and no sharing agreement exists, only data arrangements. The live issues concern information, timing and trust more than volume.
The hydrological baseline
Most of the river’s water is generated in India by monsoon rain and tributaries below the Great Bend; discharge where it leaves China is roughly a tenth of that in Bangladesh. China cannot choke the river, but it can shape lean-season flow, release timing and sediment, which is where India is exposed.
The current issues
- Upstream dams. Zangmu began generating in 2015, with Dagu, Jiexu and Jiacha following. The decisive project is Medog (Motuo) at the Great Bend: approved in December 2024 and launched on 19 July 2025, a cascade of five stations of about 60 GW costing some 1.2 trillion yuan, built by a new state company. Beijing calls it run-of-river; India, which has conveyed its concerns and says it will monitor the project, fears regulated releases, sediment trapping and seismic risk near the epicentre of the 1950 Assam earthquake.
- Data as leverage. The Brahmaputra flood-season data memorandum (2002) lapsed in 2023 and the Sutlej one in 2020; India pays for the data. During Doklam (2017) China withheld it while supplying Bangladesh. In August 2025 China agreed to share emergency hydrological information on humanitarian considerations. The 25th Special Representatives round (25 August 2026) only agreed to convene the Expert Level Mechanism (2006) in September and to keep talking on data and renewal of the memoranda.
- Disaster warning. Landslide-dam bursts in 2000 and the 2018 Tibetan blockages showed that timely information, not allocation, protects Assam and Arunachal.
- Diversion fears. Proposals to send Tibetan water north persist in Indian debate, amplified by Brahma Chellaney’s Water: Asia’s New Battleground (2011), though nothing built targets the Brahmaputra.
- A legal vacuum. China voted against the UN Watercourses Convention (1997); India is not a party either. Beijing’s practice approaches the Harmon doctrine of absolute territorial sovereignty, while India argues for equitable use and no significant harm, a case weakened by its April 2025 decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance.
- Securitisation. Medog lies opposite Arunachal, which China claims, so water is folded into the boundary rivalry: China gains leverage, while India, the weaker party, securitises to win attention. India’s counter, the roughly 11,000 MW Siang Upper Multipurpose Project with storage as a buffer, is resisted by Adi communities facing submergence.
- The third riparian. Bangladesh, downstream of both, has made the same transparency requests of China.
Conclusion
The dispute is about information, regulation and trust, not quantity. India’s realistic aim is a binding data and notification regime, pursued alongside Bangladesh, and its own storage built with local consent rather than against it.