Water wars are the new geo-strategic frontier so keep an eye on Beijing
A couple of decades ago and more ago, when the notion of energy security first started getting media space as an issue of geo-strategic import, it was in the main laughed off by the establishment as cocooned academics' imaginings and conspiracy theories getting a mainstream airing. Today, India is playing catch up with China which moved early and fast, using all the power, pun unintended, at its disposal to secure its energy needs for the next few decades from extant sources and simultaneously investing heavily in research and development to develop new energy sources. It would, in this context, be both sound and prudent for New Delhi to take quiet and very serious note of Beijing's moves to build a 1000-kilometre tunnel, the world's longest, to carry water from the Brahmaputra river (known as the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet) close to Arunachal Pradesh to its parched Xinjian region. Though Beijing rejected as “false and untrue” a report in the South China Morning Post that engineers have begun testing techniques for the tunnel that would ‘turn Xinjian into California', such denials have in the past not always been accurate and anyway diversion of the Brahmaputra is not an issue China discusses in public as it implies devastating India's northeastern plains either with floods or reduced water flow.
The purported move has environmentalists deeply concerned given the fragile nature of Himalayan geology but China is known to give short shrift to such “concern” when its own interests are at stake. India, a riparian state, has voiced its objections to the various dams being built by the Chinese on the Brahmaputra as there is no bilateral or multilateral treaty on sharing of the water, which the Chinese side has duly noted and carried on regardless. In fact, Beijing, has never been shy of projecting its considerable heft when it comes to its development-security concerns, notions which are hardwired in its deep state thanks to Chinese hyper-nationalism which rarely gets called out. China, of course, sees its moves not as expansionism but as pursuance of its reunification policy, a rubric that has included persistent and successful efforts to regain the territories of Tibet, Hong Kong and Macau and ensure Taiwan is not recognised as a sovereign state. It also continues to make assertive claims in the South China Sea and along the border with India/Bhutan while its perennial warning to all comers not to entertain the “splittist” Dalai lama does not even raise eyebrows anymore. Even while engaging China economically, India must ensure its interests are protected at all costs and it has not insubstantial assets which it can leverage — other upset Chinese neighbours, Sino-US stresses and a putative quadrilateral Pacific rim alliance excluding China to name just three — better than it has hitherto done.