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The portion of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna mega-basin shared between Nepal, Bhutan, northern India, and Bangladesh is one of the poorest, most densely populated, ecologically vulnerable, and socially and politically unstable areas in the world. As such, reducing the potential for transboundary water conflict by increasing cooperation between riparian states has been of increasing interest to policy-makers and foreign aid donors. The World Bank-led South Asia Water Initiative (SAWI) commenced in the mid-2000s. Yet, in more than a decade of existence, neither SAWI nor other international initiatives, have been able to improve transboundary water interactions between India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. In part this is because of the sheer complexity of transboundary water governance, and in part because of contextual factors. Addressing transboundary water issues is not a priority for the riparian states; there is significant distrust between them and resentment about India’s hydro-hegemony; and bilateral, rather than multilateral, arrangements prevail. These factors make collective action both more urgent and more difficult. If they are to increase transboundary water cooperation, international actors should, among other things, resolve historical grievances; strengthen water-sharing institutions; build trust between riparian states; and work toward outcomes based on principles of water justice.

Te year 2013 was the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation. It was also the year that saw the Indian geostrategist Brahma Chellaney publish Water, peace and war: Confronting the global water crisis not long afer his award-winning Water: Asia’s new battleground. One year, two very diferent perspectives. Which is it then? Is water a nexus for peace, or a nexus for war? And what does the answer imply for the future of hydropolitics in the world generally, and for India in particular? Since the 1990s it has been a truism that the conficts of this century will be about water, and looking at South Asia specifcally at frst glance this seems a compelling concern. Te region is rapidly growing while water appears increasingly scarce. Zero-sum competition over water resources is said to be intensifying, while recent state fragility makes for volatile geopolitics. At the same time, India, the regional hydro-hegemon, is not taking clear leadership of South Asia’s troubled hydropolitics. On closer inspection however the situation is far more complex and ambiguous than alarmist headlines or the UN’s wishful thinking would suggest. For a start, there is no such thing as ‘water war’. A broader concept, water confict, is ill-defned, multi-faceted, and usually based on the fallacious assumption that confict is the opposite of cooperation. Cooperation and confict, however, coexist in every relationship in various confgurations. More importantly, ostensible cooperation, such as the signing of a water-sharing treaty, can cement inequalities in the status quo while confict can lead to the airing and ultimately the resolution of grievances (Zeitoun and Mirumachi, 2008, 297-307). Water interactions, in short, are much more complex than the simplistic and alarmist fear of water wars would suggest. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a ‘perfect storm’ of water-related issues and tensions in South Asia that appear to put the region particularly at risk of imminent hydro-confict