B'putra water flow not dependent on China: Himanta busts Pak scare narrative
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Guwahati: After India decisively moved away from the outdated
Indus Waters Treaty
, Pakistan is now spinning a new scare narrative — what if China stops Brahmaputra water to India? Assam chief minister
Himanta Biswa Sarma
's response, backed by researchers, dismantles this myth saying the Brahmaputra grows in India and not shrinks.
"Let's dismantle this myth — not with fear, but with facts and national clarity," Sarma wrote on X reminding Pakistan that "Brahmaputra is not a river India depends on upstream — it is a rain-fed Indian river system, strengthened after entering Indian territory."
Sarma further wrote on X that China contributes only about 30–35% of the Brahmaputra's total flow, mostly through glacial melt and limited Tibetan rainfall, while remaining 65–70% is generated within India, thanks to torrential monsoon rainfall in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, and Meghalaya.
Sarma listed the major tributaries like Subansiri, Lohit, Kameng, Manas, Dhansiri, Jia-Bharali, Kopili which feed Brahmaputra river inside India in addition to the inflows from the Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia Hills via rivers such as Krishnai, Digaru, and Kulsi.
Sarma said if China turns off the tap, which he says is unlikely, it may actually help India mitigate the annual floods in Assam, which displace lakhs and destroy livelihoods every year.
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Sarma pointed out that at the India-China border at Tuting in Arunachal Pradesh's Upper Siang district, the flow is about 2,000 to 3,000 m³/s which swells to 15,000–20,000 m³/s in Assam plains and swells during the monsoon.
"Meanwhile, Pakistan — which has exploited 74 years of preferential water access under the Indus Waters Treaty — now panics as India rightfully reclaims its sovereign rights," Sarma added.
Researcher Nilanjan Ghosh, who is also the vice-president at Development Studies and senior director at Observer Research Foundation at Kolkata centre, backing Sarma's fierce response to Pakistan, replied that conclusive evidence were provided that Chinese interventions will have negligible or almost no effect to India but "unfortunately, over the last decade, nobody listened to us, despite that I wrote on this on so many forums.
"
Ghosh cited a scientific paper published in International Journal of Water Resources Development, which he co-authored with Sayanangshu Modak, a human-environment geographer and a scholar of water governance, that the Yarlung Tsangpo's (the main stem of the Brahmaputra system in Tibet) "contribution to the Brahmaputra flow is not even 30-35%, but in the range of 15-20% at most."
Modak is also a doctoral researcher at the University of Arizona at Tucson.
"Unfortunately, over the last decade, nobody listened to us, despite that I wrote on this on so many forums," Ghosh wrote on X, appreciating Sarma for recognising these facts.
Ghosh cited another article, "How data deficiency is hindering hydro-diplomacy between China and India" published on Mongabay last Feb, which he co-authored with Modak where they pointed out that the discharge of the Yarlung Tsangpo, measured at Nuxia in Tibet, is 31.2 billion cubic meters (BCM) annually, swelling to an estimated 135.9 BCM as it passes through the Great Bend and exits China, the rain-rich stretch of the river where China plans to harness hydropower.
"However, when compared with the annual discharge of approximately 526 BCM at Pandu in Guwahati, India, and 606 BCM at Bahadurabad in Bangladesh, the data begins to unravel. This dramatic surge isn't driven by glacial melt but by the sheer force of the monsoon on the south side of the Himalayan crestline which extends predominantly to Medog County through a moisture corridor along the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon," they wrote in the article.
The Brahamputra river system originates in the Angsi Glacier in Tibet and flows to the Bay of Bengal, covering a distance of 2,880 km. The river starts as Yarlung Tsangpo for 1,625 km before entering India where it flows for 918 km — first as the Siang, then the Dihang, before transforming into the Brahmaputra. Its final 337-km stretch before entering the sea is in Bangladesh where it is named as Jamuna, merging with the Ganga.
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