Latest news with #BoundaryCommission
Irish Independent
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
How ‘inertia, incapacity and appalling ineptitude' stymied attempts to redraw the Irish border
In 1925, the Boundary Commission collapsed amid rancour, spying and an absent-minded Irish representative One hundred years ago, the Irish Boundary Commission collapsed in acrimony after the proposal by the three boundary commissioners suggesting a new border in Ireland was shelved and the border remained as it was, as it still is. Under the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which provided for the prospect of a boundary commission to decide the contours of the border, three commissioners were to be appointed to carry out the task. The chairman was to be appointed by the British government, with the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland governments appointing one representative each.
Indian Express
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
India-Pak water wars: A Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohd Ali Jinnah story
Weeks before Cyril Radcliffe drew the eponymous Line in August 1947 partitioning India and Pakistan, he had an earful from Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The founder of Pakistan told the chairman of the Boundary Commission that he would rather have 'deserts than fertile fields watered by courtesy of Hindus'. A dressing-down from Jawaharlal Nehru would follow as part of the 'joint Hindu-Muslim rebuke'. Radcliffe was not at fault. Fighting the oppressive heat fuelled by a delayed monsoon in the soon-to-be divided Punjab, his biggest challenge in carving up the land was to assign control of its irrigation system, which was 'built, with a good deal of British inspiration, largely by Sikh money, design and sweat' to channel river waters through a system of elaborate canals to the arid west, 'turning the province into the granary of India.' While the five rivers that supplied the water were all in the east and would invariably come under India, the land they irrigated was mostly in the west, which would become Pakistan. Realising that Partition 'vitally threatened' the great watering network, Radcliffe took a proposal, through the Viceroy, to Jinnah and Nehru: Would the two leaders agree to run this river-canal system as an Indo-Pakistan joint venture? 'Both leaders were obviously furious with him (Radcliffe),' recounted British author Leonard Mosley in his 1962 book 'The Last Days of the British Raj'. 'He was rewarded for his suggestion by a joint Hindu-Muslim rebuke. Jinnah told him to get on with his job and inferred that he would rather have Pakistan deserts than fertile fields watered by courtesy of Hindus. Nehru curtly informed him that what India did with India's rivers was India's affair.' That was, according to Mosley, Radcliffe's 'one and only attempt to try to make a constructive suggestion' as the chairman of the Boundary Commission. The issue of shared waters between the two neighbours has remained contentious ever since. While India put 'in abeyance' last month the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, citing a lack of 'good faith' after a terror attack in Kashmir's Pahalgam, even the buildup to the landmark water pact was fraught with mistrust. With joint control of canals out of the question, a temporary solution was found in a 'Standstill Agreement' reached in December 1947 to buy time until March 1948 to negotiate a lasting solution. But neither side took any initiative to extend the timeline, and India discontinued the supply of water from the Indian Punjab's Ferozepur headworks on the Sutlej to the Dipalpur Canal in Pakistan's Punjab province on April 1, 1948. This also marked the formal Indo-Pakistan dispute over sharing the waters of the Indus system. A month later, on April 30, Nehru ordered the East Punjab government to resume water supply. In an agreement signed on May 4, India assured that water would not be withheld without prior notice and time to develop alternate sources, and Pakistan recognised India's legitimate need for developing resources in Indian Punjab, which was historically deficient in water infrastructure. Two years on, however, Pakistan said it accepted the May 1948 Agreement under 'compulsion' and 'signed under duress.' In response, Nehru wrote: 'A more extraordinary statement I do not remember to have come across at any time… It took two years for your government to discover that the Agreement was signed under duress.' An initiative by the World Bank broke the impasse in 1951, and it took nine long years to thrash out a deal before the Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960. But Pakistan remained wary of India upstream. Half a century later, Pakistan moved the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2011 against the Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project, citing 'stark deficit in trust between the parties' and the 'historical experience of 1948 when the East Punjab government cut off all the canals supplying West Punjab.' Pakistan argued that the Indus River system is 'fundamental to (its) existence and the health and livelihood of its people'. Terming India's dam construction programme 'an existential issue,' Pakistan underlined the importance of 'limitations on India's capacity to manipulate the timing of flows,' by 'limiting the amount of live storage' of every hydropower dam that India could construct. Before the PCA, India denied the relevance of events that occurred in the immediate aftermath of Partition, before the Indus Waters Treaty, 'during a period of some confusion between two new States … that were sorting out their respective rights.' Holding that 'the assertion that the Baglihar Dam was filled in such a way as to harm Pakistan is factually incorrect', India argued that the evidence introduced by Pakistan should be disregarded as 'inaccurate, emotion-laden and inflammatory'. An Indian counsel underlined that India believes in the 'sanctity of all our international legal commitments,' including the Indus Waters Treaty. 'India wants peace and friendship with its neighbours, and we have striven very hard to build friendship, build confidence and trust,' he told the PCA. That trust was tested by 'sustained cross-border terrorism by Pakistan targeting the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir' that goes against the fundamental 'obligation to honour a treaty in good faith'. On April 24, India decided to hold 'in abeyance' the Indus Waters Treaty, citing 'fundamental changes in the circumstances'. Jay Mazoomdaar is an investigative reporter focused on offshore finance, equitable growth, natural resources management and biodiversity conservation. Over two decades, his work has been recognised by the International Press Institute, the Ramnath Goenka Foundation, the Commonwealth Press Union, the Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust, the Asian College of Journalism etc. Mazoomdaar's major investigations include the extirpation of tigers in Sariska, global offshore probes such as Panama Papers, Robert Vadra's land deals in Rajasthan, India's dubious forest cover data, Vyapam deaths in Madhya Pradesh, mega projects flouting clearance conditions, Nitin Gadkari's link to e-rickshaws, India shifting stand on ivory ban to fly in African cheetahs, the loss of indigenous cow breeds, the hydel rush in Arunachal Pradesh, land mafias inside Corbett, the JDY financial inclusion scheme, an iron ore heist in Odisha, highways expansion through the Kanha-Pench landscape etc. ... Read More
Belfast Telegraph
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Belfast Telegraph
Sinn Féin President backs unity referendum by 2030 saying Irish Government ‘can't bury its head in sand', on The Late Late Show
On The Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty said he wanted to talk about North and South as Ms McDonald had said at the weekend she believes a United Ireland referendum would happen before the end of the decade. Kielty said the only way that can happen under the Good Friday Agreement is with the approval of Northern Ireland Secretary of State. He referenced a recent poll by the Irish Times ARINS project says 34% in the North favour it and asked how that is going to change in the next five years. The Sinn Féin leader said she believes that 'we're living in the end days of partition'. She added: 'Actually, this year marks a century since the Boundary Commission partitioned our island. 'So a century ago, people in Tyrone, in your own home county of County Down, woke up one morning and everything had changed for them and they had been left behind. And then the history unfolded, as we know. 'We're now at a point where we have real opportunities, economically, socially, to build an Ireland that creates wealth, prosperity, happiness, security for our entire island population. 'And I think we need to grasp that. And I also know that we need to plan for it. One of the astonishing things is that in the absence of any substantive debate, that you have 34% of the population north of the border saying, yes, I favour this. 'I believe that as the conversation deepens and as we listen to each other carefully and as the opportunities become more apparent, I believe that support will grow. But the government here in Dublin has to lead that. 'They can't bury their heads in the sand.' Mr Kielty made the point that it isn't about economics but a 'hearts and minds thing' and the DUP and those who are British have to be 'persuaded'. Ms McDonald responded: 'Of course we do. Of course we do. And that's on the one hand the great challenge of this process, but that's actually what makes it interesting. 'That's what makes it exciting. And by the way, if you are British in a partitioned Ireland, you will be British in a united Ireland. That's who you are. That's your identity. We're not trying to challenge that. 'But I'm saying very directly that this island, this entire economy is better off as a single unit. And there's evidence of that already. I mean, in the time of the Good Friday Agreement, the all-Ireland trade was somewhere in the region of about two billion. 'It's now, what, about 14 billion all those years on. The border is a liability for us. We have unfinished business, and I think we should have this as a national project that we reconcile, we unite our island, and we build a place where our young people, all of them, whatever their background, have their right chance here at home and that we're not seeing them unscathed.' Kielty suggested Sinn Féin as a party should lay out its plan for a united Ireland, Ms McDonald said there should be conversations about issues such as health care and setting out values, adding, 'I'm not going to hand down on tablets of stone, this is how it shall be.' She said there has to be a defined democratic space where that conversation happens and repeated that the current government in Dublin has to lead in that regard, pointing to north-south engagement on the Brexit issue with input from hauliers and business people. When speaking to women from the unionist community, she said, they want to talk about healthcare, about their children and grandchildren and about how tomorrow can be better. The Co Down presenter agreed, but said when he speaks to the same people they want to talk about those issues while still being part of the UK. Ms McDonald accepted there will be people who are 'absolutely committed to a unionist position' and 'that's okay' as across the island there are committed nationalists and republicans, unionists and others. She said there is also a 'whole swathe of people in the middle' who 'ultimately need to be engaged in this conversation', describing it as a 'really exciting time it's a time of opportunity'. In a wide-ranging interview Kielty and Ms McDonald also spoke of dealing with the loss of parents in recent times. The republican leader praised Pope Francis for championing the 'underdog' recognising how he rang Gaza City every evening, 'even when he was really, really sick and struggling himself' which 'told the world who he was'. She also ruled herself out of running for President of Ireland and said her party was undecided when it comes to fielding their own candidate or backing someone from outside of Sinn Féin.
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First Post
25-04-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Bharat's post-Pahalgam plan should begin from Indus and end in POK
Americans bullied Nehru into signing the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960; by suspending it, PM Modi has corrected a historic blunder. This should be followed by a detailed and decisive strategy to get Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir back read more When the dastardly Pulwama attack took place in February 2019, Bharat responded with the audacious airstrikes against terrorist training camps in Balakot. The action was unprecedented. But over the years, the government realised that Balakot might have conveyed a strong message to Islamabad that any act of terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil won't go unpunished. Still, it wasn't enough to dismantle the overall jihadi infrastructure in that country. On April 23, in the wake of the Pahalgam attack that led to the killing of 26 people, the government decided to suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, among a few other diplomatic decisions. The treaty is unique in the way that it is the only water agreement in the world that has conceded the 'doctrine of restricted sovereignty' in the Indus basin comprising six main rivers—Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Of the six rivers, the treaty, quite generously, gives Pakistan complete authority over the three westernmost rivers—Indus, Jhelum and Chenab—contributing 80.52 per cent of annual flows in the Indus basin. The remaining three rivers are allotted to Bharat, contributing merely 19.48 per cent of the annual flows. By any standard of the term, this has been the most generous water treaty ever offered to any country. (Pakistan, for instance, gets 90 times more water than Mexico's share under a 1944 treaty with the United States.) Bharat hoped that its generosity would push Pakistan towards a good-neighbourly path and stop sponsoring terrorism. Delhi was trying to buy peace by offering water. But Islamabad instead returned the favour with blood—a lot of blood. What's little known is that the Indus Waters Treaty was the outcome of an American bullying: The then US administration had coerced the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, into signing this deal. Former diplomat Rajiv Dogra recounts in his seminal book, Where Borders Bleed, how at the time of Partition, Mohammed Ali Jinnah 'replied caustically that 'he would rather have deserts in Pakistan than fertile fields watered by the courtesy of Hindus', when Cyril Redcliffe advised the two countries at the meeting of the Boundary Commission in Lahore in July 1947 to have joint management of the vast network of canals that ran through Punjab. By the autumn of 1947, informs Dogra, Jinnah had climbed down from his 'not-needing-Hindu-water' stand. And by 1954, when the World Bank, under the American prodding, proposed that three main eastern rivers (Sutlej, Beas, Ravi) be reserved for Bharat, and the three western rivers (Indus, Chenab and Jhelum) should be for Pakistan's use, the then Pakistani President, Ayub Khan, in his book Friends Not Masters believed this was 'tantamount to asking for the moon'! STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Bharat's financial difficulties in the late 1950s, writes Dogra, 'provided the US a platform to put pressure on Nehru. What persuasion could not achieve was easily obtained through financial influence. The foreign exchange requirements of the Second Five Year Plan plus the financial strain of importing food due to drought-like conditions made India turn to the US and the World Bank for loans'. In this backdrop, James Langley, the then American ambassador in Pakistan, suggested to Washington: 'Both Pakistan and India are edging closer and closer to bankruptcy and India in particular is in financial terms becoming more desperate daily. The USA is thus in a position to put conditions on loans to make Nehru more amenable to a settlement with Pakistan.' Pakistan, thus, did get the moon! And in return, it gave nothing back to Bharat, except death and destruction in the name of jihad! This Pakistani policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds worked well till 2014. It played its sinister game and Delhi kept forgiving and forgetting that. But post Pathankot, the Government of Bharat revised its Pakistan policy: Reciprocity became the buzzword, especially vis-à-vis Islamabad. For the first time, a country was made accountable for terrorism emanating from there. By punishing Pakistan for terror originating on its soil, Bharat made its immediate western neighbour answerable for its acts of omission and commission. A new Lakshman Rekha was drawn and the politicians and generals of Pakistan had a rude awakening that this particular line could not be crossed without repercussions. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD There are enough historical precedents that show that any treaty signed under duress can be scrapped. Also, Bharat can always cite the example of a country like China that has openly declared sovereignty rights over waters that flow through its territory. Why should Bharat follow a treaty that is exceptional in every word of the term? Moreover, post Pahalgam, new realities demand a new treaty. Meanwhile, the Modi government's decision has received a mixed response. While a large section of people have welcomed the move, some people question it, saying rivers are no ordinary taps that can be turned on and off as per one's whims and fancies. What they don't realise is that the government has been working on several projects on this front, especially in the past decade. One of them, Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project, built on a tributary of the Jhelum, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2018. The 330 MW Kishanganga Project, located in Bandipora district of Jammu & Kashmir, is a run-of-river scheme. The project will provide a free power of 13 per cent to the Union Territory. Jhelum has another project, Tulbul Navigation Project, too which has been revived post-Uri attack in 2016. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD While inaugurating Kishanganga, PM Modi also laid the foundation stone of the Pakal Dul Power Project in Jammu & Kashmir. Pakal Dul, with 1000 MW capacity, on completion, will be the largest Hydro Power Project in the Union Territory. Built on a tributary of a Chenab river, it is also the first storage project in Jammu & Kashmir. Chenab has another project, Ratle Hydroelectric Project, which was revived in 2021 with an 850 MW capacity. The suspension of the Indus treaty is going to directly impact the lives of people in Pakistan, which is already a water-starved country. It relies heavily on the Indus for irrigation, with 80 per cent of its farming surviving on these waters. Reduced water supply would immediately lower crop production, which would be catastrophic in a country where food inflation is already a big issue. What makes the situation worse is Punjab's total and exploitative appropriation of Pakistani resources, including water. Authors Ashok Motwani and Sant Kumar Sharma write in their book, Indus Waters Story: Issues, Concerns, Perspectives: 'Today, in Pakistan, except for Punjab and the regions adjacent to the upper Indus system, other parts, notably downstream Sindh, are simmering with discontent because the mighty Indus has almost vanished from their once fertile lands. Large parts of Sindh province, which derives its name from the Indus (anglicised version of Sindhu) River, have turned barren and more may meet the same fate in the coming years. This has happened mainly because very little waters flow in the Indus today by the time it reaches the lower riparian Sindh and upper riparian Punjab appropriates them.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Such has been the Punjabi dominance that 'perhaps, as part of Pakistan, the water rights of the Sindh province are afforded less protection than they were during the British period when the Indian Irrigation System ensured more fair apportionment of water', as Motwani and Sharma write. (One adds to this the overarching exploitation-cum-persecution of the Balochis and other tribals of the NWFP, and the total dissolution of the Pakistan project seems imminent.) The suspension of the Indus treaty is also important because it would particularly hurt the elites of Pakistan. The Chenab waters help irrigate vast tracts of land located east of Marala Barrage in Pakistan. These large tracts of land are owned by the political-military elite of that country. Apart from the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, Bharat has decided to close the Attari Wagah border, cancel visa exemptions, expel Pakistani defence personnel, and also reduce the strength of the Indian mission in Islamabad. Pakistan, in retaliation, has announced that the 1972 Simla Agreement has been put in abeyance. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Bharat should be happy with the Pakistani decision, as the 1972 treaty was a sad reminder of Delhi's political class squandering away all the gains its military had made on the battlefield. The removal of the Simla pact also takes away Islamabad's façade of being interested in a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, thus opening the doors for a renewed Indian effort to get back Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK). The time has come for Bharat to make a concerted effort to get POK back. This will not just give the country its strategic depth in the region but also deliver Pakistan's military-jihadi nexus a big jolt. Bharat's post-Pahalgam strategy should begin from Indus and end in POK. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
