The Ganga Basin Management - The Ganga: Water Use in the Indian Subcontinent - page 249

which they otherwise could not independently afford to create. It might also
be useful to consider promoting exchange of personnel, engaged in interna-
tional water resources management, to train management staff and as a means
of sharing and disseminating experience in applying the criteria and methods
for collection, storage, retrieval and standardization of basic basin data.
International Organizations and Treaties
There are three kinds of international rivers in the world- the successive, the con-
tiguous and the successive-cum-contiguous. Successive rivers flow through one
country first and then enter another country, leaving the first one. The contiguous
rivers flow through more than one country at a time (two banks in two coun-
tries). The successive-cum-contiguous rivers flow through one country first and
then flow through two countries (one bank in one country) before finally entering
a third country. Treaties have been concluded on sharing of waters etc. on La Plata
(among Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) on 23rd April 1969,
on the Mekong (among Lao, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam), on the Columbia
(between Canada and the USA), on Senegal (among Mali, Mauritania and Senegal),
on the Colorado (among Canada, the USA and Mexico), on the Volta (among Ghana,
Togo and Benin), on the Rhine (among Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands,
France and Luxemburg), on the Vardar-Axios (between Greece and Yugoslavia), on
the Nile (between Egypt and Sudan) in the 1920s, on the Danube (among Bulgaria,
former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania. Yugoslavia and the former USSR) and
on the Indus (between India and Pakistan). For relevance to our subject, let us have
a closer look at the Indus River Treaty.
Indus River Treaty
The Indus (the Sindhu in ancient Hindu texts) flows through India and Pakistan.
Before 1947, when there was no Pakistan, it passed through one single country,
India. Afterward, it was divided between the territories of two countries. Before
1947, it irrigated Punjab, Sind, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Bahawalpur
and Bikaner etc. but it did not have enough water to meet the demands of each State,
giving rise to occasional disputes. In 1935, the then Government of British India
constituted Anderson Committee to forge an agreement on some outstanding issues.
The committee recommended certain modalities which the government accepted
and gave effect to in 1937.
However, the government of Sind was not happy and lodged a complaint in
1941 that the withdrawal of water by Punjab upstream would affect irrigation
through the inundation canals in Sind from May to October and also would cre-
ate a shortage of water at Sukkur in winter. The Government of India appointed
the Indus Commission with Justice B. N. Rau as Chairman and the chief engineers
of Uttar Pradesh and Madras Provinces as members to look into the complaints.