China - India kicks off water war
Shares
China and India may have defused a potential border conflict but the stand-off seems to have led to dispute over another contentious issue: water.
Delhi says it has not received any hydrological - the scientific study of the movement, distribution and quality of water - data for the Brahmaputra river from upstream China this monsoon season, despite an agreement.
One of Asia's major rivers, the Brahmaputra, originates in Tibet and flows down to India before entering Bangladesh where it joins the Ganges and empties into the Bay of Bengal.
Beijing has said its hydrological stations are being upgraded which means it cannot share data.
But the BBC has found that China continues to share data for the same river with Bangladesh, the lowest downstream country in the Brahmaputra basin.
The river data issue between China and India comes after the two countries ended a tense stand-off over a disputed Himalayan border area that lasted more than two months.
The Brahmaputra gets severely flooded during monsoon season every year, causing huge losses in northeast India and Bangladesh.
The two countries have agreements with China that requires the upstream country to share hydrological data of the river during monsoon season between 15 May and 15 October.
The data is mainly of the water level of the river to alert downstream countries in case of floods.
"For this year…we have not received the hydrological data from the Chinese side beginning 15 May until now," Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of India's External Affairs Ministry said last month at a regular briefing.
"We don't know the technical reasons behind this but there is an existing mechanism under which China is to provide hydrological data to us."
