From Hydro-Hegemony to Hydro-Coercion: Politics of Precarity in India-Bangladesh Transboundary Water Conflicts

Abstract

This article advances the concept of hydro-coercion to analyze how asymmetric power relations shape transboundary water governance between India and Bangladesh, with broader implications for political geography, environmental justice, and the geographies of state power. Focusing on the Ganges, Teesta, and Brahmaputra rivers, the article argues that India's upstream dominance enables it to exercise coercive control over shared water resources through material infrastructure, institutional stalling, and ideational narratives of water nationalism. These practices exacerbate ecological degradation and human vulnerability in downstream Bangladesh, weaponizing transboundary rivers as geopolitical leverage. Drawing on critical hydro-politics, theories of power, and empirical case studies, the article illustrates how control over rivers reconfigures hydro-social territories, deepens regional precarity, and reveals the limitations of existing treaties and institutional mechanisms. The analysis situates these dynamics within broader regional transformations, including China's upstream interventions that complicate India's dominance and the increasing impacts from accelerating climate change, all of which intensify risks for Bangladesh's deltaic socioecologies. The article posits that a fundamental rethinking of transboundary water governance is imperative, toward a transformed governance paradigm that moves beyond technocratic bilateralism toward multilateral, ecologically just, and politically accountable frameworks. By centering lived experiences of precarity in downstream regions and theorizing hydro-coercion as a mechanism of escalating spatial and geopolitical domination, I emphasize the need for decolonial, rights-based, and ecologically grounded approaches to shared water governance in an era of intensifying climate and political uncertainty.