Liquid power: On the feats and failings of Southasia’s attempts at regulating water

Southasia, the MacArthur Fellow and historian Sunil Amrith writes, "stands at the frontline" of an existential crisis. As climate change ushers in rising sea levels, violent and unpredictable weather patterns, and widespread species extinctions, the relationship of humans to water will be both newly imperilled and also vitally important. How did we get here? Amrith's book, Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia's History, charts a history of Southasia's – predominantly India's – relationship to water. It is a timely and distressing read, which stresses the urgent need to formulate a new, more wholesome relationship with nature – without, necessarily, providing us with a blueprint to do so.

Unruly Waters is a dazzling feat of historical synthesis. It begins in the 19th century when the British East India Company stepped up the pace and scale of its maritime conquests and proceeds through two centuries of colonial rule followed by another of post-independence nation-building. But unlike traditional histories of Asia – which foreground conquest, liberation, partition and growth – Amrith chooses an unlikely protagonist: water, in the form of the rivers, oceans, atmosphere and groundwater reserves that shape history.