While this book will prove 'a welcome addition to some libraries because of the volume of information it contains, editors Verghese and Iyer deliver much less than what they promise in the title. Because negotiations on the Eastern Himalayan rivers have seen extremely limited progress "for a variety of reasons", they write, the time seemed right for an "objective, nonofficial study by scholars uninhibited by political compulsions and able to examine and propose a range of possible options".
Unfortunately, this publication contains no definite proposals or development options. Instead, till past the halfway mark, the book belabours the background and describes the vast untapped potential of the Brahmaputra, Ganga and Meghna rivers — of which there has been no doubt. When the book eventually takes up the core issues related to regional cooperation and development strategies, the discourses are mostly restricted to records of past dialogues and country positions — as seen from an Indian perspective. There are no startling revelations or fresh insights in this 286-page work, which contains 22 papers by distinguished Indian experts on a range of topics.
It is of course true: "it is not that the tremendous, catalysing potential of the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) system is unknown or technologically unrealisable", but opportunities have "not been creatively seized", because "a number of social, political and historical inhibitors are at work". The goals the editors set for themselves were to address these inhibitors and to define "a common approach to the optimal development" of the Eastern Himalayan rivers.
What the book does best is provide the reader with background information on the GBM Basin, which supports 535 million people and covers over 174 million hectares (including in Tibet). The three rivers together drain a third of India and almost all of Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, and represent one of the world's most expansive river systems. Harnessing their full potential would of course create enormous economic wealth in the four countries.