ABSTRACT
The plurality of meanings associated with water often gets usurped by the dominant strategic narratives of water diplomacy, which equate water with national security and national interest. Considering this to be an important gap, which currently informs the meta-narrative of water diplomacy in South Asia in general, and India–Pakistan relations in particular, this chapter identifies certain micro-narratives which are salient to understanding how meanings associated with water change and can potentially even diffuse across scales. Notwithstanding these developments which are reflective of the broader trajectory of India–Pakistan bilateral relations, this chapter draws attention to the literature around scales and narratives, examining local discourses around River Ravi, a transboundary minor river shared by India and Pakistan. At a conceptual level, it emancipates ‘waterscapes’ (which is different from IWRM) as a perspective to explore and understand water-centric landscapes by revisiting emerging local voices from Indian Punjab and Pakistan Punjab.
