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This article frames the political economy of electricity trade and hydropower development in eastern South Asia. It distils and analyzes four crucial variables in this regard: the health of distribution companies in India; the role of hydropower in India's ambitious turn to renewable energy; Bangladesh's power crisis and import dependency; and the governance of regional electricity trading arrangements. It argues that progress in both electricity trade and hydropower development in the region will be incremental in the next decade, hindered by mixed demand signals and the turbulence of geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public access to government-maintained water and climate data in the three major co-riparian countries of the Ganges Basin - Nepal, India and Bangladesh - has been either inadequately granted or formally restricted. This paper examines the effects of newly enacted Right to Information (RTI) laws in these three countries to assess changes in the information access regimes as they relate to hydrological data. We find that neither the RTI laws nor the internal and external demand for increased transparency in governments have affected access to information regimes on water at a fundamental level. In India, the RTI laws have not eased public access to data on its transboundary rivers including in the Ganges Basin and in Nepal and Bangladesh, while data can be legally accessed using RTI laws, the administrative procedures for such an access are not developed enough to make a tangible difference on the ground. We then discuss the implications of our findings on the continuing impasse on regional collaboration on water in South Asia and point to rapid advancements in technology as an emerging pathway to greater data democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]