Indus waters: Yawning gap between threat and reality

In retaliation for the dastardly attack on tourists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, the Narendra Modi government has decided to scrap the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, even if it will have quite a few consequences. A fter the Uni incident, our Prime Minister had said that “blood and water cannot flow together’. The truth is that while the flow of blood can be stopped, water will continue to flow.

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The geography makes it next to impossi-ble to sn the How of the waters from the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum. Yet there was ample reason to revisit this treaty, because of Pakistan's persistent misuse of the provi-sions of the IWT that enable it to adopt a “dog in the manger” attitude to prevent or delay any development of hydel projects on the three rivers that is permitted by the treaty. This will now stop.

The entire Indus river system has a total drainage area which exceeds 11,165,000 sq km. Its estimated annual flow stands at around 207 km3, making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow. It is also Pakistan's sole means of sus-tenance. The British had constructed a com-plex canal system to irrigate the Punjab re-gion of Pakistan. Partition left a large part of this infrastructure in Pakistan.