Heightened attacks in Jammu region should make us relook at Indus Water Treaty

Border has disabled us from understanding that someone walking from Pakistan into Jammu has to simply walk on long existing routes which were shaped by rivers.

- VENUS UPADHAYAYA

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To have a fresh understanding of the tensions in our Jammu and Kashmir border areas, particularly the recent escalation in attacks in Jammu region, we need to relook at the Indus Water Treaty and understand if it's increasingly getting weaponized. We need to set up fresh mechanisms that just don't talk about building dams and infrastructure but going further that deal with communities inhabiting the border and understand their relations with their geography, particularly rivers and forests. We need to relook how our river ways and forests have become weaponized because of infiltration from across the border that's increasingly embedding into them a narrative of conflict and tension.

In this heightening context of conflicted border, the Indus Water Treaty needs to encompass not just river water and its sharing but it now needs to become inclusive of the hydrogeological aspects of the underlying geography—meaning river water can't be held in separation from its geography which includes multiple parameters like altitudes, climate and natural resources and how the interplay of these various parameters impacts the native societies particularly their agriculture and economy.