Indus Water Treaty needs an urgent review

Even without a conflict, a comprehensive review of the Indus Water Treaty has been long overdue.

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

Any honest review of the Indus Water Treaty would show that it has few parallels-are is the upper riparian state which has such agreements with a lower riparian, and that too a lower riparian state that is relentlessly adversarial.

Therefore, the question that ought to be asked about the Indus Water Treaty signed in Karachi in April 1960 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani President Ayub Khan is not whether it needs a review-but how this treaty, brokered by the World Bank, that governs the use of the waters of six rivers in the Indus water basin has survived for so long without one.

The treaty is remarkable not only because of upperlower riparian dynamic noted earlier but also because it has survived every conflict, every war between India and Pakistan, as if ensconced in its own bubble.

After the dastardly terror attack at Pahalgam, India has kept the treaty "in abey ance" meaning it would not be cooperating with Pakistan on the modalities of the treaty including periodic data sharing, cooperation in controlling water flow and other such issues.

It is not widely known in the public square in India that 80 per cent of the waters under this treaty and flows from the three major rivers, Indus, Jhelum and Chenab (western bank rivers), go to Pakistan, and those from Ravi, Beas and Sutlej (eastern bank rivers) are for India. For a long time, India did not even use all the waters in its quota, leaving some extra flow for Pakistan. Part of the reason was also underinvestment in building adequate infrastructure like dams and canals to use the full share which India did not do in the past. But recent developments like the Shahpur Kandi and Ujh dams on the Indian side have caused friction.

Any development of hydroelectric projects by India also causes conflict.