Does placing the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance bite?
To answer this, let’s go back to when Pakistan was born and Kashmir was torn apart. The Indus River System, which flows from India to Pakistan, did not pause for partition, although a standstill agreement maintained the pre-Partition water allocation. In October 1947, Pakistan-backed rebels attacked Kashmir. So, on April 1, 1948, when the standstill agreement expired, India flexed its hydrological muscles by turning off the tap. As a result, 5.5% of west Pakistan’s agricultural land dried up before sowing, and Lahore lost its main municipal water source. Pakistan had to pay for any water it received through the Indus River system. A ceasefire agreement followed and Kashmir became a formal part of India. According to a senior Pakistani negotiator of the Indus Waters Treaty, “India held all the cards” at the time, evidence that water can be a powerful disciplinary tool.
So, what changed?
The IWT.
For a decade, India and Pakistan struggled to reach an agreement. Then, in 1957, an El Nino year, drought struck India. India’s balance of payments account dropped from a $14 million surplus in 1955–56 to a $656 million deficit in 1956–57. India needed World Bank assistance to resolve its balance of payments crisis, but that came with strings attached. In 1959, the World Bank president convinced India to sign the Indus Waters Treaty, giving Pakistan the water of the three western rivers of the Indus system. India had to pay ~$174 million towards projects that helped Pakistan bypass Indian headworks, while supplying it with water while these projects were built.
Currently, India lacks the required infrastructure to use the Indus system as an effective hydro-disciplinary tool. The Indus system consists of three eastern rivers which India has full rights to, and three western rivers. Indeed, only recently has India fully used up its own share of the river system’s water. To craft an effective disciplinary tool, it is the flow of these western rivers – the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab – which hold 80% of the river system’s water, that India must control. India is building projects on these river systems including the operational Kishanganga run-of-the-river project, built on a tributary of the Jhelum, the under-construction Ratle Project on the Chenab and the Pakal Dul project on the Marasudar River (a tributary of the Chenab), both expected to be completed in 2026. According to government press releases, these dams adhere to the terms of the IWT and contribute significantly to employment in J&K while producing renewable energy.
Could these dams theoretically divert water away from Pakistan? Technically, yes, with additional infrastructure. But, Pakistan has raised concerns about even legitimate design features of these dams. The Himalayan rivers carry a lot of silt, making silt management an essential feature of dam design here. But, to oblige Pakistan, some necessary features were omitted while building the Salal Dam in the 1970s, leaving a silted, inefficient dam. In later dams, India has effectively advocated for the inclusion of silt management features, such as flushing operations. But some worry that these features could be weaponised: During flushing, a dam might release a large volume of water quickly — especially if it’s combined with high flow from rain or snowmelt. Think of it like suddenly dumping a big bucket of water into a narrow drain: this sudden surge could cause flooding downstream. After all, in the highly seasonal water of the subcontinent, changing timing can be almost as effective a deterrent as diversion.
Placing the IWT in abeyance, allows India to potentially build more infrastructure, stop data-sharing and consultation with Pakistan, thus increasing the perceived risk of punishment.
So, yes, this does bite.
Pakistan’s rhetoric suggests they’ve got the message. The sting is more painful because the Indus-basin, thanks to its high dependence on snow-and-glacier-melt, is especially vulnerable to climate change.
Also, we are signalling to other downstream neighbours that “blood and water cannot flow together”. After all, what is sauce for the Jhelum can be sauce for the Ganga.
Finally, China. When China annexed Tibet, it became the ultimate upstream country for Himalayan rivers. China does not currently have a formal water sharing agreements with its downstream neighbours. But because Tibet is dry, the importance of Nepal, Bhutan and within India, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, increases from a hydro-geopolitical perspective. Nepal, for example, provides 70% of the Ganga’s dry season flow. For India to lessen the risk of water-disciplining action, it must draw these regions into a more loving embrace – through hydropower agreements, tourism and cultural exchanges. I’ve gone intothis more deeply in my book and elsewhere.
Importantly, India must recognize water’s strategic priority. We can speak forcefully today because we are food secure. El Ninos and climate change, however, threaten this security. This makes the depleting groundwater aquifers beneath the dry lands on which our food security rests as important, if not as immediate, a threat as a fanatical neighbour with little to lose. Improving our negotiation position strengthens us geopolitically. A good place to start would be to shape our food subsidies and procurement subsidies around water, increase our lean-season water supply by treating and reusing more of our sewage, and protecting our forests.
(Mridula Ramesh is a climate-tech investor and author of The Climate Solution and Watershed. She can be reached on tradeoffs@climaction.net)