08-05-2025
The Indus Waters Treaty: Back to the drawing board
In the early hours of May 7, India carried out strikes inside Pakistan, which, as the Indian Ministry of Defence press release said, 'have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature'. The strikes, carried out in Bahawalpur, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Muridke, Sialkot, and Shakargarh, were anticipated after the barbaric terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, in which 26 tourists were killed on April 22.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, India decided to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance. The IWT was signed in 1960, under which waters from the eastern rivers — Sutlej, Ravi and Beas — were given to India. The treaty also allocates waters from the western rivers — Jhelum, Indus and Chenab — to Pakistan with limited use for India. Around 39 per cent of the Indus Basin lies in India, 47 per cent in Pakistan, and the remaining in Afghanistan and Tibet (China).
When the IWT was negotiated in the 1950s, India and Pakistan were not friends but had normal ties. The then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistani Military Chief Field Marshal Ayub Khan were in complete command of political affairs in their respective countries. Nehru was a towering leader of the postcolonial world. His idealism, mixed with tenets of realism and pragmatism, convinced him to sign the water deal.
Nehru thought that the water treaty would extend cooperation between India and Pakistan to other bilateral matters. For instance, in Karachi, Nehru and Ayub Khan discussed issues like evacuee property, Kashmir, etc. After it was signed, the IWT faced criticism in both India and Pakistan.
India accepted the World Bank's mediation after it proposed that it would make distinctions between 'political' and 'functional' aspects of the water disputes. John Laylin of the law firm Covington & Burling, representing Pakistan in the US, reacted favourably to the World Bank's proposal, convincing Pakistani leadership to accept the mediation. Furthermore, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, Canada and Germany agreed to contribute to the Indus Development Fund set up under the IWT.
As India strongly advocates for a rules-based international order, New Delhi may not want to entirely stop the flow of water to Pakistan, which could be seen as violating the lower riparian country's legal right to shared rivers. The Helsinki Rules and Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1997, call for reasonable and equitable water use in an international river basin, rejecting absolute sovereignty over transboundary water resources. When the Convention was put to vote in 1997, China voted against it, India and Pakistan abstained, and Nepal and Bangladesh voted for it but have not ratified it. The Berlin Rules on Water Resources of 2004 reiterate the principle of reasonable and equitable use of water, prioritise human needs, and have a chapter with provisions on protecting waters and water installations during war or armed conflict.
India, nevertheless, can strategically use the situation to make the required modifications in the IWT. In the last few years, India has, unsuccessfully, written letters to Pakistan calling for an amendment in the treaty under Article XII (3) of the IWT, which says that its provisions 'may from time to time be modified by a duly ratified treaty concluded for that purpose between the two Governments'. In January 2023, India issued a notice to Pakistan seeking modifications in the IWT. Between then and September 2024, India sent four letters to Pakistan to initiate talks to revise and modify the treaty. India argues that there is a 'change in circumstances' in the Indus River Basin region due to the increasing population and the accelerating impact of climate change that requires modifications to the IWT.
Taking advantage of the current status of the IWT, as some media reports say, India has carried out 'reservoir flushing' on the Salal and Baglihar dams without informing Pakistan. Keeping the IWT in abeyance may advance the date of completion and speed up works on long-pending Indian water projects like the Tulbul/Wular Barrage with a storage capacity of 0.3 million acre-feet of water involving the river Jhelum, the Bursar project on Marusudar River (a tributary of Chenab), and Jispa Dam on Bhaga River (a tributary of the Chenab).
In a changed political environment, where there is an increasing demand to abrogate the treaty, India may modify some of its terms, renegotiate a part or the entirety of it or even consider offering a new water-sharing treaty to Pakistan. However, such decisions would be politically difficult. To negotiate a treaty peacefully, one needs a conducive political environment. In some cases, a powerful country imposes a treaty on a relatively weak country. Even international organisations have played a role in brokering a deal between hostile countries.
Unlike the 1950s, India-Pakistan ties have touched a new low following the terror attack in Pahalgam. Moreover, India is less likely to accept the World Bank or any other international organisation/foreign country to act as a mediator. In the current situation, the fate of the IWT largely hinges on intersecting factors such as political leadership, the level and cost of escalation and de-escalation in bilateral tensions, and effective bilateral and international diplomacy.
The writer is a researchfellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, NUS, Singapore
