India’s suspension of the decades-old World Bank-facilitated Indus water treaty with Pakistan could cut large quantity of flows into Pakistan, but this is likely to be a gradual process, depending on what kind of infrastructure projects India might plan in the basin, experts said.
On Wednesday, India decided to halt the 1960 water-sharing pact, a day after terrorists killed 25 tourists and one local in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, a region famous for its rolling meadows and snow-capped mountains.
The treaty governing six rivers that make up the Indus basin had been already strained by differences. Pakistan has objected to India’s plans for two hydropower projects.
The Indian side has demanded talks to re-negotiate the terms of the 1960 treaty, citing natural changes in the basin itself that have put pressure on its needs for power and drinking, according to Indian authorities. The Indus basin has been shrinking due to lower freshwater outflows, according to Washington-based The Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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While Pakistan has pressed for legal arbitration, India has demanded that matters be resolved through a mutually agreed neutral person.
India stepped up pressure in 2016 when terrorists gun downed 19 soldiers at an army base, saying it might withdraw from the pact.
On Wednesday, India decided to halt the treaty, a day after gunmen killed 26 tourists in Pahalgam, a region frequented by visitors for its meadows and snow-capped mountains.
“One could see this coming. The Prime Minister had said that water and blood can’t flow simultaneously even during previous terror attacks,” said Shashi Shekhar, a former Union water resources secretary who now oversees policy at the World Resources Institute.
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“Even otherwise, India has cited several reasons why it wants a re-negotiation of the treaty through mutual discussions.” The former bureaucrat said the treaty has provisions for third-party arbitration to resolve disputes but it is purely a bilateral agreement, which needs the primary parties to be in agreement for its continuation. Its provisions, as India interprets them, require disagreements to be first discussed at a mutual level.
India and Pakistan have fought four wars but the treaty had never been paused before, despite disagreements over matters such as visitation rights to monitor compliance in each other’s territories by either side, adherence to flow rates, construction of canals and the scope of end-use, including types of water consumption.
If India pulls out, there will be no “hurdles and obligations on India to adhere to provisions governing technical norms on designing and controlling dams or other projects”, said PK Saxena, a former commissioner for the treaty.
Nuts and bolts
The treaty governs the use of the western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab— and the eastern rivers — the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej— by both the countries.
After nearly a decade of negotiations, India and Pakistan signed the deal on September 19, 1960 in Karachi. It provided for the building of dams, link canals and barrages as per the treaty’s terms, paving the way for two of Pakistan’s biggest projects, the Tarbela dam on the Indus river and the Mangla dam on the Jhelum.
Its key provisions allows the control of seasonal fluctuations in flows through the rivers, creating resources that feed 80% of Pakistan’s irrigation networks and allows India to construct projects to avoid acrimony, said Prakash Upadhyay, retired faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
The deal gives India powers to regulate water flows in the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej or the eastern rivers while Pakistan has the authority to manage the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab, the western rivers. Pakistan lies downstream of the entire Indus basin.
A third of Pakistan’s energy depends on hydropower and the Indus rivers are a lifeline for Punjab, the country’s bread basket. A unilateral pull-out from the treaty by India can wreak havoc to the neighbour’s farming systems, delay sowing, sap power supply and jeopardise food security, analysts said.
Nearly 60 million people in Pakistan’s plains could also experience severe flooding if India doesn’t regulate water flows.
“Indian government wants a renegotiation because changing characteristics of the basin over time have meant that 75-80% of the basin’s total utilisable water is now available to Pakistan under the treaty, which is unfair,” an official said, requesting anonymity.
Shekhar, the former Union water resources secretary, said India was “well within its rights to suspend the treaty” because a bilateral treaty exists at the “pleasure of parties involved”.
Under international conventions, lower riparian states do have well-defined rights over cross-border rivers but these are separate from the Indus treaty itself, according to the Upadhyay.
India’s take
The treaty provided for a Permanent Indus Commission or PIC, with one commissioner from each country. A mechanism for resolving disputes was also laid out, which according to India, requires bilateral negotiations first before any escalation, such as a demand for a neutral arbitrator by either country. The two commissioners are required to meet at least once every year, alternately in India and Pakistan.
The 117th sitting of the PIC led by the two Indus commissioners was held on March 1-3 in 2022 in Islamabad, where the Indian side claimed that three major dams — Pakal Dul, Kiru and Lower Kalnai — under construction in India were fully compliant with the treaty and “Pakistan was provided full technical details in support of its position”, according to a statement by the external affairs ministry at the time.
In 2017 India completed construction of the Kishanganga dam in Kashmir. It continued work on the Ratle hydroelectric station on the Chenab despite Pakistan’s objections. India presented designs of the projects for scrutiny amid negotiations chaperoned by the World Bank, which it said didn’t violate any clause of the pact.
In September 2024, India announced there would be no more sittings of the PIC until the treaty itself is re-negotiated, alleging that Pakistan was sitting on India’s request for talks to specifically address the issue of re-negotiation.
Wary Pak
Pakistan has asked for a neutral expert to intervene in these matters, which India agreed to until the neighbour called legal arbitration.
Pakistan has contended that the technical design of India’s hydroelectric plants contravene the treaty, a charge denied by Indian authorities.
In October 2022, the World Bank appointed Michel Lino as the neutral expert and Sean Murphy as chairman of the court of arbitration on various disputes.
“One common question that arises in moments like this is whether India can simply ‘stop the flow’ of water into Pakistan. In the immediate term, the short answer is no. Certainly not at the scale that would make a meaningful dent in flows during the high flow season,” wrote Hassaan F Khan, a Pakistani-origin academic at Tufts University, in Pakistan’s Dawn daily on Thursday.
In his piece, Hassaan said India will not succeed in diverting large-scale flows to Pakistan immediately. “Even if India were to coordinate releases across all its existing dams, all it may be able to do is slightly shift the timing of flows.”
According to a September 2020 report in the same newspaper, lawmakers in both houses of Pakistan’s parliament said India’s ambitions were to divert waters away from the neighbour, warning that “any such act would be seen as an act of war”.
The National Security Committee (NSC) in Islamabad on Thursday said “India has no legal right under the treaty to revoke or review it on its own” and reiterated that India’s act constituted an act of war, according to AFP.