India has decided to hold the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 “in abeyance” as one of several steps taken in response to the brutal massacre of 26 tourists in south Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
A group of Pakistani and local militants are suspected to have carried out the terror strike – one of the deadliest since the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008.
The Indus river system is central to Pakistan’s water needs. Not surprisingly, the Pakistani government reacted strongly to India’s decision to walk away from the over six-decade-long water sharing agreement between the two countries. Pakistan warned India that any disruption to its water supply would be considered “an act of war”, which the country was prepared to respond, “with full force across the complete spectrum of national power.”
Jal Shakti minister CR Patil has claimed that the Indian government will make sure that “not a drop of water” goes to Pakistan.
But rhetoric aside, what implications does India’s withdrawal from the treaty have for Pakistan?
Experts told Scroll that the suspension of the treaty implies that India is no longer accountable to Pakistan for using, regulating or stopping the flow of the water of three western rivers – the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum – allotted to Pakistan under the treaty.
But they refuted claims that India can immediately block the flow of water into Pakistan. While India does have the capacity to hurt Pakistan because of its position as an upper riparian state, building large dams in the seismically fragile Western Himalaya region can pose risks to its own people, the experts added.
The impact
A large part of Pakistan’s agriculture is dependent on the irrigation system and network of canals built around the Indus river system.
“The decision could have serious impacts on Pakistan’s economy, especially the agricultural sector, threatening the livelihoods of rural people,” said Dr Dan Haines, an associate professor in the department of risk and disaster reduction, University College London.
Haines, the author of Indus Divided: India, Pakistan and the River Basin Dispute, said the suspension of the treaty can have both short as well as long-term impacts on Pakistan.
“In the short term, Indian engineers could operate existing water-control infrastructure in ways that would harm Pakistani agriculture, for example by refilling reservoirs [upstream] and reducing downstream flows at the beginning of the crop-sowing season in the plains, which is just the time of year when Pakistani farmers need large amounts of water.”
For an impact in the longer run, India would have to build new dams “with large storage reservoirs, which could more severely reduce the amount of water available in Pakistan, or affect the timing of flows”, he said. But that needs time and resources, he added.
“This would take several years because such projects take a long time to design, finance and build, though perhaps some of India’s existing water-control plans could be adapted more quickly,” Haines added.
The suspension may be an advantage for India during a flood-like situation. “During high flood peaks in the rivers, I expect Indian water managers would release the water downstream so that it would flow to Pakistan, instead of allowing flood waters to spill over into Indian territory,” Haines added.
Under the Indus Water Treaty, India has to share hydrological data with Pakistan so that the neighbouring country can predict floods and plan its irrigation needs accordingly. Now, India simply has no legal obligations to do that.
The disagreement over the water-sharing may also change the nature of politics in both the countries.
A substantial chunk of the Indus river system flows through Jammu and Kashmir. As a result, Kashmir may become even more central to the discourse between the two neighbours. “The narrative of upper riparian India blocking water will be used for mobilisation and populist purposes,” pointed out Dr Medha Bisht, associate professor at South Asian University, New Delhi. “Why Kashmir is important for Pakistan’s survival might also come to the fore.”
The agreement
The Indus Water Treaty is a water-sharing agreement reached between India and Pakistan in 1960, with the mediation of the World Bank, to establish terms for use of water in the Indus river basin.
The dispute over water sharing had its genesis in the partition of British India in 1947 and division of Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Originating from the Himalayas in Tibet, the 2,880 km long river empties into the Arabian sea. The river flows through India for 800 km, covering states and union territories like Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Rajasthan. Apart from the main Indus river, the basin comprises five left bank tributaries – the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Beas and the Satluj. All of them flow through India before flushing into Pakistan.
Under the Indus Water Treaty, the waters of three eastern rivers – the Sutlej, the Ravi and the Beas – “shall be available for the unrestricted use of India”. Similarly, Article III of the treaty provides that Pakistan shall “receive for unrestricted use” of “all the waters of the Western Rivers – the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum – which India is under obligation to let flow”.
However, India, too, was allowed to use the water of western rivers for domestic and agricultural use. Overall, while Pakistan received 80% of the three western rivers, India was authorised to utilize only 20%.
The treaty also allowed India to generate hydroelectricity on the western rivers provided that these projects are run-of-the-river hydroelectricity projects – which use the natural flow rate of water to generate electricity and do not store large amounts of water.
Under the treaty, India had to inform Pakistan before it started building a new hydropower project on the western rivers. The treaty mandated that India brief Pakistan about the design, location, hydrological and hydraulic data, including information on how the hydroelectricity generation may affect the flow of the western rivers. The treaty also made it binding on India to allow the Pakistan government’s experts to visit the region.
With India putting the treaty into “abeyance”, experts say, New Delhi may no longer comply with any of these clauses. “If one is not bound by a treaty, one is able to use water as per its needs. China has anyway been doing that with the Brahmaputra,” said Bisht, whose research interests include international relations, water governance and diplomacy.
In January, India had raised serious concerns with Beijing after the Chinese government cleared the construction of the world’s largest dam on the Brahmaputra river in Tibet close to the Indian border. With the relations between India and China in upheaval, the construction of the dam has fuelled anxieties in lower riparian countries like India and Bangladesh. Just as India is an upstream nation in the Indus river system, China enjoys a similar geographical advantage on the Brahmaputra river.
A treaty undone?
Even though it was signed way back in 1960, the Indus Water Treaty had largely remained insulated from multiple wars, terrorist attacks and other skirmishes between the two nuclear-armed rivals. In fact, the treaty is widely considered as one of the longest-standing agreements between two countries over a transboundary river system.
But in recent years, the hostile relationship between the two neighbours has taken a toll on the pact. Last year, India had sent a formal notice to Pakistan, seeking renegotiation of the treaty.
Pakistan has repeatedly raised objections over the power projects built by India on the western rivers, even though the treaty allows it to.
Since 2006, both countries have been engaged in a prolonged dispute over India’s decision to construct two power projects in Jammu and Kashmir – the 330-megawatt Kishanganga project on the Jhelum river and the 850-megawatt Ratle project on the Chenab river. While the Kishenganga power project was inaugurated in 2018, the Ratle dam is under construction.
The dispute over the two power projects has dragged on for years owing to the differences in the implementation of the dispute-resolution mechanisms underlined within the treaty. For example, in case of a dispute between the two countries, the first platform to solve the issue is the Permanent Indus Commission.
In case the commission fails to resolve the dispute, a “neutral expert” could also be appointed on the request of either commissioner to decide on the issue. If there’s no solution from the expert, then both the countries or either of them can request the constitution of an International Court of Arbitration to solve the differences.
In the case of Kishanganga and Ratle, while India wanted each step of the resolution mechanism to be exhausted completely, Pakistan showed a greater urgency to escalate the dispute to other platforms of resolution as it considered Delhi was not addressing its concerns properly.
Before the Pahalgam attack, even with the lingering differences over interpretation of the dispute resolution mechanism, both the countries were bound to comply with the treaty. That may have changed now.
One of the ways India might be implementing the “abeyance” of the Indus Water Treaty is by not taking Pakistan on board while constructing the Ratle power project, experts said. Not only that. After the scrapping of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood in 2019, New Delhi has cleared eight more hydropower projects in Ladakh.
“It is possible that India can choose not to consider Pakistan's concerns,” pointed out Srinivas Chokkakula, president and chief executive of the Centre for Policy Research think tank.
Chokkakula, who leads the transboundary rivers, ecologies, and development studies programme at CPR, however, pointed out that New Delhi has not explained what it actually means by “abeyance”.
“…It is not easy to control or deviate water flows without significant investments in infrastructure. But there are other ways that the abeyance can impact,” Chokkakula said. “That depends on what India chooses to do under 'abeyance.' It is best to await specific details about the measures India takes instead of speculating on it.”
Haines of the University College London, concurred. “The Indus Waters Treaty previously put strong restrictions on the way that India could design projects on the ‘western’ rivers…,” he said.
But its suspension allows India to design and power projects that can store a lot of water, which gives it leverage over the flow of water to Pakistan. “If the Indian government decides not to reinstate the treaty in the longer term it could press ahead with different designs for Kishenganga and other projects.”
Costs for India
Are there legal ramifications for India as it has unilaterally walked out of the treaty?
Experts pointed out that technically India has not exited from the treaty as there is no exit clause in the Indus Water Treaty. All of them agreed that New Delhi has no reason to worry about other consequences – other than the threat of the war issued by Pakistan.
“I do not see serious ramifications in terms of legal and any other aspect,” said Chokkakula, who is also the MoJS (Ministry of Jal Shakti) Research Chair, Water Conflicts and Governance, at CPR. “The ramifications depend on what Pakistan does towards getting a redressal. It will also be interesting to see what the third party to the treaty, the World Bank does.”
On April 25, The Hindu reported that the World Bank has not been informed of India’s decision to put the Indus Waters Treaty in “abeyance.” Significantly, a World Bank spokesperson told the newspaper that it was only “signatory to the treaty for a limited set of defined tasks” and “it did not opine” on “treaty-related sovereign decisions taken by its member countries.”
The Indus Waters Treaty has been traditionally thought of in Western policy circles as an example of successful conflict resolution between India and Pakistan, Haines said. “India could in principle stand to lose some of its reputation for being an internationally responsible state,” said Haines. “But I do not know whether India would actually suffer serious reputational harm in practice, given the current state of global geopolitics.”
But Himanshu Thakkar of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People pointed out that this could affect India’s reputation in its own neighbourhood – and give China more reason to use its position to India’s disadvantage. “There are other implications of this besides India and Pakistan,” he said. “China is not an upstream country only with respect to Brahmaputra, but also Sutlej, one of the major tributaries of Indus.”
Moreover, for its own sake, India may need to be extra cautious about its existing as well as proposed water infrastructure in states such as Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.
For example, building dams in a challenging terrain like Jammu and Kashmir has many potential risks, including displacement of people, threat to livelihoods and other environmental aspects, experts pointed out. “It will affect the downstream communities within India as well – the local biodiversity, groundwater and economy,” pointed out Thakkar.
Haines added a warning. “…Any water-control infrastructure has the possibility of being breached,” he explained. “It’s worth remembering that the western Himalayas are highly seismically active, too, so the possibility of earthquakes damaging dams, canals, and thereby causing floods has to be considered.”
