The drones and missiles have been stilled after India and Pakistan’s brief but intense military battle this month. But the two neighbors have turned up the heat on another longstanding conflict, over the sharing of water.
A day after terrorists killed 26 people on the Indian side of Kashmir in April, igniting tensions that would lead to four days of escalating conflict, the Indian government said it would suspend a vital pact governing rivers that flow from India into Pakistan.
That agreement, the Indus Waters Treaty, covers a river system that tens of millions of people rely on for their livelihoods and survival. India, which linked the April attack to Pakistan, said it would step away from its obligations under the pact until its nemesis “credibly and irrevocably” renounced support for cross-border terrorism. Pakistan, which denied any role in the terrorist attack, called India’s move an “act of war.”
India’s targeting of water, however, is not just about combating terrorism, analysts say. The Indian government has been frustrated by the 65-year-old treaty, believing it has favored Pakistan from the start, and analysts say that India is hoping to force Pakistan to renegotiate it. That could allow India to better use its allotted waters to meet the needs of its immense population and adapt to climate change.
India’s decision to put the agreement “in abeyance” — and the vague conditions it has imposed on Pakistan to reverse that — has injected a note of uncertainty into the future of a treaty that has survived multiple wars and conflicts.
A full breakdown would have serious consequences for both countries, especially Pakistan, an arid land with few other sources of water.
Rising temperatures and increased demand make South Asia’s water systems among the world’s most stressed. The hostile neighbors also share a need to address dangers like flash floods and glacial lake bursts unleashed by global warming. And if changes in river flows endanger Pakistani lives or employment, India could face international opprobrium.
‘A Spirit of Good Will’
The treaty specifies how the waters of the Indus River basin — around which one of the world’s oldest civilizations, the Indus Valley civilization, flourished — will be used by the two countries.
The agreement, which became necessary after India and Pakistan became independent nations in 1947, took nine years to negotiate and was signed in 1960 in what its preamble called a “spirit of good will,” and with the World Bank as a mediator.
Pakistan has unrestricted use of three western rivers, and India has the same claim to three eastern rivers. India also has limited rights to the western rivers within its territory, including for irrigation, and the ability to build dams for power generation.
The treaty’s allotment of 80 percent of the waters in the Indus system to Pakistan was a “remarkable act of generosity, driven by the hope of promoting subcontinental peace,” said Brahma Chellaney, a strategic analyst who has written about water and conflict.
Scientists and officials say the treaty has held up because it is a sound legal document that provides for a permanent commission with representatives from each country who are expected to be in regular contact, as well as mechanisms for settling conflicts using neutral experts and arbitration.
But it has been a trying process over the decades between deeply distrustful neighbors.
In 1992, when five days of heavy monsoon rains caused deadly flooding, Pakistani officials accused India of unannounced dam releases, while India maintained that the actions were necessary owing to the extreme rainfall and were in compliance with protocol.
India currently has six dams on the western rivers, with plans to build more. Pakistan has raised objections to several of the dam designs and plans, including the Kishenganga hydroelectric project.
Over the past decade, the treaty has encountered increasing geopolitical friction. After attacks on Indian troops in 2016 and 2019 in Indian-administered Kashmir, India announced plans to curtail water flows to Pakistan but did not follow through.
The treaty can be altered by mutual consent. As India has formally sought to revise the treaty, Pakistan has rejected these efforts, according to Indian government records and experts.
“The obstructionist approach” continues to prevent the “utilization of the legitimate rights by India,” Parvathaneni Harish, India’s permanent representative to the United Nations, said at a forum last week on water and armed conflict.
At the same meeting, Pakistan’s deputy permanent representative, Usman Jadoon, said that India was using river waters as a political weapon, and that Islamabad would not allow New Delhi to turn water into a tool of coercion.
Pakistan’s Woes
India has little ability to substantially reduce the flow of water into Pakistan, and building the infrastructure to do so would take years, experts say.
But Pakistan is unnerved by India’s suspension of its participation in the treaty in part because India has stopped providing hydrological data, according to Indian government officials and experts.
Because it is downstream, Pakistan relies heavily on India to share this data, which is crucial for Pakistani agriculture, a sector that accounts for nearly a quarter of the country’s economy and employs 37 percent of the labor force.
Information from India about glacier melt, the speed of floodwaters and precipitation levels, as well as timing decisions on opening sluice gates, is vital for Pakistan to determine its irrigation needs and flood management plans.
Even before the current suspension, India in recent years was providing no more than 40 percent of the required river flow data, said Shiraz Memon, a former Pakistani commissioner of the Indus Waters Treaty.
Fazalullah Qureshi, a former senior Pakistani official, linked this data gap to Pakistan’s inability to anticipate devastating floods in 2022, which killed over 1,700 people and affected 33 million of the country’s 245 million people.
During the coming monsoon season, Pakistani water managers will need to operate in a more uncertain environment, relying less on formal notifications and more on real-time observations and rapid-response systems, said Hassaan F. Khan, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Tufts University.
Dr. Khan said that underscored the “urgent need for Pakistan to invest in more nimble, adaptive water governance.”
Mr. Qureshi, the former official, said there was no immediate threat to the country’s water supply, but a prolonged suspension of treaty mechanisms could severely affect agriculture and the broader economy.
India’s Wants
India’s move to step away from the treaty has given Prime Minister Narendra Modi a fresh chance to show his Hindu nationalist base that the government is putting the squeeze on Pakistan.
“All we’ve said is that we’ve kept it in abeyance,” Mr. Modi told a cheering crowd recently. “And they’ve started sweating.”
Political rhetoric aside, India’s water needs are greater than ever. It has 1.4 billion people, or about 18 percent of the world’s population, and only 4 percent of its water resources, according to the World Bank. According to NASA data, the Indus basin ranks as the world’s second most overstressed aquifer, following only the Arabian Aquifer System.
India is on track to surpass Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Although the Indus waters are primarily used in the country’s north, they are important for electrification, job creation and development of the restive region of Kashmir. They also irrigate the wheat fields of a region known as India’s bread basket.
India has not yet made full use of the waters of the eastern rivers, according to government documents. It has not built enough reservoirs and canals to divert water flows there, analysts said. Dams and the gated structures known as barrages have been built on them, but other proposed projects are yet to be cleared. During the monsoons, the extra water ends up flowing into Pakistan, becoming an additional source for its agricultural needs.
There is a “strong need” to revisit the entire treaty, given the significant warming over the region and changing precipitation patterns, said Vimal Mishra, a professor of civil engineering at IIT Gandhinagar.
Dr. Mishra called for a “comprehensive modernization backed by better scientific understanding that optimizes in terms of risk reduction, hydropower generation and water available for irrigation,” reflecting the changing needs of people over six decades.
Anupreeta Das covers India and South Asia for The Times. She is based in New Delhi.
Hari Kumar covers India, based out of New Delhi. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
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