Indus Water Treaty: India needs a dynamic approach that centres Kashmir, balances concerns

While the Indus Waters Treaty has survived three India-Pakistan wars, the pattern of interaction between the two countries on sharing the waters of the Indus Basin has been conflictual rather than cooperative.

Post-Operation Sindoor, it is pertinent how India recalibrates the link between water and terrorism.

Some claim India has weaponised the Indus Waters Treaty by putting it in “abeyance”, an action that can have regional ramifications. There are also claims that India will now expedite projects on both the western and eastern rivers of the Indus system and that putting the treaty in abeyance can be seen as a political signal rather than legally enforceable action.

Rivers, however, can be actors with agency and not mere pawns in a bargaining game. Climate change, water scarcity, deteriorating quality of the springs that feed the basin and melting glaciers are significantly overlooked in the Indus Waters Treaty.

The treaty perhaps needs to take these factors into account for its future survival. However, its survival itself may now be in doubt.

Pakistan depends on the Indus system for almost 80% of its total irrigation water requirement. No legal groundwater framework binds India and Pakistan and this has impacted nutrition security in both Indian and Pakistani Punjab.

Up to now, India undertook projects permitted by...

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