Needless controversy: Did India really try to violate Indus Waters Treaty?

IWT is one of the world's most successful international water accords that has withstood the test of time and even three full-fledged wars between India and Pakistan

Water resources minister Nitin Gadkari’s statement on stopping India’s share of water from going to Pakistan has got blown out of proportion to create a pointless controversy over the Indus Water Treaty (IWT). Though the minister’s remarks are unambiguous, it has been clarified through the subsequent official statements that the reference was to the unutilised water of the rivers Satluj, Beas and Ravi that belongs to India and is flowing to Pakistan. This water is now proposed to be gainfully used within the country. Any misinterpretation to project it as a threat of punitive action against Pakistan in the wake of the recent dastardly terror attack on the Indian armed forces’ convoy in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir is wholly uncalled for. In fact, an indication of this move had come soon after the Uri attack in 2016 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “Blood and water cannot flow together”.

What needs to be realised is that the IWT, brokered by the World Bank and signed in 1960, is one of the world’s most successful international water accords that has withstood the test of time and even three full-fledged wars between the two neighbours. India, behaving as a responsible upper riparian, has seldom threatened to abrogate the treaty or curtail Pakistan’s share of the water. This is despite the fact that the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly passed unanimous resolutions twice, in 2003 and 2016, seeking revocation or revision of the IWT to safeguard the state’s interests.

Indeed, the noteworthy point is that the IWT is principally flawed as it divides the rivers between the two countries rather than apportioning their water to them. The three east-flowing rivers — Beas, Ravi and Satluj — having a mean water flow of 33 million acre-feet (MAF) have been allotted to India while the remaining three west-flowing rivers — Indus, Chenab and Jhelum — with a much larger water flow of 80 MAF have been given to Pakistan. India has, no doubt, been allowed a limited use of the western rivers, but this is mostly for non-consumptive purposes. To make it worse, such use has been subjected to strict regulations, thus, providing Pakistan enough leverage to impede implementation of water projects by raising objections and calling for adjudication. It has made full use of it to inordinately delay projects such as Tulbul, Baglihar, Ratle, Kishanganga and others, most of which involved only the non-consumptive use of the waters of western rivers.

Unfortunately, India has also failed to create adequate infrastructure to fully tap the water of the rivers over which it has been granted unrestricted control. Consequently, nearly 5 per cent of India’s water, including about 2 MAF of water from the Ravi, continues to drift across the border. It is only now that India has launched three projects — the Shahpurkandi dam on the Ravi, the second Ravi-Beas link in Punjab, and the Ujh dam on the river Ujh in Jammu and Kashmir — to harness this water. Apart from generating power and additional irrigation potential, these projects will augment water availability in several states, including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi. Considering the potential gains from this move, the work on these projects needs to be speeded up. Equally important is to amicably resolve some of the lingering inter-state water-sharing disputes that are hindering progress on this front.