India's notification to Pakistan for a “review” and “modification” of the Indus Waters Treaty has been in the making for a few years. In 2016, days after the Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked the Uri brigade headquarters at the Line of Control, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “blood and water cannot flow together”.
In 2022, the World Bank provided an opening to Delhi by operationalising two dispute resolution mechanisms of the treaty at the same time -- the neutral expert and the court of arbitration -- to examine Pakistan's objections to the 330-MW hydropower project on the Kishenganga, a tributary of the Jhelum, and the 850-MW Ratle project on the Chenab.
An aggrieved Delhi's objection that the two processes may yield two conflicting results was not accepted. At the time, Delhi sent a notice to Pakistan for “modification” of the dispute resolution clauses. India's second notice, sent on August 30 this year, suggests, through the use of the word “review”, that Delhi now wants to junk the 64-year-old World Bank-brokered treaty.
The treaty gave the three western-flowing rivers in the Indus basin – Indus, which originates in Tibet, Jhelum and Chenab – to Pakistan, and the “eastern” rivers – Sutlej, Ravi and Beas – to India.
But the increase in population, water intensive agricultural practices on both sides, and changing weather patterns have put enormous pressure on water-sharing. Increasingly, Delhi, the upper riparian, has viewed the arrangement as a millstone around its neck as Pakistan has sought to obstruct every project on the western rivers, even though “run of the river” hydropower projects are allowed on the Indian side with some caveats.
The problem is on both sides: Pakistan sees the IWT as a weapon in aid of its territorial claims on Kashmir. In India, the Modi government has tended to play on public sentiment by seeming to threaten to “stop the water” to Pakistan to avenge cross-border terrorism. It may be just coincidence that the notice to Pakistan went just as elections in Jammu & Kashmir and Haryana were announced.
Delhi has called off all meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission, the treaty implementing body, until Pakistan sits down for talks. The Treaty does not allow a termination by either party unilaterally. It can be ended only when both sides have negotiated another to replace it.
But at this time, when the two sides have not had any official engagement for five years, do Delhi and Islamabad have the political or diplomatic will to find a resolution to any of their problems?
Given this bilateral blackhole, the danger is that river-sharing will go from being the most successful example of India-Pakistan cooperation to being another source of conflict between the two sides. The subtext may well be that India no longer cares, and is not interested in repairing ties with Pakistan. But Delhi must tread carefully.
At a time that Modi has pitched himself as peacemaker in Ukraine, India can hardly be seen as rocking the boat on a vital agreement for co-existence with Pakistan.