CSS Forums - Political Economy of Indus Water Treaty

The IWT is a 56-year-old accord that governs how India and Pakistan manage the vast Indus River Basin’s rivers and tributaries. The IWT is a very good deal for Pakistan. Although its provisions allocate three rivers each to Pakistan and India, Pakistan is given control of the Indus Basin’s three large western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab — which account for 80 percent of the water in the entire basin. Since water from the Indus Basin flows downstream from India to Pakistan, revoking the IWT would allow India to take control of and — if it created enough storage space through the construction of large dams — stop altogether the flow of those three rivers into Pakistan. To be sure, India would need several years to build the requisite dams, reservoirs, and other infrastructure to generate enough storage to prevent water from flowing downstream to Pakistan. But pulling out of the IWT is the first step in giving India carte blanche to start pursuing that objective.

According to recent figures from the International Monetary Fund, Pakistan is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, with a per capita annual water availability of roughly 35,300 cubic feet — the scarcity threshold. This is all the more alarming given that Pakistan’s water intensity rate — a measure of cubic meters used per unit of GDP — is the world’s highest. (Pakistan’s largest economic sector, agriculture, consumes a whopping 90 percent of the country’s rapidly dwindling water resources.) In other words, Pakistan’s economy is the most water-intensive in the world, and yet it has dangerously low levels of water to work with.

There are other compelling reasons for India not to cancel the IWT. First, revoking the treaty — an international accord mediated by the World Bank and widely regarded as a success story of transboundary water management — would generate intense international opposition.

Second, if India decided to maximize pressure on Pakistan by cutting off or reducing river flows to its downstream neighbor, this would bottle up large volumes of water in northern India, a dangerous move that according to water experts could cause significant flooding in major cities in Kashmir and in Punjab state (for geographical reasons, India would not have the option of diverting water elsewhere). Given this risk, some analysts have proposed that New Delhi instead do something less drastic, and perfectly legal, to pressure Islamabad: build dams on the western rivers of the Indus Basin. The IWT permits this, even though these water bodies are allocated to Pakistan, so long as storage is kept to a minimum to allow water to keep flowing downstream. In fact, according to Indian media reports, this is an action Modi’s government is now actively considering taking.

Third, if India ditches the IWT to punish its downstream neighbor, then it could set a dangerous precedent and give some ideas to Pakistan’s ally, China. Beijing has never signed on to any trans boundary water management accord, and New Delhi constantly worries about its upstream rival building dozens of dams that cut off river flows into India. The Chinese, perhaps using as a pretext recent Indian defensive upgrades in the state of Arunachal Pradesh — which borders China and is claimed by Beijing — could well decide to take a page out of India’s book and slow the flow of the mighty Brahmaputra River. It’s a move that could have disastrous consequences for the impoverished yet agriculturally productive northeastern Indian state of Assam. The Brahmaputra flows southwest across large areas of Assam. Additionally, Beijing could retaliate by cutting off the flow of the Indus — which originates in Tibet — down to India, depriving New Delhi of the ability to limit the river’s flows to Pakistan.

Fourth, India’s exit from the IWT could provoke Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the vicious Pakistani terrorist group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks. LeT has long used India’s alleged water theft as a chief talking point in its anti-India propaganda.

To be sure, India has good reason to be unhappy about the IWT. The treaty allocates to India only 20 percent of the entire Indus River Basin’s water flows, and New Delhi knows it’s gotten the short end of the stick. Additionally, the IWT’s provisions limit India’s ability to build hydro-projects in Kashmir. These are significant matters in a nation with its own severe water stress.

All this is to say that India has a strong case for requesting a renegotiation of the treaty. That would be a more prudent strategy than unilaterally revoking it.

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