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'If you stop water to Pakistan, you will flood J&K'
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September 24, 2016 11:24 IST
'In the last 55 years India and Pakistan have gone to wars, but nobody spoke about scrapping the Indus Waters Treaty.'
IMAGE: A child stands near the Chenab river with the Baglihar hydroelectric project in Jammu and Kashmir. Photograph: Amit Gupta/Reuters
The hawks in India feel Pakistan needs to be punished post the Uri attacks. Since war is unlikely, eyes are turning towards the over five-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty
.
The treaty, signed in 1960, has been the most successful treaty between India and Pakistan lining out the water sharing arrangement between the two nations.
Dr Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, head of the earth sciences, geology and geophysics departments, University of Kashmir, explained to Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf why it is not possible to scrap the Indus Waters Treaty.
There is a view that India needs to scrap the Indus Waters Treaty and cut off water supply to Pakistan. Is that possible?
People who talk about scrapping this treaty have no technical understanding. I don't think it can be done.
India is an emerging power and it is aspiring to become a permanent member of the United Nation Security Council, so I don't think you can scrap an international bilateral treaty which also involved the World Bank.
In this treaty we have divided six rivers. Three rivers on the eastern front are given to India. On the western side three rivers have been given exclusively to Pakistan.
This is a win-win situation. Both countries are happy and this is why the treaty has been working so well for the last 56 years.
Will the World Bank step in if India abrogates this treaty?
For many reasons it is not possible. Both countries are happy about this treaty. There are so many trans-boundary rivers in the world and countries have to find a mechanism to share water.
All over the world the Indus Waters Treaty is referred as our most successful treaty.
In the last 55 years India and Pakistan have gone to wars in 1965 then 1971 and Kargil too, but nobody spoke in past about scrapping this treaty.
At this moment we are sharing water with Bangladesh and Nepal too.
If we scrap this treaty we will scare these countries as well. So you should check out who is talking about scrapping this treaty. These are military generals or hawks. I don't think officially this is India's position.
Vikas Swarup, the ministry of external affairs spokesperson, hinted at this.
He said treaties depend on goodwill. That is what he said. That's all. And that is a fact.
India and Pakistan are in conflict over Kashmir and you can't open another front. I don't think we can afford to do that now.
There is lot of insecurity in Pakistan too because they feel India is controlling the water despite the fact that this treaty is running very well.
I have not heard anyone in Pakistan talking about scrapping this treaty because I believe they cannot get anything better than this treaty.
There is a belief that scrapping this treaty would teach Pakistan a lesson.
Technically, it is not possible. Even if you put infrastructure to do so, it will take you 10 to 15 years to build (canals to divert the water).
J&K is a mountainous state and you will have to build canals to take the water out of the state.
Can you explain how many rivers flow from India to Pakistan?
There are six rivers. On the eastern front we have the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi for which rights have been given exclusively to India in the treaty.
On the western front we have the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
The rights of these rivers are given to Pakistan except the fact that some water is used from these rivers for J&K for the purpose of hydropower generation, for domestic use and for agriculture. The rest of the water is released to Pakistan.
What can be the implications for Pakistan if we stop the water?
You cannot do that and let us assume we stop the water supply for the sake of argument. Where would the water go?
We do not have infrastructure to store this water. We have not build dams in J&K where we can store the water. And being a mountainous state, unlike Tamil Nadu or Karnataka, you cannot move water to another state. So you cannot stop water technically.
Take another example of water flowing from Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh. We do not leave this water to Pakistan, but use it in Rajasthan.
Will there be flooding in India if we stop the river waters from entering Pakistan?
Yes, the Kashmir valley will flood as will Jammu. You just don't have the storage capacity.
We never developed diversion canals which could have taken this water to some other state. In Kashmir you do not need too much water for irrigation purposes.
If you look at the Indus Waters Treaty, India is entitled to store water, but has failed to develop that infrastructure in J&K.
The People's Democratic Party, which currently rules Jammu and Kashmir, has always stated that J&K suffers losses because of the Indus Waters Treaty.
That is a different aspect. If you see this treaty you will find that the people of J&K can use the water for non-consumption. We can use it for electricity.
We cannot have dam projects. Even the National Conference had argued that this treaty was negotiated during 1960 and that the people of J&K were not taken into confidence and their government should be given compensation. These political parties were objecting because there are several restrictions on the usage of water.
What is the role of the Indus commissioner?
This treaty has set up a very good grievances redressal mechanism. Each country has its commissioner. If there is a dispute these two commissioners meet to sort out the problem.
If they cannot reach an agreement, then they go to the foreign secretary level and failing that, the government. If the problem is not solved there as well, then they go to a neutral expert.
That neutral expert panel is decided by these two countries. In the past neutral experts were from Europe and the US. Now even if they fail, then the issue goes to the International Court of Justice.
Recently, we went to a neutral expert for the Kishanganga project in J&K where the decision went in India's favour. However, on appeal, the case went to the court of arbitration where the decision went in Pakistan's favour.
http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/if-you-stop-water-to-pakistan-you-will-flood-jk/20160924.htm
Indus Waters Treaty: Hold your horses warmongers, a river attack will lead nowhere
Indus Waters Treaty: Hold your horses warmongers, a river attack will lead nowhere
Akshaya Mishra Sep 23, 2016 16:04 IST
#CriticalPoint #External Affairs Ministry #India #Indo-Pak ties #Indus Waters Treaty #Kashmir #Nawaz Sharif #Pakistan #Uri terror attack #Vikas Swarup
90 Comments
Vikas Swarup, spokesperson for the External Affairs Ministry, was suitably cryptic when he mentioned the Indus Waters Treaty on Thursday. “Not everything is spelled out in diplomacy,” he said replying to a question whether India would revisit the treaty to get even with Pakistan. That was cue enough for the war-mongering crowd to visualise a possible Indian post-Uri action on this front.
Swarup clarified later that the government was not contemplating any change in the status quo on the treaty. However, by then the earlier statement had worked up enough excitement to bury the import of the latter.
Representational image. Reuters
No soldiers, no gunfire, no crossing the border, no casualties on our side and no risk – isn’t leaving Pakistan water-starved the best way to teach it a lesson? Thus went the argument. A parched Indus basin, accounting for more than half of the country’s productive area, means a disastrous blow to the country’s economy. Once the economy collapses, the rest will follow. Since we are the upstream country, we can easily stop some rivers in the Indus system from flowing into the neighbouring territory. The Indus Waters Treaty, signed way back in 1960 and not of any significant benefit to India so far, may well be scrapped.
With the government not willing to jump into any rash, poorly thought out move to please them, the desperation among the warmongers is understandable. Subtle diplomacy and silent manoeuvring to choke the enemy is not the style they subscribe to; revenge for them has to be violent, crude and quick. In the immediate absence of any such possibility, they would like India to go for the ‘water treatment’.
There are a few problems with this though. India’s battle is supposed to be with the political and military establishments of Pakistan and the network of terror operatives they back, not against the people of the country in general. A measure like stopping water for agriculture and other uses will hit ordinary people the most and trigger a humanitarian crisis. It might work as a strategy to bring Pakistan on its knees but it would take the moral sheen off India, particularly in the eyes of the international community which the government has managed to wean in its favour after the Uri attack.
Such a measure would amount to directly escalating tension between the countries and precipitate a full-fledged war. The trigger for war, from Pakistan’s perspective, would shift to water, an issue everyone would view with some sympathy unlike Kashmir. In any case, India is not keen on a war right now; it wants to exhaust other option first. If it is then it has a far more potent issue – killing of 18 of its soldiers in a terror attack – to launch an offensive across the border than water.
It’s not easy to break the natural flow of rivers. Any effort towards this will also have consequences for India. The Indian Express quoted Shakil Ahmad Ramshoo, who is the head of Earth Sciences Department in Kashmir University in this context. “Waters cannot be immediately stopped from flowing to Pakistan unless we are ready to inundate our own cities. Srinagar, Jammu and every other city in the state and Punjab would get flooded if we somehow were able to prevent waters from flowing into Pakistan,” he told the paper. India has enough experience of the disaster that playing with the natural course of rivers can invite.
If the article so far makes one sound like a war-fearing, pre-Narendra Modi age animal, even maybe anti-national, here’s an explanation. It is always better to tread on the side of caution rather than be impulsive and foolish. As Sun Tzu, one of the earliest exponents of the art of warfare, would say, “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” To finish, one more from him: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move fall like a thunderbolt.” Put simply, don’t make your plans a subject of ignorant public discourse. Even cryptic mentions are avoidable.
http://www.firstpost.com/india/indu...a-river-attack-will-lead-nowhere-3017506.html
Why Indus water treaty is a bad bargaining chip for India
Why Indus water treaty is a bad bargaining chip for India
Under the treaty, the water of six river - Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum - was to be shared between India and Pakistan. (File Photo)
Indus water treaty of September 19, 1960, between India and Pakistan, is one of the most liberal water-sharing pacts in the world.
Under the treaty that was signed by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan president Ayub Khan, the water of six river - Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum - were to be shared between the two countries. (Click here for the full text of the agreement)
The pact, brokered by World Bank, survived three wars fought between the two countries and constant strain in their bilateral ties.
There is now a clamour to use the pact to bring the neighbour to mend its ways after the Uri attack proved Pakistan is both unable and unwilling to stop its territory being used by terrorists against India.
Read | Mutual trust must for treaties like on Indus water to work, says India
But can India use the Indus water treaty to force Pakistan to pay the price for its sponsorship of terrorism against India?
Indus water-sharing pact in a nutshell
The Indus agreement deals with six rivers - the three eastern rivers of Ravi, Beas, Sutlej and their tributaries and the three western rivers of Indus, Jhelum, Chenab and their tributaries.
Under the treaty, the waters of the eastern rivers have been allocated to India and New Delhi is under obligation to let the waters of the western rivers flow, except for certain consumptive use, with Pakistan getting 80% of the water.
Indus water treaty gives the lower riparian Pakistan more “than four times” of the water available to India. Despite such liberal terms, Pakistan and India have sparred over water.
Recent contention and Pakistan’s erroneous notions
Pakistan had issued a non-paper on the treaty to India in 2010, the year two neighbours fought over the treaty for long. It often makes an erroneous notion - of course by design - that the Indus water treaty permits limited use of water from the western rivers for purposes of “domestic use”, “non-consumptive use,” besides a water storage capacity of 3.6 million acre-feet (MAF).
Even when India uses the water from the western rivers to the maximum extent permissible in the treaty, it is not likely to use more than 3-4% of the annual mean flow of these rivers, which is 135 MAF.
New Delhi says Pakistan’s concern over the issue of pollution is taken care of in the article IV-10 of the treaty, which provides inter alia that each party “agrees to take all reasonable measures before any sewage or industrial waste is allowed to flow in the rivers”.
So, it suffices to say that India has given a most magnanimous water-sharing pact, hailed as a success model, world over. But it is a bad bargaining chip for India, which has got other tools.
Here are the reasons:
1. India is a lower riparian state when it comes to Himalayan rivers like the Brahmaputra
India has always cited how responsible it has been as an upper riparian state when it comes to the water-sharing agreement. Indus water treaty has remained the most demonstrable evidence of it.
Pakistan’s all weather ally China is the upper riparian state in the Brahmaputra, a river which flows into India’s northeast. Making any precedent in which an upper riparian state is overbearing can give hints to Beijing on the water-sharing issue which doesn’t augur well for India.
And in any conflict situation, Beijing siding with its close friend is a forgone conclusion.
2. Kashmir issue will get another dimension
Water was at the centre of the Kashmir issue between the two neighbours as well. After Independence, India used water as a penalising measure but it didn’t yield much result. India did that in April 1948 but restored water flow soon enough.
In 1951, Pakistan mounted an accusation that India water not releasing water to it, subsequently the two sides painstakingly put together the Indus water pact. The process for a water-sharing pact began in 1954 and ended with the Indus water treaty in 1960.
Any tampering with the pact would give Pakistan another propaganda to link it with Kashmir issue, which will further complicate the situation.
3. Pakistan won’t mend ways with punitive measures
Any punitive measure from India such as turning off the Indus tap or tampering with the pact will be fodder for Pakistan to whip up anti-India feelings among people.
Pakistan as a state never learnt from three war defeats from India. Instead of mending ways, it went on an offensive to target India through radicalisation and raising a bunch of non-state actors.
India needs to think beyond such measures to make Pakistan see reason. As a mature country with a robust market and strong institutions, India has many other ways to put across its point.
4. Spillover impacts on other water-sharing pacts in South Asia
Water sharing accords are tough to arrive at. India is a part of three of the seven water-sharing pacts between countries in the region — the Ganges treaty with Bangladesh that took 20 years to hammer out, the Indus water treaty with Pakistan and the Gandak treaty with Nepal.
Unlike Indus, Teesta water sharing agreement of 2011 envisages a 50:50 water-sharing formula for the water of the river that is crucial to both north Bengal and the northwestern districts of Bangladesh. The pact has not been signed yet.
It is better not to create bad precedents on water-sharing pacts when arriving at such pacts is becoming an increasingly onerous task.
Footnote
“What India did with India’s waters was India’s affair,” was the curt reply from India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to a taunt from Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah that he would rather have “deserts in Pakistan than fertile fields watered by the courtesy of Hindus”.
That is how the two countries reacted to a suggestion on joint river management from Cyril Radcliffe, the chairperson of the Punjab boundary commission tasked to divide the Punjab territory and water assets between the two south Asian neighbours.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/analy...p-for-india/story-LLyx2YvAPsSSU4y9uLWxyK.html
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Text size: A A A
September 24, 2016 11:24 IST
'In the last 55 years India and Pakistan have gone to wars, but nobody spoke about scrapping the Indus Waters Treaty.'
IMAGE: A child stands near the Chenab river with the Baglihar hydroelectric project in Jammu and Kashmir. Photograph: Amit Gupta/Reuters
The hawks in India feel Pakistan needs to be punished post the Uri attacks. Since war is unlikely, eyes are turning towards the over five-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty
.
The treaty, signed in 1960, has been the most successful treaty between India and Pakistan lining out the water sharing arrangement between the two nations.
Dr Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, head of the earth sciences, geology and geophysics departments, University of Kashmir, explained to Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf why it is not possible to scrap the Indus Waters Treaty.
There is a view that India needs to scrap the Indus Waters Treaty and cut off water supply to Pakistan. Is that possible?
People who talk about scrapping this treaty have no technical understanding. I don't think it can be done.
India is an emerging power and it is aspiring to become a permanent member of the United Nation Security Council, so I don't think you can scrap an international bilateral treaty which also involved the World Bank.
In this treaty we have divided six rivers. Three rivers on the eastern front are given to India. On the western side three rivers have been given exclusively to Pakistan.
This is a win-win situation. Both countries are happy and this is why the treaty has been working so well for the last 56 years.
Will the World Bank step in if India abrogates this treaty?
For many reasons it is not possible. Both countries are happy about this treaty. There are so many trans-boundary rivers in the world and countries have to find a mechanism to share water.
All over the world the Indus Waters Treaty is referred as our most successful treaty.
In the last 55 years India and Pakistan have gone to wars in 1965 then 1971 and Kargil too, but nobody spoke in past about scrapping this treaty.
At this moment we are sharing water with Bangladesh and Nepal too.
If we scrap this treaty we will scare these countries as well. So you should check out who is talking about scrapping this treaty. These are military generals or hawks. I don't think officially this is India's position.
Vikas Swarup, the ministry of external affairs spokesperson, hinted at this.
He said treaties depend on goodwill. That is what he said. That's all. And that is a fact.
India and Pakistan are in conflict over Kashmir and you can't open another front. I don't think we can afford to do that now.
There is lot of insecurity in Pakistan too because they feel India is controlling the water despite the fact that this treaty is running very well.
I have not heard anyone in Pakistan talking about scrapping this treaty because I believe they cannot get anything better than this treaty.
There is a belief that scrapping this treaty would teach Pakistan a lesson.
Technically, it is not possible. Even if you put infrastructure to do so, it will take you 10 to 15 years to build (canals to divert the water).
J&K is a mountainous state and you will have to build canals to take the water out of the state.
Can you explain how many rivers flow from India to Pakistan?
There are six rivers. On the eastern front we have the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi for which rights have been given exclusively to India in the treaty.
On the western front we have the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
The rights of these rivers are given to Pakistan except the fact that some water is used from these rivers for J&K for the purpose of hydropower generation, for domestic use and for agriculture. The rest of the water is released to Pakistan.
You cannot do that and let us assume we stop the water supply for the sake of argument. Where would the water go?
We do not have infrastructure to store this water. We have not build dams in J&K where we can store the water. And being a mountainous state, unlike Tamil Nadu or Karnataka, you cannot move water to another state. So you cannot stop water technically.
Take another example of water flowing from Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh. We do not leave this water to Pakistan, but use it in Rajasthan.
Will there be flooding in India if we stop the river waters from entering Pakistan?
Yes, the Kashmir valley will flood as will Jammu. You just don't have the storage capacity.
We never developed diversion canals which could have taken this water to some other state. In Kashmir you do not need too much water for irrigation purposes.
If you look at the Indus Waters Treaty, India is entitled to store water, but has failed to develop that infrastructure in J&K.
The People's Democratic Party, which currently rules Jammu and Kashmir, has always stated that J&K suffers losses because of the Indus Waters Treaty.
That is a different aspect. If you see this treaty you will find that the people of J&K can use the water for non-consumption. We can use it for electricity.
We cannot have dam projects. Even the National Conference had argued that this treaty was negotiated during 1960 and that the people of J&K were not taken into confidence and their government should be given compensation. These political parties were objecting because there are several restrictions on the usage of water.
What is the role of the Indus commissioner?
This treaty has set up a very good grievances redressal mechanism. Each country has its commissioner. If there is a dispute these two commissioners meet to sort out the problem.
If they cannot reach an agreement, then they go to the foreign secretary level and failing that, the government. If the problem is not solved there as well, then they go to a neutral expert.
That neutral expert panel is decided by these two countries. In the past neutral experts were from Europe and the US. Now even if they fail, then the issue goes to the International Court of Justice.
Recently, we went to a neutral expert for the Kishanganga project in J&K where the decision went in India's favour. However, on appeal, the case went to the court of arbitration where the decision went in Pakistan's favour.
http://www.rediff.com/news/interview/if-you-stop-water-to-pakistan-you-will-flood-jk/20160924.htm
Indus Waters Treaty: Hold your horses warmongers, a river attack will lead nowhere
Indus Waters Treaty: Hold your horses warmongers, a river attack will lead nowhere
Akshaya Mishra Sep 23, 2016 16:04 IST
#CriticalPoint #External Affairs Ministry #India #Indo-Pak ties #Indus Waters Treaty #Kashmir #Nawaz Sharif #Pakistan #Uri terror attack #Vikas Swarup
90 Comments
Vikas Swarup, spokesperson for the External Affairs Ministry, was suitably cryptic when he mentioned the Indus Waters Treaty on Thursday. “Not everything is spelled out in diplomacy,” he said replying to a question whether India would revisit the treaty to get even with Pakistan. That was cue enough for the war-mongering crowd to visualise a possible Indian post-Uri action on this front.
Swarup clarified later that the government was not contemplating any change in the status quo on the treaty. However, by then the earlier statement had worked up enough excitement to bury the import of the latter.
Representational image. Reuters
No soldiers, no gunfire, no crossing the border, no casualties on our side and no risk – isn’t leaving Pakistan water-starved the best way to teach it a lesson? Thus went the argument. A parched Indus basin, accounting for more than half of the country’s productive area, means a disastrous blow to the country’s economy. Once the economy collapses, the rest will follow. Since we are the upstream country, we can easily stop some rivers in the Indus system from flowing into the neighbouring territory. The Indus Waters Treaty, signed way back in 1960 and not of any significant benefit to India so far, may well be scrapped.
With the government not willing to jump into any rash, poorly thought out move to please them, the desperation among the warmongers is understandable. Subtle diplomacy and silent manoeuvring to choke the enemy is not the style they subscribe to; revenge for them has to be violent, crude and quick. In the immediate absence of any such possibility, they would like India to go for the ‘water treatment’.
There are a few problems with this though. India’s battle is supposed to be with the political and military establishments of Pakistan and the network of terror operatives they back, not against the people of the country in general. A measure like stopping water for agriculture and other uses will hit ordinary people the most and trigger a humanitarian crisis. It might work as a strategy to bring Pakistan on its knees but it would take the moral sheen off India, particularly in the eyes of the international community which the government has managed to wean in its favour after the Uri attack.
Such a measure would amount to directly escalating tension between the countries and precipitate a full-fledged war. The trigger for war, from Pakistan’s perspective, would shift to water, an issue everyone would view with some sympathy unlike Kashmir. In any case, India is not keen on a war right now; it wants to exhaust other option first. If it is then it has a far more potent issue – killing of 18 of its soldiers in a terror attack – to launch an offensive across the border than water.
It’s not easy to break the natural flow of rivers. Any effort towards this will also have consequences for India. The Indian Express quoted Shakil Ahmad Ramshoo, who is the head of Earth Sciences Department in Kashmir University in this context. “Waters cannot be immediately stopped from flowing to Pakistan unless we are ready to inundate our own cities. Srinagar, Jammu and every other city in the state and Punjab would get flooded if we somehow were able to prevent waters from flowing into Pakistan,” he told the paper. India has enough experience of the disaster that playing with the natural course of rivers can invite.
If the article so far makes one sound like a war-fearing, pre-Narendra Modi age animal, even maybe anti-national, here’s an explanation. It is always better to tread on the side of caution rather than be impulsive and foolish. As Sun Tzu, one of the earliest exponents of the art of warfare, would say, “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” To finish, one more from him: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move fall like a thunderbolt.” Put simply, don’t make your plans a subject of ignorant public discourse. Even cryptic mentions are avoidable.
http://www.firstpost.com/india/indu...a-river-attack-will-lead-nowhere-3017506.html
Why Indus water treaty is a bad bargaining chip for India
Why Indus water treaty is a bad bargaining chip for India
- Jayanth Jacob, Hindustan Times
| - Updated: Sep 23, 2016 13:40 IST
Under the treaty, the water of six river - Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum - was to be shared between India and Pakistan. (File Photo)
Indus water treaty of September 19, 1960, between India and Pakistan, is one of the most liberal water-sharing pacts in the world.
Under the treaty that was signed by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan president Ayub Khan, the water of six river - Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum - were to be shared between the two countries. (Click here for the full text of the agreement)
The pact, brokered by World Bank, survived three wars fought between the two countries and constant strain in their bilateral ties.
There is now a clamour to use the pact to bring the neighbour to mend its ways after the Uri attack proved Pakistan is both unable and unwilling to stop its territory being used by terrorists against India.
Read | Mutual trust must for treaties like on Indus water to work, says India
But can India use the Indus water treaty to force Pakistan to pay the price for its sponsorship of terrorism against India?
Indus water-sharing pact in a nutshell
The Indus agreement deals with six rivers - the three eastern rivers of Ravi, Beas, Sutlej and their tributaries and the three western rivers of Indus, Jhelum, Chenab and their tributaries.
Under the treaty, the waters of the eastern rivers have been allocated to India and New Delhi is under obligation to let the waters of the western rivers flow, except for certain consumptive use, with Pakistan getting 80% of the water.
Indus water treaty gives the lower riparian Pakistan more “than four times” of the water available to India. Despite such liberal terms, Pakistan and India have sparred over water.
Recent contention and Pakistan’s erroneous notions
Pakistan had issued a non-paper on the treaty to India in 2010, the year two neighbours fought over the treaty for long. It often makes an erroneous notion - of course by design - that the Indus water treaty permits limited use of water from the western rivers for purposes of “domestic use”, “non-consumptive use,” besides a water storage capacity of 3.6 million acre-feet (MAF).
Even when India uses the water from the western rivers to the maximum extent permissible in the treaty, it is not likely to use more than 3-4% of the annual mean flow of these rivers, which is 135 MAF.
New Delhi says Pakistan’s concern over the issue of pollution is taken care of in the article IV-10 of the treaty, which provides inter alia that each party “agrees to take all reasonable measures before any sewage or industrial waste is allowed to flow in the rivers”.
So, it suffices to say that India has given a most magnanimous water-sharing pact, hailed as a success model, world over. But it is a bad bargaining chip for India, which has got other tools.
Here are the reasons:
1. India is a lower riparian state when it comes to Himalayan rivers like the Brahmaputra
India has always cited how responsible it has been as an upper riparian state when it comes to the water-sharing agreement. Indus water treaty has remained the most demonstrable evidence of it.
Pakistan’s all weather ally China is the upper riparian state in the Brahmaputra, a river which flows into India’s northeast. Making any precedent in which an upper riparian state is overbearing can give hints to Beijing on the water-sharing issue which doesn’t augur well for India.
And in any conflict situation, Beijing siding with its close friend is a forgone conclusion.
2. Kashmir issue will get another dimension
Water was at the centre of the Kashmir issue between the two neighbours as well. After Independence, India used water as a penalising measure but it didn’t yield much result. India did that in April 1948 but restored water flow soon enough.
In 1951, Pakistan mounted an accusation that India water not releasing water to it, subsequently the two sides painstakingly put together the Indus water pact. The process for a water-sharing pact began in 1954 and ended with the Indus water treaty in 1960.
Any tampering with the pact would give Pakistan another propaganda to link it with Kashmir issue, which will further complicate the situation.
3. Pakistan won’t mend ways with punitive measures
Any punitive measure from India such as turning off the Indus tap or tampering with the pact will be fodder for Pakistan to whip up anti-India feelings among people.
Pakistan as a state never learnt from three war defeats from India. Instead of mending ways, it went on an offensive to target India through radicalisation and raising a bunch of non-state actors.
India needs to think beyond such measures to make Pakistan see reason. As a mature country with a robust market and strong institutions, India has many other ways to put across its point.
4. Spillover impacts on other water-sharing pacts in South Asia
Water sharing accords are tough to arrive at. India is a part of three of the seven water-sharing pacts between countries in the region — the Ganges treaty with Bangladesh that took 20 years to hammer out, the Indus water treaty with Pakistan and the Gandak treaty with Nepal.
Unlike Indus, Teesta water sharing agreement of 2011 envisages a 50:50 water-sharing formula for the water of the river that is crucial to both north Bengal and the northwestern districts of Bangladesh. The pact has not been signed yet.
It is better not to create bad precedents on water-sharing pacts when arriving at such pacts is becoming an increasingly onerous task.
Footnote
“What India did with India’s waters was India’s affair,” was the curt reply from India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to a taunt from Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah that he would rather have “deserts in Pakistan than fertile fields watered by the courtesy of Hindus”.
That is how the two countries reacted to a suggestion on joint river management from Cyril Radcliffe, the chairperson of the Punjab boundary commission tasked to divide the Punjab territory and water assets between the two south Asian neighbours.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/analy...p-for-india/story-LLyx2YvAPsSSU4y9uLWxyK.html
