The opening article titled ‘Revising the Indus Waters Treaty’ of a compilation of articles on the IWT issued by NATSRAT by Pankaj Saran and PK Saxena, discloses a likely compelling reason for India’s call for revising the Indus Waters Treaty.
It recalls the angry outburst of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September 2016 following a terrorist attack against an Indian Army base in Uri in Kashmir that “blood and water can not flow together”. It describes the remark as “one of the boldest statements on the Indus Waters Treaty by an Indian prime minister”, adding that “the message to Pakistan was that it cannot run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. It cannot expect business as usual from India while waging a proxy war of terror and more against India”.
The article describes India’s January 2023 call for amendments to the treaty as “a major and long overdue move which should have been made many years ago”. It discloses that the “government has set up a task force under the directions of the Prime Minster’s Office to ensure exercise of India’s rights under the treaty. The second meeting of the task force took place on May 26, 2023 in Srinagar, and was chaired by India’s Deputy National Security Advisor Vikram Misri.
The task force is said to have ‘fast-tracked’ nine projects on the Chenab, including Ratle (850MW), Swalkot (1850MW), Kirthai-11 (930MW), Kiru (624MW), Kwai (287MW), Sachkhas (287MW), Dugar (500MW), Kiro, and Kwar. The total capacity of these projects adds up to 6500MW. Notably, all the ‘fast-tracked’ projects are run-of-the-river, allowed by the IWT. It is also worth mentioning that 58 per cent of the already completed Indian projects are also on the Chenab River in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian media had recently reported their government’s plan to turn the Chenab Valley into a Valley of Dams, while water resource experts underlined the adverse effects of cascades of hydroelectric projects on a single river.
The Indian government’s bid to renegotiate the Indus Waters Treaty cannot be seen in isolation from the dismal state of India-Pakistan relations since 2016. High-level contacts between the two neighbours have been frozen; trade, travel, and all kinds of socio-cultural interaction have sharply declined; and diplomatic missions have skeletal staff strength. Indian authorities discourage contact and cooperation between the civil society representatives of the two countries.
Following several deadly attacks by Kashmiris against Indian military bases in Indian-administered Kashmir on September 29, 2016, New Delhi announced its decision to boycott the Saarc summit to be hosted by Pakistan in November. It actively lobbied other Saarc countries to oppose the convening of the Summit in Islamabad. India’s hostility has paralysed the major inter-governmental organisation devoted to regional cooperation in all fields, including climate change and water security.
On August 5, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government spearheaded a decision by the Indian parliament to abolish Articles 370 and 35 A of the Indian constitution which recognise the special status of the Jammu and Kashmir state. Pakistan denounced the Indian move; the Pakistani parliament condemned the unilateral change in the status of a disputed territory; and the foreign minister complained to the UN Security Council against the unilateral change of the status of J&K in violation of Security Council resolutions.
The revocation of the special status of J&K led to the withdrawal of the high commissioners and suspension of all transport links between India and Pakistan and the two halves of J&K. During the past five and a half years, Prime Minister Modi and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar have carried out a ferocious campaign of vilification against Pakistan, accusing it of being an “epicentre of terrorism”. They have spurned Islamabad’s repeated calls for peaceful and cooperative relations and amicable resolution of outstanding disputes, and, instead, sought Islamabad’s isolation at the global level.
India’s call for re-negotiating the IWT is a corollary of its unremitting hostility against Pakistan; it also manifests its growing self-confidence buttressed by its impressive economic growth and burgeoning security-centered alliance with the US which has enlisted Indian support for its abortive global effort to counter China’s inexorable rise. Moreover, the amendment of the dispute settlement mechanism prescribed by the IWT sought by India is aimed at reinforcing India’s hegemony over the transboundary rivers of South Asia.
Pakistan’s rejection of India’s call for renegotiating the IWT, and its proposal that India’s concerns should be taken up by the Permanent Indus Commission has led to a stalemate. The suspension of the annual sessions of the Indus Commission entails the grave risk of India going ahead with its dam-building spree on the western rivers, starting with the ‘fast-tracked’ projects on the (already heavily damned) Chenab River, thereby grievously weakening the IWT. It is, therefore, necessary on the part of Pakistan to exert all possible efforts to salvage the only functioning and internationally recognised means of avoiding and resolving disputes over its access to transboundary water resources.
New Delhi’s call for formal negotiations to rectify its complaints against the process for resolving technical issues on its hydropower projects on the three rivers flowing into Pakistan from India and J&K. is unwarranted. The history of India-Pakistan relations in general and the agonising process of negotiations leading to the IWT, in particular, highlight the enormous hazards in formal negotiations on even the most innocuous issues.
The appropriate means for addressing the issues raised by Indian experts and Pakistan’s complaints is a comprehensive dialogue on integrated water resource management focusing on the assets of the shared Indus River Basin. Unfortunately, the governments of India and Pakistan have never carried out an open-ended, detailed dialogue on the range of water-related issues. The single topic of the sessions of the Indus Commission since 1974 has been the Indian hydropower projects on the western rivers. Article 7 — on future cooperation — has never been discussed.
The holding of an all-encompassing conversation could be a major step towards the goal, defined by the opening sentence of the IWT, of the fulfilment of “the most complete and satisfactory utilization of the waters of the Indus system of rivers”. It would also align with the treaty’s affirmation of “a spirit of goodwill and friendship” driving the determination of the rights and obligations of the two countries.
Four Track-2 dialogues between Indian and Pakistani experts were held. Convened by friendly governments or institutions, the dialogues took up all the important issues that were not addressed by the protracted IWT negotiations because they were not regarded as important or even recognised as relevant or urgent. The dialogues were prompted by alarming warnings about the impacts of climate change on freshwater resources, including those in South Asia, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fourth Assessment Report (AR 4) issued in 2007.
The Track-2 discussions were neither mandated to, nor achieved, formal agreements on water issues but they did evolve broad understandings of the cooperative measures needed to cope with the effects of climate change on water and their far-reaching socio-economic consequences. A major goal was to build up a robust knowledge base to guide prudent decision-making by governments and other stakeholders of India and Pakistan.
The understandings emerging from the Track-2 dialogues included calls for joint studies by Indian and Pakistani experts on the impacts of climate change on the glaciers of the Himalaya-Karakoram-Hindu Kush (HKH); investigation of diminishing water availability upstream in the Indus Basin; pollution abatement in the catchment areas of the western rivers; joint monitoring of the HKH glaciers; promoting the sustainability of the shared Indus Aquifer; regular and timely exchange of hydrological data concerning dry season flows as well as heavy precipitation events for use in flood control; cooperation in promoting modern micro irrigation methods and technologies for water conservation and optimum use of water; joint studies aimed at enhanced knowledge on monsoon variability trends, and the imperative of environmentally and ecologically necessary flows in the eastern rivers.
The proposed India-Pakistan water dialogue should revisit and fine-tune the relevant understandings from previous Track-2 dialogues on the climate change-water nexus and, hopefully, agree on recommendations for consideration by the two governments.
Islamabad should also propose a bilateral exchange of views on energising the implementation of the IWT by streamlining and updating the communication between the Indus commissioners.
Pakistan should proactively call for a comprehensive bilateral dialogue on promoting the integrated management of the water resources of the shared Indus Basin, in collaboration with relevant regional and international organisations and institutions based on mutual agreement. These measures would, hopefully, help in achieving the shared resolve of the two major riparians of the Indus Basin to preserve the Indus Waters Treaty.
Concluded
The writer is a retired ambassador and former UN assistant secretary-general.
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