The brewing water war: analysing India’s growing combativeness

Indus Waters Treaty comes under serious threat

SITUATIONER

April 27, 2025

SINCE December 2016, at least three papers published by reputed international organisations have forecast the water-related conflict recently escalated by the Narendra Modi-led government against Pakistan, following the killing of 26 tourists in Occupied Kashmir. It would be instructive for Pakistani leaders, government officials, and journalists to study these papers closely; without a deep understanding of the Indian mindset, correct policy decisions simply cannot be made.

(We have studied the three articles solely to understand the Indian government’s stance. We do not, in any way, endorse New Delhi’s narrative regarding this matter. It is evident even to a layperson that any unilateral repudiation of an international treaty brokered by a world body cannot constitute correct policy. Likewise, this piece does not subscribe to the Indian claim that Pakistan has been orchestrating terrorist attacks in Occupied Kashmir.)

The first article in question dates back to 22 December 2016 and was published by the BBC under the prescient headline: "Are India and Pakistan Set for Water Wars?" Written by the BBC World Service’s Environment Correspondent, Navin Singh Khadka, its standfirst read: “India wants to build dams to take more water before it reaches Pakistan.”

The opening paragraph sets the tone for India’s subsequent actions following the deadly 2016 Uri attack, in which 19 Indian soldiers were killed — an incident New Delhi blamed on Islamabad. Khadka’s article began: “India is stepping up efforts to maximise its water use from the western rivers of the Indus Basin, senior officials have told the BBC. The move would involve building huge storage facilities and canals.”

The report explained that New Delhi intended to construct storage facilities on the three rivers classified as ‘western rivers’ under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) — namely the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab. As is well known, the 1960 treaty allocates around 80 per cent of the water from these rivers to Pakistan and 20 per cent to India, while India has exclusive rights over the Beas, Ravi, and Sutlej rivers.

Indian officials, quoted in the report, justified the proposed projects by citing underutilisation of their share of water: the treaty reportedly allows irrigation of 1.4 million acres using the western rivers, but only 800,000 acres are currently irrigated. India also generates about 3,000 MW of hydroelectricity from these rivers, although the basin has an estimated potential of nearly 19,000 MW, according to the Indian officials.

Pakistan sees Indian plans with suspicion

However, owing to the deep distrust between the two nations, Pakistan has viewed such claims with suspicion, consistently objecting to Indian development projects on the Indus Basin rivers. According to the second article in focus — published by the Lowy Institute’s online journal, The Interpreter, on 3 October 2024 — this persistent opposition has increasingly left New Delhi frustrated.

Titled “Parting the Waters: India v Pakistan," the article, authored by Ambika Vishwanath and Ruth Gamble, revealed that India formally requested Pakistan to modify the IWT on 30 August 2024 — the fourth such request since January 2023. The article described these requests as the most significant challenge to the treaty since its inception, with India citing demographic changes, the need for clean hydropower, and security concerns over Occupied Kashmir as its primary reasons. The catalysts, it said, were Pakistan’s complaints about Indian hydropower projects and the inefficiency of the treaty’s dispute resolution mechanism.

The third article under review was written by Brahma Chellaney, a noted academic and author of Water: Asia’s New Battleground, published by Georgetown University Press. His piece, titled "South Asia’s Looming Water War," appeared on Project Syndicate’s website on 16 February 2023.

Chellaney argued that repeated Pakistani objections to Indian hydropower projects have forced India to reconsider what he described as its earlier “largesse” under the treaty. He alleged that Pakistan may have violated the IWT by frequently seeking international intervention to halt Indian projects on technical grounds, thereby abusing the treaty’s dispute resolution provisions.

Concluding his article, Chellaney wrote: “For any treaty to survive, the advantages it confers on all parties must outweigh the duties and responsibilities it imposes. The IWT is nowhere near meeting that standard for India, which has so far accrued no tangible benefits from it.” In his view, Pakistan must embrace compromise and cooperation to preserve a treaty that, in his assessment, favours Pakistan.

Collectively, these three articles demonstrate that tensions over water have been building since at least 2016, when Indian officials first spoke to the BBC about plans to construct reservoirs on the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab rivers.

Can India stop river water from entering Pakistan

While not explicitly mentioned in the three papers discussed, it is worth noting that one possible reason for India’s aggressive stance over the Indus Basin rivers could be the severe pollution of its other rivers, including the Yamuna. These rivers are so contaminated that they can no longer be used for drinking and washing purposes. That may be why New Delhi seeks to usurp as much water from the Indus Basin rivers as possible.

Interestingly, Navin Singh Khadka recently authored another article for the BBC titled “Can India really stop river water from flowing into Pakistan?” In it, he suggests that while India has initiated several projects since 2016, it has not yet developed the infrastructure required to store or divert large volumes of water from the rivers in question. During the high-flow period (May to September), significant diversion remains unlikely; however, during low-flow periods, India’s tampering with river flow could pose a serious threat to Pakistan, when water scarcity is already acute.

What, then, is the way forward? Surely, the two nuclear-armed neighbours cannot remain locked in an intractable dispute indefinitely. Their armed forces cannot stand eyeball-to-eyeball for months on end. Either an international organisation such as the World Bank — the guarantor of the IWT — would have to intervene, or the two countries would have to sit across the negotiating table to thrash out an acceptable solution to the problem. The unilateral abrogation of an international treaty by either side can never be deemed acceptable.