The Indus Waters Treaty, once described as a treaty that withstood three wars between India and Pakistan, is receiving much flak after being framed as ‘Nehru’s betrayal of Independent India’. While the 1960 treaty was neither a celebrated success nor a complete failure, it was nevertheless an example of thin mediation where the Indus Basin was partitioned. It was an institutional mechanism set up to stabilise the competing water claims of India and Pakistan.
Beyond simple allocations, the treaty contained components of a broader transboundary water governance framework. While much ink has been spilt on the negotiated outcomes of the treaty, less attention has been given to Articles 4, 6, 7 and 8, which offer insights into the treaty from a governance perspective.
For instance, Articles 4 and 6 of the Indus Waters Treaty offer possibilities of an iterative engagement to address interconnected issues related to river erosion, promoting river protection, and treating sewage and industrial water at the source point. Article 7 alludes to integrated development of the river for optimal use through overseeing drainage works and data sharing. And Article 8 suggests a gradual adaptive response, opening the way for a graded dispute resolution mechanism.
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Indus Waters Treaty: From stability to stalemate
However, the governance potential of the Eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej) was never realised. Instead there was an overwhelming focus on the Western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab). The treaty soon became hostage to the emerging political tensions between India and Pakistan.
Instead of evolving into a flexible framework of cooperation, a post-facto assessment of the Indus Waters Treaty reveals that it hardened into a rigid legal framework, failing to address emerging water challenges. This came at the cost of ecological degradation of the Eastern rivers, and domestic water mismanagement in both countries, particularly concerning water quality and groundwater over-extraction.
Simultaneously, hydroelectric dams emerged as legal flashpoints. Projects like Wullar Barrage, Baglihar, and Kishenganga were mired in technical objections raised by Pakistan. Such objections were perceived as a tactical manoeuvre to delay the construction of these projects by India. This locked the two countries into a frustrating stalemate of non-action.
Water disputes and domestic mismanagement
Given this history, it is reasonable to consider whether conversations about Indus waters should also become moments for critical reflection and discussion.
After all, political opportunism from both India and Pakistan will not address the multiple water security challenges faced by both countries. These include groundwater depletion across the aquifers in Pakistan’s Punjab and Indian Punjab, glacial melt disrupting spring and autumn flows, exacerbating water security for communities reliant on glacial melt water for agriculture or industrial pollution contaminating the Eastern tributaries, among others. These will affect the Indian states and Pakistan’s northern regions and provinces, regardless of the presence or absence of a bilateral treaty between the two countries.
Moreover, urban water stress in cities and salinisation of agricultural land in coastal provinces render water politics a double-edged sword—prompting one to scrutinise domestic water management issues rather than solely attributing water scarcity/security challenges to each other.
This raises some key questions: What is the purpose of water treaties? Are treaties a means for facilitating effective transboundary governance, or are they instruments for tactical manipulation to further domestic, bilateral and regional interests?
The latter approach carries significant diplomatic and ecological costs.
When treaties become tools of manipulation, they can damage diplomatic relations, as water has been observed to be a trigger, a weapon, or a casualty of conflicts. Water disputes can also evoke nationalistic feelings, negatively affecting a country’s public diplomacy outreach efforts.
The case of the Indus Waters Treaty demonstrates that it was hostage to bilateral relations between India and Pakistan. A treaty initially associated with good faith and strategic patience has now been reframed as Nehru’s betrayal.
Against this backdrop of the Indus Waters Treaty’s dysfunction, the overemphasis on the 80:20 water division by which 80 percent of the water of three rivers – the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – are allocated to Pakistan, becomes problematic and misplaced. Three other rivers – the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – were allocated to India.
Roles beyond water
While critics focus on the seemingly generous allocation to Pakistan, one cannot ignore the crucial outcome that the treaty served — it ultimately succeeded in separating the Kashmir issue from water disputes. This is because the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab all flow through the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
In its absence, the trajectory of India-Pakistan relations would have been very different. This separation has been particularly significant given how Kashmir and water have been ostensibly employed in Pakistan’s domestic political discourse.
Furthermore, the “betrayal” narrative oversimplifies the complex international context of treaty formation. External players, notably the World Bank, as well as Washington and London, played a significant role in shaping the treaty. The final outcome was indeed influenced by Nehru’s documented tendency to nurture internationalist ambitions.
The interpenetration of international and domestic concerns underscores the role of Nehru’s unilateral decision-making. In fact, the treaty was also a background factor in normalising relations between the two countries despite existing tensions between them.
Indus Waters Treaty: The Pakistani perspective
The international dimension gets a further layer when considering Pakistani elite perspectives on the treaty. The disaffection emerging from the elite circles of Pakistan, including linkages to the Chenab Formula, which advocated using Chenab River as the border. This would have given Pakistan access to the catchment areas of Chenab, which could be used to build dams upstream. General Pervez Musharraf testify to the Kashmir-water linkage.
The Indus Basin has also influenced the scholarship on the idea of Pakistan itself, with author, politician and lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan questioning the notion that the Indus waters inherently “belonged” to India.
Therefore, while Nehru’s alleged betrayal may strike a chord with a certain section of the Indian audience, it does not resonate with Pakistani sensibilities that view the Indus Waters Treaty’s terms as insufficient rather than overtly generous. Thus, beyond the betrayal narrative, one needs to recognise that the discourse on Indus has shifted to strategic escalation.
The recent actions of the Narendra Modi government have permanently separated India-Pakistan relations from the Kashmir issue, and water is now linked to terrorism. This strategic escalation implies that Indus flows have become a tool of coercive diplomacy. Such an escalatory approach rests on fundamentally different assumptions from strategic idealism, its predecessor.
Rather than believing that cooperation breeds stability, it assumes that strength must be demonstrated to command compliance.
In the coming years, this strategic pathway will manifest in several ways: the acceleration of dam construction initiatives despite awareness of potential disputes, the proliferation of narratives portraying India as a hegemonic upper riparian, and the explicit framing of water issues in strategic rather than technical terms. This tactical framing will obscure perspectives that consider water in holistic and relational dimensions, potentially making future cooperation even more difficult to achieve.
Medha Bisht is Associate Professor (Senior Grade), Department of International Relations, South Asian University, New Delhi. Originally published underCreative Commons by360info
