{"id":6860,"date":"2026-05-30T18:36:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T12:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/?p=6860"},"modified":"2026-05-30T18:39:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T12:54:05","slug":"response-to-the-article-titled-india-and-pakistan-still-cant-agree-to-restore-the-indus-waters-treaty-but-re-engagement-could-help-bring-lasting-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/?p=6860","title":{"rendered":"Response to the article titled “India and Pakistan still can’t agree to restore the Indus Waters Treaty \u2013 but re-engagement could help bring lasting peace”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Pradeep Kumar Saxena<\/span><\/b><\/span>
\nThis article is taken from Chatham House, which claims to be an independent policy institution and a trusted forum for debate and dialogue, and aims to help governments and societies build a safe, sustainable, prosperous and just world. This article presents a view that is heavily biased towards preserving the status quo of the treaty that has been operating at India\u2019s expense for over six decades.<\/span><\/span>This article is written from a fundamentally flawed perspective that presents the Indus Waters Treaty as an instrument of cooperation. In reality, the treaty served as an instrument of division, imposing many obligations on India without placing comparable obligations on Pakistan.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The durability of any water-sharing treaty depends largely on the conduct of the upstream riparian states. If the treaty has survived for six decades despite frequent conflicts, the credit goes entirely to India, which, as a responsible and principled nation, has continued to honour its obligations even during the most turbulent periods without any reciprocity. While Pakistan has continued to use it as a political tool to obstruct development in Jammu and Kashmir.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

India\u2019s sovereign right to suspend an unequal treaty !<\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b>
\nThe article portrays India\u2019s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty after the Pahalgam attack as provocative or destabilizing. This accusation is misleading and morally reprehensible. India is a victim nation that has suffered decades of devastating terrorist attacks on its soil, attributed to actors operating from or with the support of Pakistani soil. The Pahalgam attack is a tale of the last straw. The proposition that India should continue to fulfill treaty obligations towards states sponsoring terrorism against India defies fundamental principles of international law, including the principle of rebus sic stantibus, which allows for the suspension of treaty obligations when the underlying circumstances have materially changed. A treaty designed to promote cooperation cannot be expected to endure as a unilateral obligation when the other side continues to undermine bilateral relations through pseudo-violence.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The structural inequality of the treaty has been ignored for too long !<\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b>
\nThe article promotes the IWT as a model of \u201csteady power\u201d and stability, but blatantly ignores what India has conceded in the name of cooperation. As an upper riverine state, India was allocated only three eastern rivers \u2013 the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej \u2013 which account for less than 20 percent of the basin\u2019s total flow, including water already in use. Even for this small share, India was forced to pay \u00a362 million (about $2.45 billion in current values) as compensation for replacement work in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. This extraordinary concession may have been made under geopolitical pressure in the 1960s when India\u2019s developmental needs and the hydrology of the basin were not well understood. Decades later, with India\u2019s population and water demand growing exponentially, and Jammu and Kashmir chronically underdeveloped due to treaty restrictions on water use, this arrangement has become structurally untenable. The article argues that \u201cincreasing India\u2019s reservoir storage capacity risks exacerbating the crisis as water scarcity worsens,\u201d suggesting that India should abandon its legitimate development aspirations altogether.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Pakistan has weaponized the treaty\u2019s dispute settlement mechanism !<\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b>
\nThis article speaks fondly of the Permanent Indus Commission and third-party processes as \u201cdata sharing\u201d and dispute management. What it fails to mention is that Pakistan has consistently misused these mechanisms to block perfectly legitimate Indian run-of-river hydroelectric projects on the western rivers, some of which are less than 5 MW in capacity and do not cause any material harm to Pakistan\u2019s water availability. India Pakistan has objected to projects such as Kishanganga, Baglihar, Ratle and many others, dragging them into arbitration proceedings of dubious jurisdiction and using treaty forums as a means of diplomatic harassment rather than genuine dispute resolution. The article also acknowledges that technical disputes have become \u201cmore frequent and increasingly politicized\u201d but fails to assign any responsibility to Pakistan for this deterioration.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The arguments for modernization apply to both sides !<\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b>
\nThe IWT, as the article itself admits, \u201cpredates modern climate science and is based on outdated hydrological assumptions.\u201d If the treaty is so ill-suited to current realities, the logical conclusion is that it should be fundamentally renegotiated in terms that reflect current hydrological conditions, equitable water sharing, technological progress, and India\u2019s legitimate development imperatives. It should not simply be \u201creinstated\u201d to preserve arrangements that have been distorted against India from the start.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is not appropriate to compare with other river basins !<\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b>
\nThis article draws parallels with the Aral Sea Basin, the Mekong River Commission, and the Senegal River Basin to argue for cooperative governance. These examples include states that are broadly united in their developmental interests and do not engage in sustained cross-border terrorism against each other. India-Pakistan relations have no such basis. Cooperation frameworks work where there is basic harmony. Pakistan\u2019s continued support for terrorist infrastructure targeting India makes comparisons with the Mekong Commission or the Jordan-Israel water regime incomplete and fundamentally misleading.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Water diplomacy without accountability ?<\/span><\/span><\/u><\/b>
\nThe article ends by urging international actors to support \u201cwater diplomacy\u201d and calling for \u201cpatience\u201d in rebuilding trust. India\u2019s position is clear: it maintains a strict policy of bilateralism in all dealings with Pakistan, rejecting third-party mediation. Furthermore, it has committed to dismantling terrorist infrastructure and strengthening its international trust can only be rebuilt through proven, sustained action by Pakistan to honor commitments. Pakistan\u2019s continued impunity and urging India to treat the IWT as sacred is not a call for peace. It is a continued exploitation of India\u2019s restraint. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In short, this distorted Chatham House article expects India to subordinate its sovereign interests, security concerns and development needs to the maintenance of an outdated and biased institutional arrangement mediated by a third party. India\u2019s restrained response to Pakistani aggression, including the suspension of the treaty, is not a threat to regional stability. It is a long-awaited signal that the terms of engagement must change.<\/span><\/span>
\nThe author is a former Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters.<\/span><\/b><\/span>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Pradeep Kumar Saxena This article is taken from Chatham House, which claims to be an independent policy institution and a trusted forum for debate and dialogue, and aims to help governments and societies build a safe, sustainable, prosperous and just world. This article presents a view that is heavily biased towards preserving the status […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-highlights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG-20260530-WA0005.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6860"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6863,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6860\/revisions\/6863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesasian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}