Pakistan's water debate has become increasingly focused on India. The reasons are understandable. Indian leaders have openly questioned the future of the Indus Waters Treaty, new storage and hydropower projects continue to emerge on the western rivers, and political rhetoric has hardened. Every new announcement triggers warnings about Pakistan's water security and renewed calls for reservoirs, diplomatic action and legal remedies.

These concerns are legitimate. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that Pakistan's water future will be decided primarily in New Delhi. India can influence the quantity, timing and predictability of flows entering Pakistan, but it cannot determine how effectively Pakistan manages the water already inside its borders. That remains a domestic challenge, and increasingly it is the domestic challenge that deserves greater attention.

For decades, Pakistan's water sector benefited from a margin of error. The rivers were large enough, groundwater remained sufficiently accessible, and the political system was flexible enough to postpone difficult decisions. When irrigation systems underperformed, farmers adapted. When maintenance was deferred, the consequences accumulated slowly.

When reforms stalled, the system continued functioning well enough to avoid a crisis. The significance of India's recent actions is not that they created Pakistan's water problems—most of those problems predate the current tensions by decades—but that they have begun to shrink the margin for error on which Pakistan has long depended.

That shift matters because every weakness in the system becomes more consequential when uncertainty increases. Inefficiencies that were once tolerable become more expensive. Delays become riskier. Long-running disputes that could previously be managed through political accommodation become harder to contain. The challenge facing Pakistan is therefore not merely one of water availability. It is increasingly a challenge of governance, coordination and trust.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationships between the provinces. The 1991 Water Apportionment Accord remains one of the most important federal agreements in Pakistan's history, establishing a framework through which provinces with very different hydrological realities share a common river system.

When Indus flows decline and shortages begin to emerge, Punjab often views the operation of the Chashma–Jhelum Link Canal as an operational necessity for stabilising........

© The Friday Times