Following the dastardly massacre of innocent Hindu tourists at Pahalgam, India swiftly declared that it will put the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT), brokered by the World Bank, on abeyance. The IWT has survived three major wars between the two nations besides Kargil, and its suspension will certainly escalate the tension between two nuclear armed belligerent nations. However, nothing will change on the ground, at least not in the foreseeable future.

The origins of the IWT date back to the Partition. Indus, which has given India its name, and its five tributaries, have sustained humanity on the subcontinent for millennia. Both India and Pakistan depend on Indus water for agriculture, irrigation, and electricity, but without the Indus system water, Pakistan would face serious existential threats. So, at Partition, the two countries signed an agreement called the Standstill Agreement to allow the flow of water across the border, and when that agreement expired in 1948, they negotiated for nine long ears, mediated by the World Bank, to sign the IWT in September 1960.

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The treaty gives India access to the waters of the three eastern rivers: the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, while Pakistan gets the waters of the three western rivers: the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, which account for almost 80 per cent of the shared basin’s water. While India can use the western rivers to generate hydel power and for limited irrigation, it cannot build infrastructure that restricts the flow of water from those rivers into Pakistan, either by storing or diverting their flows.

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Despite the bellicosity between hostile neighbours, the IWT survived, even though every major terrorist violence inflicted by Pakistani state-sponsored actors had threatened to derail it. With no expiry date, the treaty also provides a standing mechanism for cooperation and dispute resolution by a Permanent Indus Commission with one commissioner from each country. One can refer unresolv – ed differences to a neutral expert, and legal disputes to an international Court of Arbitration, and the World Bank can also provide mediation.

The Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab are lifelines to Pakistan, as it has no alternative sources of water and relies heavily on the western rivers for its agriculture, irrigation and energy. Between May and September, these rivers carry tens of billions of cumecs (cubic metre per second) of water from melting glaciers to nourish agriculture in Pakistan’s Punjab and Sindh provinces. Its irrigation system depends almost entirely on the predictable timing of flows from the western rivers, when farmers plan their sowing depending on the canal........

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