Indus Waters Story: Issues, Concerns, Perspectives

By Ashok Motwani and Sant Kumar Sharma

Soon after the Treaty was signed, India went on to construct several hydroelectric power plants and storages on its portion of the Western rivers. Consequently, the building of these structures has become a controversial issue between the two countries, since the Western rivers are controlled by Pakistan and provide more that 90% water to that country.
Although the Treaty has survived decades of acrimony and three wars, between India and Pakistan and remains one of the most successful water-sharing arrangements in the world, it has been running into more difficulties in recent times. Following the Uri attack of September 2016 and the Pulwama attack on February 2019, there have been renewed demands to stop sharing water with Pakistan, if not to scrap the Treaty altogether.
This book highlights the sensitive issue of water sharing between the two nuclear powers. It explains that how, if not addressed, the dispute could well lead to yet another war.
Furthermore, it examines what, within the scope of the Treaty, can be done by India to exercise its rights. What is required for that is an understanding of the nuances of the Treaty, the political will to go ahead with exercising India's rights to the fullest and the enterprise to ask engineers to design projects aimed at doing so.

Well researched, balanced and concise, Ashok Motwani and Sant Kumar Sharmaprovide a valuable perspective on Indus Water Treaty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Oct 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9789389611861

Ashok Motwani

Ashok Motwani associated with Mega Programs: Bharatiya Pravasi Divas, Sindhu Darshan & Goa Film Festival since Inception. Founder Member of Global Organization for PIO's, edits Diaspora Times for Cultural Bond among Diaspora Countries / Nations, currently is Executive Producer to Series of Short Films on Value Education. His forthcoming books are The Sindh Story II and Nepal Revisited: 2020.

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INDUS

WATERS

STORY

INDUS

WATERS

STORY

ISSUES

CONCERNS

PERSPECTIVES

ASHOK MOTWANI

SANT KUMAR SHARMA

BLOOMSBURY INDIA

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Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. The Historiography of Indus Waters

2. Shahpur Kandi Barrage Project

3. Kishanganga Project

4. Salal and Baglihar Spats

5. Tulbul Navigation Project

6. The Chenab Formula

7. Conclusion: Scope for Joint Development of Indus River Basin

List of Abbreviations

Appendices

Bibliography

Foreword

The ancient history of this great nation is founded on our great Vedic traditions and Vedic tales. The Rig Veda talks about the seven rivers, three shores, eight summits of Earth as encompassed by the shloka (asthauvyakhyatkakubhahprthivyam tri dhanva yojana saptasindhun RV.I.35.8). The mythical Vedic land was sandwiched between the land of seven rivers flowing into the ocean, an area between Gandhara and Kurukhestra. Six out of these seven rivers, that is, Ravi, Jhelum, Beas, Chenab, Sutlej and Indus form the very foundation of our Vedic identity. The fact that all of these rivers form the basis of Indus Waters Treaty, goes on to show that the treaty is not merely a strategic water sharing agreement brokered by the World Bank in 1960, it is the very basis of our cultural history. The Indus Waters Treaty is widely regarded as one of the most successful water sharing treaties in the world. Three of these rivers are controlled by India—the eastern rivers of Beas, Sutlej and Ravi. On the Pakistani side, the three rivers controlled by Pakistan are the western rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. While India gets only 33 million acre feet (MAF) of combined annual flow from these rivers, the annual flow in Pakistan from their share of rivers is more than double than on the Indian side, at 80 million acre feet. While the Indus Waters Treaty is one of the most successful water sharing agreement, the conditions under which the provisions were made, weighed heavily on the Indian side. As per article 5/1 of the treaty, India had to pay 125 metric ton of gold (according to gold standard) to Pakistan to build canals and headworks for the utilisation of its share of water. In present value, this payment is equivalent to 5.2 billion dollars. One can’t but contemplate over the advantages that India got from making such a noble gesture as Pakistan has over the years interrupted India’s peace and threatened our sovereignty by breeding terrorists on its soil. Despite Pakistan’s repeated failures on the war fields and repeated attempts to bring peace and tranquility to the subcontinent from the India state, Pakistan has not reciprocated either in toning down its rhetoric or by taking concrete step through its actions. This attitude is in stark contrast to the Preamble of the Indus Waters Treaty itself, where Good will and Friendship and co-operation is inscribed as the fundamentals on which the treaty stands. Thus, steps by Pakistan that runs contrary to the preamble has often led to voices in the country and the world that are asking for a rethink over the Indus waters treaty. At this crucial junction, the book Indus Waters Treaty written by Mr Ashok Motwani and Mr Sant Sharma shall aid us understand the problem in a better manner. They have written about various complex issues in a very understandable and simple tone, which makes for easy reading.

I wish them all the best in their initiative and hope this book will educate a lot of common readers about the complexities of the treaty, the legal challenges it beckons and, overall, the necessity for a re-think, if any.

(Gajendra Singh Shekhawat)

Preface

Why Discuss Indus Waters Now?

On 14 February 2019, a suicide attack was conducted by a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) (identified as Adil Dar by intelligence agencies) on a convoy carrying the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in Pulwama, which killed at least 40 men. This incident triggered public outrage against Pakistan across India, with people urging the Central Government to take punitive measures against the perpetrators and those providing them sanctuaries, using all options at our disposal, including cessation of the flow of Indus waters.

Over a couple of years earlier, the September 2016 Uri attack by four terrorists was also an occasion when similar demands for blocking the flow of Indus waters were made. The Uri attack led to ‘Surgical Strikes’ as a retaliatory measure aimed at some terrorist camps inside Pakistan Occupied Jammu Kashmir (POJK). However, stoppage of waters flowing into Pakistan was not an option exercised; perhaps, it is impossible to do it as fast as military kinetic action such as Surgical Strikes that could be used as a deterrent action.

Rhetorically, demands for stoppage of waters may seem attractive and had (they still have) a lot of political traction too. As a knee-jerk reaction, the proposal served to showcase the pent-up public anger and frustration. Beyond that, this did not have much meaning in the short term as waters continue to flow into Pakistan rivers, as before. Despite repeated calls to stop these flows, it is impossible at a short notice since adequate barrages or storage dams to divert or discontinue these flows altogether just do not exist.

As a result of such demand raised after the Uri attack, the Central Government had set an Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) to examine the issue seriously. Incidentally, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) provides the necessary legal framework that governs the flows in international rivers that traverse the two countries. Once again, after the Pulwama attack, there was a popular demand for the stoppage of waters and sporadic demands for scrapping the IWT unilaterally and immediately. For those demanding the scrapping of the Treaty, it means that this could have been an effective way of punishing Pakistan, and must be exercised, without any hesitation. But the consequences of such unilateral punitive action were not fully understood by those making such demands. Whether the provisions of the Treaty and international riparian laws would allow doing so is a moot question.

It is, therefore, imperative to understand the issues related to IWT for a wider public debate. In this spirit, this book is a modest attempt to complement the existing literature on IWT available in the public domain. Ironically, it seems that though the issue is of vital significance vis-à-vis India-Pakistan relations in the context of upper riparian and lower riparian, there is a dearth of enough literature on the topic which is readily available. This issue had to be dealt with in professional life for the first time during a stint with Star News (Hindi) in 2005 after Pakistan objected to the Baglihar Hydropower project on the Chenab River.

Getting a copy of the complete text of the IWT, reading and trying to make sense of this highly technical document, which was framed after eight years of negotiations, is not an easy task. The office of the Indus Commissioner of India located at CGO Complex in Delhi came to the rescue and the requisite text was supplied by them. Beyond that, understanding the text in little snatches, every now and then, led to interactions with several engineers. Not that it helped much even then!

On 27 August 2012, six Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) terrorists attacked a project site at Adipora village in Bandipora district. The location housed dozens of workers and heavy machinery engaged in dredging Wullar lake, the vast natural sponge that Kashmir is endowed with. The ₹ 400-crore project lost steam thereafter and was virtually abandoned as the workers were threatened to flee or face the consequences (usually a euphemism for a threat to be shot dead by terrorists). The attack by HM harmed the residents of Kashmir the most two years later, in September 2014 floods. The fury of the floods could have been much milder had the flood protection and allied works not been harmed by the HM attack.

The incident was reported and treated by various newspapers based in the Kashmir valley, and outside, as a fairly commonplace terrorism-related event, something that happens in the Kashmir valley with monotonous regularity. Of course, it was mentioned that the attack had been carried out by the Mujahideen at the behest of Pakistan as it was violative of the IWT provisions. This meant that the Mujahideen were acting to guard Pakistan’s interests as they interpret it. It also means that Pakistan is not beyond using terror proxies as a tool to enforce any provision or provisions of the IWT on which the two nations differ.

The larger implications of the terrorist attack on what is usually termed Tulbul Navigation Project (in India) or the Wullar Barrage (in Pakistan) were not adequately discussed or debated by the media or civil society and the academia in Kashmir, leave aside India. At least not at that time, and one hardly has come across any well-written article that explains it in some detail. It was underplayed by those who cover Kashmir routinely, whether deliberately due to fear of the HM or because of not comprehending it fully, is difficult to say.

Drabu (2019) argues that ‘Other than being held responsible for causing further bitterness in relations between the two nations, India will not gain anything for now by abrogating the Indus Waters Treaty’. Regarding the Treaty, he further states that ‘the Treaty has withstood the acrimonious relationship between the two neighbours, including the three wars. It is not surprising then that it is considered as one of the most successful water-sharing arrangements in the world today.’

He further asserts that:

There is a good potential for constructing a number of smaller storages, possibly in cascade, on the tributaries of Jhelum and the same are permitted under the Treaty – the volume of these storages would though be small. It is worth mentioning here that till date, no storage of any type has been constructed by India on these rivers. Just to highlight here, if the storage volume permitted by the Treaty for Jhelum basin had been available, it could have easily moderated the level of flooding Kashmir experienced in September 2014. The relevant figures of storage allowed under the IWT provisions have not been given in the article. Of course, they are mentioned in the original document.

While examining the demand/s made for stopping the flow of water to Pakistan, he asks, ‘Is this something that is practical and achievable?’ According to Drabu:

Since India is anyway using nearly all the flows of the Eastern Rivers, any blockage of the flow of waters would essentially mean blocking the flow of the three Western Rivers which incidentally contribute more than 80% (117 billion cubic metres – BCM) of the flow of the Indus basin. The stoppage of the flow of water to Pakistan can be achieved either by storing this water and/or diverting the flow of these rivers.

For him, it is very clear that if India today were to abrogate the Treaty, for now, nothing would change on the ground. In terms of water availability for Pakistan, it would continue to receive the flows till India plans and completes its storage and/or water diversion projects.

With the Indus basin supporting 90% of Pakistan’s agriculture and employing more than 40% of the population, the common man in Pakistan will see it as India’s attempt to strangulate and starve his people and the country. It would arouse fear and create uncertainty in his mind. Without Pakistan actually feeling any impact of the abrogation of the Treaty, such an action would only provide fodder to lobbies in Pakistan who are keen to see [the] deterioration of relations between the two countries. It would suit their agenda and would be a God-sent opportunity to exacerbate the tensions between the two countries.

Let us assume that no changes are possible in the Treaty in the short term immediately. Yet, within the scope of the Treaty, a lot can be done by India to exercise its rights to the fullest and that is what we will examine over the next few chapters. The first thing needed for that is an understanding of the nuances of the Treaty, political will to go ahead with exercising India’s rights to the fullest and asking engineers to design projects aimed at doing so.

Incidentally, the IWT divides the Indus River basin between India and Pakistan, and on paper, the two nations have been allotted three rivers each. The three rivers, for the sake of convenience and based on their geographical location, are called the Eastern Rivers and the Western Rivers. The three Eastern Rivers are (Sutlej, Beas and Ravi) allotted to India. On the other hand, Chenab, Jhelum, and the Indus are called the Western Rivers and have been allotted to Pakistan.

In terms of the total volume of waters available in the Indus basin, 80.52 per cent has been given to Pakistan, and only 19.48 per cent is India’s share under the Treaty. Of even this smaller share, India has not fully utilised its share yet although it is alleged that this Treaty is inequitable and unfair to it. Interestingly, similar allegations of the Treaty being unfair to them are being levelled by Pakistan frequently. They keep on saying that India has violated this or that provision of the Treaty at one place or the other in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), on one of the Western Rivers. These allegations of wrong-doing and Treaty violations from Pakistan mostly concern the Chenab on which the Marala headworks are located.

It appears, a desire to be in total control of all the Western Rivers that propels Pakistan’s thinking vis-à-vis India. If nothing else works, (theoretically) forcefully annexing the whole of J&K will give it the entire territory in which Chenab, Jhelum and the Indus flows. For this to happen, the cheapest option available to Pakistan is to foment trouble in the State and build a narrative that the ‘People want to be a part of Pakistan’. In this context, the following chapters will deal with various issues related to the riparian rights of both the nations. Different provisions of the Treaty and related issues will also be discussed in detail.

Acknowledgements

It gives us immense pleasure to express our sincere gratitude to all our well-wishers who not only supported along the way but also helped in shaping the arguments. Mr Harbans Singh Sambyal suggested that no book on IWT could begin without reading Niranjan D. Gulhati’s Indus Waters Treaty: An Exercise in International Mediation. How right he was!

Interestingly, on 9 February 2019, the Central University of Jammu (CUJ) organised a seminar on IWT addressed by a galaxy of experts. Foremost among them were Mr P.K. Saxena, Indus Commissioner and Mr Balraj Joshi, NHPC Chairman. To our knowledge, no such event on IWT was ever organised since 2000 in the Jammu region. We are grateful to the Chancellors of both the Central Universities in Jammu and Kashmir, Ambassador G. Parthasarathy and Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd) for patronising such an intellectual exercise. We are thankful to the staff at the libraries of the India International Centre (IIC) and the Lok Sabha for providing us invaluable inputs and support.

Thanks are also due to many others not named here as they remained a source of support and inspiration all through the journey.

Ashok Motwani

Sant Kumar Sharma

1

The Historiography of Indus Waters

Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) is not a water-sharing agreement, but a Treaty for the division of waters, of six rivers of the Indus basin between India and Pakistan. There are lots of misgivings about the Treaty among the masses as there is perhaps too little debate on the subject. There is not enough literature, which articulates Indian perspectives on the subject in the public domain in terms of well-researched articles or books that is readily available in India. The situation is a lot different in Pakistan, the lower riparian of the Indus basin, where articles about the IWT keep on appearing in leading newspapers, published in both vernacular Urdu, and also English.

Another thing that seems particularly striking is the general level of awareness in Pakistan about the Treaty. A large section of Pakistanis, including the so-called elites such as lawyers, journalists, politicians, and even terrorists like Syed Salahuddin and Hafiz Saeed have been relentlessly vocal about the Treaty. It is their narratives that have been dominating the public perceptions so far. Even on the Internet, it is mostly the statements of Pakistanis that pop up first and foremost when an online search of its different aspects is made.

In contrast, statements from very few Indians about the Treaty are made, because it impacts two States of the Indian Union, mainly Punjab and J&K. Of course, Haryana and Rajasthan have also gained from this Treaty. Yet, any public discussion on this Treaty is hardly considered significant enough to try to build a national perspective. Such is generally the low level of public awareness in India on the subject.

In the JeM suicide attack on 14 February 2019, in Pulwama, (Kashmir) the lives of 40 CRPF were lost. This has led to an interest in the contours of the Treaty mainly because the JeM Chief Masood Azhar is based in Pakistan and is responsible for many terrorist attacks in various parts of India. Demands have been raised in some quarters that India must stop all waters flowing to Pakistan as a punishment for its backing of terrorists and terrorism. Demands have also been made by some people that IWT, which governs the apportioning of waters between India and Pakistan, should be immediately scrapped.

Earlier, the terrorist attack of September 2016 at Uri (Baramulla district) which had led to the deaths of 19 Army personnel had also laid to some demands regarding unilateral scrapping of the Treaty. There were demands from some quarters that India should stop waters flowing to Pakistan immediately to punish it. Some politicians also fanned these demands and adopted threatening postures in public vis-à-vis Pakistan on the IWT. However, the question that needs to be asked is: ‘Are natural rivers flowing along their paths, perhaps for hundreds of years, like municipal taps installed in kitchens and bathrooms in common houses?’

Is it possible that just as taps can be turned on and off, rivers can be stopped from flowing along their courses because of a sudden fit of genuine rage and anger provoked by the other party? A clear and honest answer is that the rivers are not amenable to momentary whimsical turning on and off just as can be done in case of ordinary taps. Of course, the courses of rivers can be changed with planning and execution by determined men or women keen on changing their paths. But for the change of any river course, dams, reservoirs, canals, and more structures need to be built over days, weeks, months, and years altogether.

Changing a river course is something that humans have done for several centuries the world over but it costs money, material and manpower. Similarly, in the case of Indus basin rivers also, it will theoretically take years of planning, commitment and construction of massive engineering structures to affect any possible diversions or stoppages. Trying to punish Pakistan through the stoppage of the flow of waters is too easy to conjure up for many. It seems to them like a very easy and catchy option but it is way too difficult when it comes to the implementation part. International riparian laws in vogue now, division of river waters under the IWT and many other factors will come into play, if at all India tries to use water as a weapon against Pakistan and bring it to heel. In short, it is easier said than done!

The apparent renewed interest in the fate of the Treaty in the backdrop of Pakistani actions is one reason for undertaking the writing of this book, which is aimed at explaining some of its pros and cons. It is also aimed at trying to convey that an abrupt and unilateral abrogation of the Treaty may not be feasible for a variety of reasons which have been explained in the book elsewhere and in some detail. For now, it may suffice to say that there exists no clause in the Treaty which can be used for its abrogation, or that