Flash Point
India’s Malafide Move on the Indus Waters Treaty
Date: June 13, 2025
Jinnah Institute’s Flashpoint series seeks to bring expert perspectives on regional developments. This edition will focus on India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) that marks the breakdown of a long-standing bilateral framework that carries far-reaching consequences for water security in the Indus Basin.
Senator Sherry Rehman
President, Jinnah Institute
India’s unilateral move to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in the wake of the May 2025 conflict marks a dangerous doctrinal shift, one that threatens to upend decades of legal and geopolitical restraint in South Asia. The 87-hour war, brief as it was, revealed the fragility of peace between nuclear-armed neighbors and the evolving contours of conflict where water is no longer just a resource, but a tool of coercion and control. For the first time since the Treaty’s signing in 1960, New Delhi has attempted to unilaterally dismantle one of the world’s most durable frameworks for transboundary water management, choosing instead to exploit its upper riparian position to alter flows and influence Pakistan’s stability.
This decision cannot be read in isolation. It is part of a broader Indian strategy to manufacture a “new abnormal”, a persistent state of confrontation where strategic disinformation, aggressive posturing, and constitutional sleights against Kashmir coalesce into a doctrine of perpetual conflict. Modi’s administration, in choosing to block meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission and deny Pakistan its legal entitlements under the Treaty, seeks not legal redress but narrative dominance. The language used by Indian officials post-conflict, invoking films, trailers, and bullets, signals a populist militarism that leaves little room for the dialogue necessary to uphold even basic treaty obligations.
Technically, India’s ability to divert western rivers such as the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab is limited. The terrain is unforgiving, the costs immense, and the hydrological consequences unpredictable. Yet, India’s infrastructural developments, especially on the Chenab, are less about electricity and more about creating a strategic chokepoint, storage structures designed to delay, not generate. Even a 24-hour disruption during peak agricultural cycles could devastate Pakistan’s food and energy security, which remain overwhelmingly dependent on the Indus Basin.
Pakistan must respond not just through legal arbitration under Article IX of the Treaty, but by recentering water diplomacy within a climate and security framework. Engagement with the World Bank is essential, but so is the activation of new diplomatic coalitions that emphasize the shared ecological destiny of the region. Supplementary protocols can be negotiated to address contemporary realities, demographic shifts, glacial melt, and environmental flow requirements, without tearing down the Treaty’s foundational architecture.
Ambassador (r) Shafqat Kakakhel
Former Diplomat & Water Expert
Indian Government’s demand for negotiations to modify the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) since January 2023, its decision in August 2024 to disallow future meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission, and its announcement of 24 April to hold the IWT “ in abeyance” until Pakistan “abjures its support for trans- border terrorism” are aimed at undermining a widely acclaimed agreement on sharing transboundary waters. India wishes to enfeeble the treaty’s “dispute settlement mechanism” by deleting or diluting external arbitration and scuttling the measures for ensuring that Indian power projects on the western rivers do not entail storage, causing loss of water flows. Its allegations linking Pakistan with terrorism are baseless and mischievous.
New Delhi’s arguments for the rewriting of the IWT, such as population growth, the impacts of climate change, and the development of renewable energy, do not hold water! These issues cannot be addressed by renegotiating a water treaty. Instead, they urgently warrant mutually beneficial bilateral cooperation. Population growth in Pakistan has been faster than in India, as has the rate of water scarcity. Western rivers of the Indus are not indispensable for India’s hydropower generation needs.
Alongside resisting formal negotiations, Pakistan should welcome a comprehensive dialogue with India on all matters concerning the Indus River Basin, especially the impacts of climate change, with a view to promoting mutually beneficial solutions. The United States and the World Bank, which played pivotal roles in the negotiations of the IWT, are uniquely positioned to end the current impasse and reinvigorate the accord.
Options available to Pakistan include external arbitration prescribed by the IWT itself. The Secretary, Pakistan Ministry of Water Resources, has, in a message to his Indian counterpart, suggested recourse to the dispute settlement mechanism stipulated in Article 9 of the IWT for the convening of a Court of Arbitration to consider India’s concerns. Other options include seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice and raising the threat to Pakistan’s water security in the Security Council and the UN General Assembly.
Widespread concern in Pakistan notwithstanding, there is no imminent threat to Pakistan’s access to the waters of the western rivers. India lacks infrastructure such as storage dams, canals, or tunnels to divert the waters of rivers as mighty as the Indus and Chenab. India does not have any urgent need to augment its water assets by transferring waters that belong to Pakistan. However, Pakistan must vigilantly monitor the flow of water in order to ensure an uninterrupted supply of the waters of the western rivers.
Pakistan must consider alternatives for securing timely information on upstream water flows in the upstream of its rivers for flood management and the irrigation network.
Pakistan should also prioritize efforts to counter the challenges that have turned a once water-abundant country into a chronically water-deficient one. Our National Water Policy of 2018 provides an invaluable framework for achieving long-term and sustainable water security.
Aisha KhanChief Executive, Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change
The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has long been a cornerstone of peace and cooperation between India and Pakistan. Brokered by the World Bank and signed in 1960, the treaty survived wars and political crises, earning its status as a model for hydro-diplomacy. But today, it stands on precarious ground. India’s unilateral decision to suspend the IWT has thrust this once-revered agreement into the heart of regional tensions, with profound implications for water security, regional stability, and international law.
This suspension is more than a legal or technical manoeuvre—it is a potent political signal. It is part of India’s broader strategic calculus, reflecting an increasingly assertive foreign policy and a shift toward water nationalism. In doing so, India is challenging the established global norm of insulating transboundary water cooperation from political conflicts. This is especially alarming in a region where two nuclear-armed neighbours are tethered by a shared and vital waterway.
For Pakistan, the implications are profound. Already grappling with growing water scarcity, rapid population growth, and a heavy dependence on the Indus River System for agriculture and livelihoods, the treaty’s suspension poses an existential threat. Any disruption in the flow, whether through storage, diversion, or delays, could have devastating impacts on Pakistan’s food security and socio-economic stability.
Though the IWT limits recourse to the International Court of Justice, Pakistan has other diplomatic avenues. It can take its case to the UN Security Council, UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme, and UN Water, using international platforms to highlight the dangers of undermining a rules-based global water governance system. Legal precedents, such as the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, offer important principles—like “equitable and reasonable use” and “no significant harm”—that India’s unilateral action clearly violates.
Diplomatic pressure, public advocacy, and backchannel engagement remain essential tools for Pakistan to project its narrative of water justice. Simultaneously, it must build alliances with other water-stressed nations to elevate the issue globally and press for a reaffirmation of hydro-diplomacy as a global norm.
While India does not yet possess large-scale infrastructure to divert western river flows to the east, its construction of 33 hydropower projects—either completed or in progress—on the western rivers introduces new variables. Even limited changes in water flow or timing due to these projects, which collectively hold a cumulative storage capacity of 3.6 million acre-feet, can significantly affect Pakistan’s seasonal irrigation patterns.
Meanwhile, Pakistan must confront its internal vulnerabilities by undertaking urgent water sector reforms. This includes addressing inefficiencies in irrigation, modernising outdated infrastructure, enacting groundwater regulations, developing wastewater recycling systems, and investing in climate-resilient water policies and robust hydrological data collection.
India’s suspension of the IWT is not just a tactical shift—it may prove to be a strategic watershed in South Asian geopolitics. For Pakistan, this moment demands more than reactive diplomacy. It calls for a proactive, non-partisan national water agenda akin to nuclear or military security. Water is no longer a mere resource; it is a matter of national security.
Danish Mustafa
Professor Critical Geography, King’s College London
India’s unilateral suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) must be viewed as a reckless act of geopolitical brinkmanship and a legal violation of an internationally recognized agreement. The IWT, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, does not contain provisions for unilateral suspension. By bypassing treaty protocols and failing to consult or notify the World Bank, India’s action demonstrates a disregard for international law. However, while India’s move may appear provocative, it may ultimately have limited practical consequences for Pakistan. Geography and hydrology, not India’s engineering, remain the dominant forces safeguarding Pakistan’s water flows.
In response, Pakistan should not merely contest this action through traditional diplomatic protests. Instead, it should seize this moment to propose a re-evaluation of the Treaty itself. The first strategic move should involve approaching the World Bank to explore the possibility of renegotiation. If India resists, Pakistan could withdraw from the IWT and seek to join the International Watercourse Convention. With this legal backing, it could file a case with the International Court of Justice to prevent international financing of Indian projects on the Indus system, asserting its rights under customary international water law. This path would shift the legal narrative from treaty-centric to one anchored in equity, ecology, and international legal norms.
India does possess the technical capacity to alter water flows from the Eastern Rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej), but this right was already granted under the IWT. These rivers have long been harnessed by India for irrigation through projects like the Bhakra and Pong Dams and the Indira Gandhi Canal. On the other hand, India’s ability to divert the Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) is severely constrained by natural and economic realities. The terrain of Kashmir and Ladakh lacks irrigable plains, and any large-scale diversion would be impractical or environmentally disastrous. For instance, damming the Jhelum’s Uri gorge would require submerging the Kashmir Valley, an impossible proposition. Likewise, tunneling and cross-drainage canals to siphon the Chenab’s waters are technically unfeasible due to sediment loads and rugged topography. Thus, much of Pakistan’s perceived water insecurity stems not from reality but from long-standing institutional paranoia.
To ensure long-term water security, Pakistan must pivot away from a defensive, treaty-bound mindset to proactive national reforms. It should focus on domestic policy actions such as sealing the four polluted cross-border drains that poison its agriculture and groundwater, and overhauling its crop mix to reduce water-intensive crops like rice and sugarcane. Pakistan must implement strong groundwater regulation to prevent aquifer depletion, which already provides 80% of crop irrigation in the fresh groundwater zones. Unchecked urban sprawl must be curbed, and equitable water access and sanitation must be made central to water policy. Finally, Pakistan should abandon elite-centered hydro-development in favor of inclusive, sustainable, and scientifically grounded water governance.
