[Answered] What are the controversies associated with Indus Waters Treaty? Why is there a call to modify the Treaty?

Indus Waters Treaty gives India control of 3 Eastern Rivers (Beas, Ravi and Sutlej). Pakistan gets control of 3 Western Rivers (Chenab, Indus and Jhelum). The treaty gives India 20% of the water from the Indus River System and the rest 80% to Pakistan. The treaty allows India to utilize the waters of Western Rivers for for limited irrigation use and non-consumptive use for such applications as power generation, navigation etc.

Controversies associated with Indus Waters Treaty:

• There has been a longstanding dispute over two hydroelectric power projects– one on the Kishanganga river (a tributary of Jhelum) and the other on the Chenab (Ratle).
• As for India’s 850 megawatt Ratle hydroelectric power project, Islamabad has repeatedly raised concerns over its design, insisting that India would use the project’s reservoir to create deliberate and artificial water shortage or cause flooding in Pakistan.
• Pakistan had demanded the constitution of a Court of Arbitration, while India demanded a Neutral Expertto resolve the dispute.
• Under the pact, any difference needs to be resolved under a three-stage approach. However, in the case of the Kishenganga and Ratle Hydro Electric Projects, the World Bank started two concurrent dispute redressal processes at the insistence of Pakistan, which India felt was a breach of the IWT.

Why is there a call to modify the Treaty?  

• Unequal sharing of the waters: Pakistan has been allocated ~80% of the Indus basin waters. Experts have termed this the most generous water sharing treaty. It is the only water-sharing pact in the world that compels upper riparian State to defer to the interests of the downstream State.
• To resolve the long-standing dispute: so that Pakistan is provided an opportunity to initiate “intergovernmental negotiations” within 90 days regarding the differences that the Indian side has described as a “material breach”.
• It prevents India from building any storage systemson the western rivers. Even though the treaty lays out that under certain exceptional circumstances storage systems can be built.
• The basin’s size and volume is getting altered by climate change.  The contribution of glaciers in the Indus basin is higher than in the Ganges or Brahmaputra basins. A change in the flow conditions may classify as ‘change of circumstances’ which can justify renegotiation or termination in the future.

India should take steps to completely utilize its entitlement of waters of Western Rivers. The infrastructure to utilize the waters has remained under-developed in J&K.