Geography Quiz: Indus Waters Treaty and India's Transboundary Rivers

The Indus Waters Treaty was signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India and President Mohammad Ayub Khan of Pakistan, after nine years of negotiation begun in 1952 through the good offices of the World Bank, which signed the treaty as a third party.

These are the three eastern rivers of the Indus system, and the treaty gives their waters to India for unrestricted use, which is why the Bhakra dam on the Sutlej, the Pong dam on the Beas and the Ranjit Sagar dam on the Ravi could be built.

The Bank brought India and Pakistan to the table in 1952, proposed the division of the rivers into eastern and western groups, helped to arrange the finance for Pakistan's replacement canals, and signed the treaty for the limited purposes in which it has a role, such as helping to appoint…

When the Permanent Indus Commission could not settle Pakistan's objections to the design of the Baglihar dam, the matter was referred to a Neutral Expert, the Swiss engineer Raymond Lafitte, appointed with the help of the World Bank, who gave his determination in 2007 and allowed the project with changes…

The Kishanganga, known as the Neelum in Pakistan, is a tributary of the Jhelum, and the Court of Arbitration at The Hague held in 2013 that India could divert its water for generating power at the Kishanganga project while maintaining a minimum flow downstream.

The two head streams of the Chenab, the Chandra and the Bhaga, rise on either side of the Baralacha La in the Lahaul area of Himachal Pradesh and meet at Tandi, below which the united stream is called the Chandrabhaga or Chenab and flows on into Jammu and Kashmir.

The Sutlej rises in the Rakshastal area of Tibet, near Lake Mansarovar, and enters India through the Shipki La pass in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh, after which it flows past the Bhakra dam into the plains of Punjab.

The Jhelum rises from the spring at Verinag at the foot of the Pir Panjal in the south-east of the Kashmir valley, flows north-west past Srinagar, passes through the Wular Lake, the largest freshwater lake of the valley, and then enters Pakistan.

The Beas, which rises at Beas Kund near the Rohtang Pass, joins the Sutlej at Harike in the Tarn Taran district of Punjab, where a barrage has been built; the Indira Gandhi Canal, which carries water into the desert of Rajasthan, takes off from this barrage, and the wetland there…

The treaty signed on 12 December 1996 for a period of thirty years fixes the sharing of the dry-season flow of the Ganga at the Farakka Barrage in West Bengal between the first of January and the thirty-first of May, in periods of ten days, and provides for a joint…

The Jhelum rises from the spring at Verinag inside the Kashmir valley, so its source lies within India, unlike the other rivers offered.