Indus Waters Treaty: Rivers, Clauses and Disputes

A transboundary river is one whose basin is shared by two or more countries, so that what one of them does upstream is felt downstream in another. India sits in the middle of such a system: the Indus and its tributaries rise in Tibet and in the Himalaya and flow out into Pakistan, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra gather water from Nepal, China and Bhutan and leave India for Bangladesh, and smaller rivers cross the borders of Myanmar and Nepal. Each of these flows is governed by a treaty or an agreement, and the best known of them is the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, which examiners ask about every year.

The Indus Waters Treaty, 1960

The treaty was signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960 by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for India and President Mohammad Ayub Khan for Pakistan, with the World Bank as the third signatory. It came after nine years of negotiation that began in 1952 under the Bank's good offices. Its method is division rather than sharing: the three eastern rivers, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej, were allotted to India for unrestricted use, and the three western rivers, the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab, to Pakistan. On the western rivers India keeps limited rights. It may use their water for domestic and non-consumptive purposes such as navigation and fishing, for a specified area of irrigation, and for generating electricity from run-of-the-river plants that do not hold back the flow, and it may build a limited volume of storage. Roughly four-fifths of the system's water lies in the western rivers, so the arrangement gives Pakistan the larger volume and India the smaller but completely free one.

How the treaty is worked

The treaty creates a Permanent Indus Commission, with one commissioner appointed by each country, which exchanges data, inspects works and is required to meet regularly. Disputes move through three steps. A question is first taken up by the commission; if it cannot settle it, a difference may be referred to a Neutral Expert appointed with the help of the World Bank; and a dispute that goes beyond the Neutral Expert's list of subjects may be placed before a Court of Arbitration. The steps have all been used. The Salal project on the Chenab was settled by agreement in the 1970s, the Baglihar dam on the Chenab went to a Neutral Expert, the Swiss engineer Raymond Lafitte, who gave his determination in 2007, and the Kishanganga project on a tributary of the Jhelum went to a Court of Arbitration at The Hague, which in 2013 allowed India to divert water for power while requiring a minimum flow downstream. The treaty has no expiry date: it stays in force until both governments replace it by another ratified treaty.

The rivers of the Indus system

The Indus rises in Tibet near Lake Mansarovar, enters India in Ladakh, and leaves for Pakistan, where it is joined by the other five rivers before reaching the Arabian Sea. The Jhelum rises from the spring at Verinag in Kashmir and passes through the Wular Lake. The Chenab is formed at Tandi in Himachal Pradesh by the meeting of the Chandra and the Bhaga. The Ravi and the Beas both rise in the Kullu hills near the Rohtang Pass, and the Beas joins the Sutlej at Harike in Punjab. The Sutlej rises from the Rakshastal area near Mansarovar in Tibet and enters India through the Shipki La pass in Himachal Pradesh, making it, with the Indus and the Brahmaputra, one of the three great rivers of the subcontinent that begin outside India.

India's other river treaties

With Bangladesh, the Ganga Waters Treaty was signed on 12 December 1996 for thirty years and fixes the sharing of the flow at the Farakka Barrage in the dry season from January to May, with a joint committee to observe the flows; the sharing of the Teesta has been under discussion for years without an agreement. With Nepal, the Kosi Agreement of 1954 and the Gandak Agreement of 1959 provided for barrages and canals, and the Mahakali Treaty of 1996 covers the Sarada barrage, the Tanakpur barrage and the proposed Pancheshwar project on the river that forms part of the boundary. With China, which lies upstream of the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej, India has no water-sharing treaty; the arrangement is confined to memoranda under which China supplies hydrological data in the flood season. The Brahmaputra itself rises as the Tsangpo in Tibet, enters Arunachal Pradesh as the Siang or Dihang, takes the name Brahmaputra in Assam after the Dibang and the Lohit join it, and becomes the Jamuna in Bangladesh, where it meets the Padma and finally the Meghna.

Why the topic matters in exams

The Indus system supplies the canal agriculture of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, and the Bhakra dam on the Sutlej, the Pong dam on the Beas, the Ranjit Sagar dam on the Ravi and the Indira Gandhi Canal taking Sutlej and Beas water into the Thar are all built on India's eastern-river entitlement. The question of transboundary rivers therefore joins physical geography with economic geography and with international relations, and a question may come from any of the three: the source of a river, the year of a treaty, the body that settles a dispute, or the project that was taken to arbitration.