Kashmir’s New Story

EARLY INTO Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term in office in 2014, he sought a detailed report on the implementation and implications of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) to assess potential benefits for India, even within the remit of the treaty, if the waters of major riv­ers that flow largely unchecked into Pakistan were har­nessed. Modi’s previous visits to Jammu & Kashmir and his interactions in both regions had stimulated a deeper curiosity about the water sharing pact and complaints that Kashmir had been deprived of its rightful claim to the western rivers to the detriment of the local population. An initial assessment revealed the possibil­ity of constructing five dams with reservoir capacities at costs that did not seem prohibitive. In May 2018, the prime minister inaugu­rated the Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project on the river that is a tributary of the Chenab. Pakistan had objected to the project when it was announced in 2009 and the International Court of Arbitration finally ruled in India’s favour in 2013. On the day he dedicated the 330 megawatt (MW) project, Modi also laid the foundation of the 1,000MW Pakal Dul Hydro Electric Project, the largest in J&K and the first to envisage a storage capacity. Interestingly enough, the in­ternal exercise was conducted at a time when the Modi government was still exploring possible engagement with Pakistan.

Projects taken up by India, as mandated by the IWT provisions, were run-of-river, such as the one on Kishanganga that diverted water to an underground power plant with the discharge flow­ing into the Wular Lake. The Kishanganga project provides 13 per cent free power to J&K and the under-construction 167-metre high Pakal Dul Dam on the Marusudar river, also a tributary of the Chenab, will on completion deliver not only 12 per cent free power but also improve water availability during the lean season. As of February 2025, the physical progress on the project was 67 per cent. The World Bank-brokered IWT assigns a mean flow of 80 million acre-feet (maf) of water from the western rivers of Indus, Chenab and Jhelum to Pakistan and 33 maf to India from the eastern rivers of Sutlej, Beas and Ravi to India. Often hailed as a rare agreement that survived upheavals of India-Pakistan relations, including wars, the treaty is regarded as unfair by many in J&K who feel it stunts regional growth. The study carried out under the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in 2014-15 concluded that there could be significant benefits to J&K as well as Punjab. The cost of developing a select number of projects was no higher than ₹15,000 crore. Soon, ongoing projects were speeded up and Modi inaugurated the second stage of the Baglihar Hydroelectric Power Project in November 2015. The first stage was operationalised in October 2008, by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The Modi government’s decision to suspend the IWT following the terrorist attack at Pahalgam which resulted in the deaths of 27 non-Muslim tourists segregated on the basis of their religion frees the upcoming 800MW Bursar dam of the constraints of being a run-of-river project and releases its storage potential for enhanced use. Labelled a “national” project, the Bursar dam is also located on the Marusudar river, which is the Chenab’s biggest tributary. Projects like Bursar have been attacked by a section of activists who have raised concerns about the ecological impact while a local resistance has also been organised. Power projects in mountainous re­gions do require careful scrutiny but the objectors have a political agenda too. As per a NABARD report, technically India could irrigate up to 13 lakh acres of land in J&K (even before suspending the IWT). This target could be achieved with optimum storage capacity. Yet, a loaded narrative has emerged with projects like Bursar cast as a bid by the Centre to impose its will on the region. The new resolve after the Pa­halgam attack should, however, accelerate these projects that do indeed have a political significance, one that does not suit separatist thinking. Taken together, hydro-power projects on the western rivers with an added storage component are intended to bring about a sweeping transformation of the agriculture and economy of J&K, multiplying power supply and increasing irrigation manifold. It is no less than a strategy to bind the people of the Union territory in a new compact of development and growth in partnership with the Centre. This explains the unease in Pakistan as well as the emergence of political objectors whose agendas are not hard to discern.

Jammu & Kashmir’s Digest of Statistics 2023-24, a very useful compendium of the Union territory’s economic activity, shows that the total area under irrigation has actu­ally declined since 2021-22 from 4.83 lakh hectares to 4.73 lakh hectares in 2023-24. Jammu leads all other districts by a large margin with 57,000 hectares under irrigation, which accounts for a goodly chunk of the total area. Budgam and Baram­ulla have 35,000 and 32,000 hectares under irrigation and none of the other districts touch the 30,000 hectare mark. On average, the Valley districts do better but not by much. “Canals, which are locally called Kuls, account for about 84% of the total irrigated area,” the report states. In 1950-51, the area irrigated under differ­ent crops was 2.63 lakh hectares and this rose to 494 lakh hect­ares by 2018-19. After the abrogation of Article 370 with regard to J&K, land under irrigation has occasionally registered small increases but has fallen since 2021-22.

The statistics tell a story of neglect and gross underutilisation as the Union territory’s irrigated areas fall short of even modest estimates of the region’s potential. A sharp increase in the public and private fleets of vehicles matches the growth in tourism. The growth in the number of vehicles operating in J&K has acceler­ated from 19,85,287 in 2019-20 to 25,67,185 in 2023-24. Tourist visits rose from 34.7 lakh in 2020 to 211.8 lakh in 2023, serving to highlight the lag in agriculture and irrigation and the harmful impact of the IWT on J&K.

Could things have been different? Fresh research into the cir­cumstances in which the IWT was agreed to by India is revealing a sorry turn of events. In the negotiation of the treaty, as with much else that transpired in the early years of independence, India’s de­cisions were strongly influenced by Jawaharlal Nehru’s sense of internationalism that sometimes resulted in misplaced generos­ity. Even a confidant like General BM Kaul, who faced the flak for China’s humiliation of India in 1962, noted in his book The Untold Story that Nehru delayed reclaiming Goa from the Portuguese fear­ing the reaction in international circles. In his forthcoming book, Uttam Sinha, senior fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and one of India’s leading experts on trans-boundary rivers, explores the differences between Nehru and NV Gadgil—then minister of works, mines and power—over initial water sharing with Pakistan. The book to be published, titled ‘Ebb and Flow: Indus Waters Treaty and India-Pakistan Relations’, examines Pakistan’s urgency in seeking a water sharing arrange­ment after experiencing severe distress during the 1947-48 war over Kashmir. The initial draft prepared by Gadgil with the assistance of Punjab’s chief irrigation engineer AN Khosla proposed a five-year accommodation period. Nehru amended the draft to do away with a time limit. Nehru’s preoccupation with how India’s position would play out abroad is apparent in a letter he wrote to then East Punjab Chief Minister Gopi Chand Bhargava: “I am greatly worried at the stoppage of canal water which used to flow to Lahore district. Whatever, the legal and technical merit may be, there is little doubt that this act will injure us greatly in the world’s eyes, and more spe­cifically when food production is so urgently needed everywhere. I have no doubt that water will have to be allowed in future because such stoppages cannot occur normally unless there is actual war.” But while agreeing to Pakistan’s need for water from the Indus basin when the IWT was finalised a decade or so later, the terms failed to protect the rights of J&K and Punjab to fulfil their needs.

Not only did the IWT, when it was inked in 1960, sign away rights to store and use waters of the western rivers, it also failed to draw lessons from Pakistan’s conduct in the preceding years. Sinha points out that in July 1948 Pakistan began secretly digging a canal to divert waters from the Sutlej to the Depalpur Canal, “threaten­ing” India’s water needs from the Ferozepur headworks. Khosla, an unsentimental Punjabi, immediately saw through Pakistan’s dis­ingenuous submission that its actions were merely a “precaution­ary measure”. With Gadgil’s backing, Khosla proposed a barrage at Harike, where the Beas and the Sutlej converge. “This plan also envisaged creating the Rajasthan Canal [renamed the Indira Gandhi Canal in 1984] to irrigate three million acres of desert land… Taking matters into his own hands, Gadgil swiftly approved the project, sanctioned funds from his own ministry and initiated construc­tion within a week. The Harike Barrage, located at the legendary site where Sage Vyas completed the Mahabharata, was a strategic move to counter Pakistan’s action of digging a canal. It also meant India had an additional structure which Pakistan feared could hinder the flow of water to its territory,” Sinha writes. Predictably, Pakistan threatened to take matters to the United Nations Security Council, seeking to internationalise an essentially bilateral matter. “A frantic Nehru called an emergency meeting… Gadgil candidly expressed his views that yielding to Pakistan would only signal India’s weakness while Nehru insisted on being generous. Gadgil recounts ‘I retorted generosity grows through gratitude and what is the good of throwing pearls… My statement provoked Nehru to ask if he had any rights as Prime Minister (and) I replied as a mem­ber of the Cabinet I too have a right to say what I feel…’ There was palpable unease between Nehru and Gadgil over water sharing with Pakistan,” writes Sinha. In the end, Nehru prevailed and Pakistan was let off the hook.

Intrigues within the PMO made the going difficult for Gadgil. Nehru’s controversial private secretary MO Mathai claimed the minister was up to “monkey tricks” and observers noted that Nehru was sometimes a poor judge of character, being susceptible to flattery and manipulation of his view of his role in interna­tional affairs. Gadgil lost his portfolio and after 1952 was out of government, having been appointed Punjab governor in 1955. Sinha notes that India’s water security and Gadgil’s ca­reer were intertwined. “As coincidence would have it, another big dam, like the Bhakra, was planned, this time on the Beas. The project aimed to take the waters through a canal from the lake near Pong. ‘Thus the Sutleg and Beas will unite at Bhakra dam. Nature brought about their union on the plains at Harike. The Punjab engineers will now unite them amidst the Himalayan mountains,’ Gadgil wrote.”

It was apparent that misplaced idealism—this would be the more charitable explanation—or, more worryingly, a se­rious error in judging an adversary resulted in an ill-advised IWT. Since its inception, Pakistan has continuously raised ob­jections to big and small Indian projects claiming a violation of the treaty in a bid to ‘internationalise’ the Kashmir dis­pute and stall development that it feared would weaken anti-India sentiments.

Evidence of just how much the IWT disadvantaged India is stark and indisputable. Writing in Down to Earth magazine, Ravindra Jaybhaye and Rahul Lad of Pune’s Savitribai Phule University said that despite J&K’s economy being mainly dependent on agriculture and nearly 70 per cent of the people depending on the sector for their income, directly or indirect­ly, the territory’s canal system has barely improved. In Kashmir, canals are the primary irrigation method and have witnessed dis­mal development. “The area irrigated by canals was 256,000 ha in 1960-1961, and it grew by less than four per cent to 265,930 ha. Additionally, the net sown area grew just by 19 per cent, from 614,000 ha in 1955-1956 to 736,000 ha in 2020-21,” they write. It is a terrible record of non-development and it is no surprise that re­gional sentiment in both Jammu and Kashmir has been united in its disgruntlement, leading to the state Assembly, in 2002, passing a resolution seeking a renegotiation of the terms of the IWT. Of a potential of 20,000MW, barely 3,500MW has been developed.

The 2016 terror attack on the Army camp at Uri moved the Modi government to accelerate its search for a new look at the IWT and while there is a focus on the ‘sharing’ aspect of the wa­ters, not enough attention has been paid to the far-reaching eco­nomic, political and social impact of fully harnessing the waters of the entire Indus basin. Even in the immediate context, Pakistan would be disadvantaged if India stopped sharing information on water flows and hydrological data. Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir’s short-sighted and poorly considered decision to up the terrorism ante and let loose jihadist killers on innocent tourists at Pahalgam has set in motion serious, long-term consequences for Pakistan. In the immediate term, Indian security forces are determined to hunt down the killer squad, which possibly included a former Pakistan army soldier. This will be followed by the likely use of military force against targets in Pakistan. But in the longer term, the discussion, and indeed ground realities in Kashmir, might be reshaped by the overdue decision to cast the IWT into the dustbin of history.

BeasChenabIndia-Pakistan relationsIndus Water TreatyKashmirNV GadgilPahalgamReasiSalal damterror attack