For over six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty symbolised India’s strategic restraint despite wars and repeated terrorist attacks. After Pahalgam, that restraint has given way to a new doctrine in which water, national security and geopolitics are increasingly intertwined.
The Treaty That Outlived Wars, But Not Terrorism
On 23 July 2026, an otherwise routine United Nations Security Council debate on the governance of natural resources witnessed yet another sharp exchange between India and Pakistan. Islamabad accused New Delhi of “weaponising water” by keeping the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, while India’s Permanent Representative, Ambassador Parvathaneni Harish, delivered a firm response. Water cooperation, he said, could not return to normal unless Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” ended its support for cross-border terrorism.
It was not merely another diplomatic exchange. It reflected a profound shift in India’s policy.
For more than six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) stood as one of the world’s most enduring examples of cooperation between hostile neighbours. It survived the wars of 1965 and 1971, the Kargil conflict, the Parliament attack, the Mumbai carnage of 26/11, Uri, Pulwama and countless diplomatic breakdowns. Successive Indian governments, irrespective of political ideology, treated the treaty as an obligation that transcended military confrontation.
That continuity ended after the terrorist attack at Pahalgam in April 2025.
The decision of the Cabinet Committee on Security to place the treaty “in abeyance” marked one of the most consequential shifts in India’s Pakistan policy since the 1971 war. For the first time since the treaty came into force in 1960, New Delhi made it clear that cooperation over shared rivers could no longer remain insulated from national security.
The message was unmistakable: a relationship repeatedly scarred by terrorism cannot simultaneously expect business as usual in every other sphere.
This is not merely a dispute over water. It is about trust, deterrence, leverage and the changing rules of engagement between two nuclear neighbours.
A Treaty That Changed the Geography of South Asia
Signed in Karachi on 19 September 1960 after almost nine years of negotiations facilitated by the World Bank, the Indus Waters Treaty remains one of the most unusual international river agreements ever negotiated. Instead of sharing water every season, it permanently divided the six rivers of the Indus basin.
India received unrestricted rights over the eastern rivers Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, while Pakistan obtained the western rivers Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. The arrangement effectively gave Pakistan access to roughly four-fifths of the average annual flows of the Indus system, while India retained the remaining one-fifth, despite being the upper riparian.
At the time, the treaty was hailed as a diplomatic triumph. Critics in India argued that New Delhi had conceded too much, while supporters maintained that long-term regional stability outweighed immediate strategic advantage. History appeared to vindicate that optimism. The treaty endured through three wars, military mobilisations, diplomatic breakdowns and decades of hostility that would have rendered most international agreements unworkable.
Yet every treaty rests on an assumption. In this case, the assumption was that technical cooperation could remain insulated from national security.
Pahalgam shattered that assumption.
Beyond the Headlines: Can India Really Stop Pakistan’s Water?
No question has generated more speculation since the treaty was placed in abeyance.
The answer, however, lies less in politics than in engineering.
Contrary to popular perception, India cannot simply close a gate and deprive Pakistan of the waters of the Indus, Jhelum or Chenab. These are mighty Himalayan rivers sustained by glaciers, snowmelt and monsoon rainfall. Controlling them requires massive storage reservoirs capable of retaining water over extended periods. India does not yet possess that infrastructure because the treaty itself placed strict limitations on storage across the western rivers.
Most Indian hydroelectric projects including, Salal (690 MW), Baglihar (900 MW) and Kishanganga (330 MW) are run-of-the-river schemes. They generate electricity by diverting flowing water through turbines before returning it downstream. Their storage capacity is designed for daily operational regulation rather than long-term impoundment.
This is why predictions of Pakistan suddenly running dry are technically inaccurate.
Indeed, no credible hydrological assessment has demonstrated any dramatic reduction in Pakistan’s annual river inflows since India’s decision.
But dismissing the move as merely symbolic would be equally misleading.
The strategic significance lies elsewhere.
Under the treaty, India was obliged to share extensive hydrological information, notify Pakistan about specified engineering works and follow detailed procedures governing reservoir operations. Those mechanisms gave Pakistan a high degree of predictability regarding upstream river management.
With the treaty in abeyance, much of that certainty disappears.
India now enjoys greater operational flexibility in scheduling reservoir maintenance, desilting, flushing and water releases in accordance with its own priorities, subject to broader principles of dam safety and humanitarian responsibility.
For agriculture, timing is often as important as volume.
Water reaching canals a few days or weeks later than expected can disrupt sowing cycles, reservoir management and irrigation planning even if the total annual quantity remains broadly unchanged.
That operational flexibility–not an immediate ability to halt rivers constitutes India’s principal strategic gain.
Pakistan’s Water Vulnerability Runs Deeper Than India
The Indus basin is Pakistan’s economic lifeline.
The river system irrigates approximately 16 million hectares of agricultural land, supports one of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation networks and provides nearly 90 per cent of the country’s irrigation water. Agriculture contributes around 23 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP, employs almost 37 per cent of its workforce, and sustains the livelihoods of a majority of its rural population.
Few countries of comparable size depend so heavily on a single river system.
Ironically, Pakistan’s greatest water challenge has less to do with India’s recent decision than with its own structural weaknesses.
Independent assessments have repeatedly highlighted Pakistan’s limited water storage capacity, estimated at only about 30 days of average river flows. Ageing canals, significant transmission losses, inefficient flood irrigation and unsustainable groundwater extraction have compounded the problem. Climate change has further intensified uncertainty through erratic monsoons, changing snowfall patterns and accelerating glacial melt across the Himalayas.
Even if the treaty had remained fully operational, Pakistan would still face an urgent need to modernise its water management systems.
That reality is often overlooked in the political rhetoric surrounding the current dispute.
India’s Greatest Opportunity Lies at Home
While public debate has focused on what Pakistan stands to lose, the more important question is what India stands to gain.
For decades, India itself failed to fully utilise the rights available under the treaty. A combination of environmental clearances, difficult Himalayan terrain, funding constraints, lengthy litigation and repeated objections through the treaty’s dispute-resolution mechanisms delayed several strategically important projects in Jammu and Kashmir. As a result, a substantial portion of water allocated to India continued flowing downstream after generating relatively limited economic value.
That is now changing.
The Pakal Dul Hydroelectric Project (1,000 MW) on the Marusudar River, a tributary of the Chenab, is among India’s largest storage-based hydropower projects in the region. Alongside it, the Kiru (624 MW), Kwar (540 MW) and Ratle (850 MW) projects on the Chenab, together with the proposed Sawalkot Hydroelectric Project (1,856 MW), represent one of the most ambitious hydroelectric development programmes ever undertaken in Jammu and Kashmir. Collectively, these projects are expected to be around 5,000 MW of hydropower generation capacity.
Their importance extends far beyond electricity.
Every additional reservoir, tunnel, barrage and powerhouse enhances India’s ability to regulate river flows within permissible engineering limits, improve flood management, strengthen grid stability, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and create employment in a strategically sensitive border region. Contrary to sensational claims, these projects will not allow India to “turn off” Pakistan’s water. What they will do is ensure that India derives greater economic and strategic value from waters flowing through its own territory before they cross the international border.
That, perhaps, is the real policy shift.
For years, the debate centred on whether India should use water as a weapon. Increasingly, the discussion is moving towards a more constructive question: why should India continue underutilising a resource that the treaty itself permits it to develop?
The Legal Debate Is Far From Settled
Pakistan has consistently maintained that the Indus Waters Treaty contains no provision permitting unilateral suspension. It relies primarily on Article XII, which states that the treaty shall remain in force until terminated by another duly ratified treaty concluded for that purpose. Islamabad therefore argues that India’s decision to place the treaty in abeyance has no legal basis.
India’s position is more nuanced.
New Delhi has not announced withdrawal from the treaty, nor has it claimed that the agreement has ceased to exist. Instead, it argues that meaningful implementation of any treaty depends upon the broader principles of good faith, reciprocity and cooperation. Successive Indian governments continued honouring those principles despite repeated terrorist attacks. Following Pahalgam, India concluded that the underlying conditions that sustained such cooperation had fundamentally changed.
This legal debate is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
International law offers arguments supporting both positions, and no international court has delivered a definitive ruling on the precise circumstances now confronting the treaty. Moreover, the World Bank, often mistakenly described as the treaty’s guarantor, is not an enforcement authority. Its role is confined to facilitating specific dispute-resolution mechanisms provided under the agreement; it cannot compel either sovereign state to alter its national security policies.
For the foreseeable future, therefore, the issue will remain political rather than judicial.
Operation Sindoor and the Emergence of a New Doctrine
If Pahalgam marked the immediate trigger, Operation Sindoor demonstrated that India was prepared to adopt a broader framework linking national security with long-term strategic policy.
For decades, India’s response to terrorism largely followed a familiar pattern: diplomatic protests, limited military responses, international outreach and eventual restoration of routine engagement. Water cooperation continued almost untouched.
That compartmentalisation appears to have ended.
The message emerging from New Delhi is that terrorism can no longer coexist indefinitely with normal bilateral cooperation. Water, trade, connectivity and diplomatic engagement are increasingly being viewed through the same strategic lens. Whether this approach ultimately succeeds will depend upon future political developments, but there is little doubt that it represents one of the most significant changes in India’s Pakistan policy since the early 1970s.
Equally important, it reflects a broader transformation in global geopolitics.
Across the world, water security is rapidly becoming a strategic issue. China’s upstream position on the Brahmaputra, disputes along the Mekong, tensions over the Nile and disagreements involving the Tigris and Euphrates all demonstrate that rivers are no longer viewed solely as environmental or developmental assets. They are increasingly recognised as instruments of national resilience, economic security and geopolitical influence.
India’s evolving approach to the Indus basin must be understood within that wider context.
The Verdict: A Treaty in Transition, Not in Ruins
Much has been said over the past year about India “weaponising water”. The phrase is politically attractive, but it oversimplifies a far more complex reality.
India has neither acquired the ability to deprive Pakistan of the Indus system overnight nor attempted to engineer a humanitarian crisis. The rivers continue to flow, as they must. Engineering realities remain unchanged.
What has changed is the strategic framework governing those rivers.
For sixty-five years, the Indus Waters Treaty represented the belief that technical cooperation could survive even when political trust had collapsed. It became an extraordinary example of restraint in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
Following the Pahalgam terrorist attack and the decisions that followed, India has made it clear that such restraint cannot be unconditional.
The future of the treaty will depend not merely on hydrology, engineering or legal interpretation, but on whether the conditions necessary for meaningful cooperation can be restored. Until then, New Delhi appears determined to maximise the legitimate utilisation of its own water resources while retaining greater strategic flexibility than the treaty previously permitted.
The Indus Waters Treaty has not ended.
It has entered a new and uncertain chapter.
For Pakistan, that chapter underscores the urgent need to reform its own water management systems rather than rely solely on diplomatic arguments. For India, it presents an opportunity to accelerate infrastructure, optimise water utilisation and align river management more closely with national security objectives.
History may ultimately judge the Indus Waters Treaty not by how successfully it survived wars, but by how it adapted to an era in which terrorism, water security and geopolitics became inseparable.
One conclusion, however, is already unmistakable. The debate is no longer about whether India can stop Pakistan’s water. The more relevant question is whether South Asia can restore the trust that once made one of the world’s most successful river treaties possible.
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