Water can be as potent a strategic instrument as territory in India-Pakistan relations. Discuss with reference to the Indus Waters Treaty.

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), 1960, brokered by the World Bank, allots the Eastern Rivers — Ravi, Beas, Sutlej — to India and the Western Rivers — Indus, Jhelum, Chenab — largely to Pakistan [1]. Long insulated from conflict, it has since 2025 become a lever of statecraft, showing that river flows can rival territory in strategic weight.

Why water carries strategic potency

• Dependence asymmetry: Pakistan draws on the Indus system for about 93% of its total water use and 80% of its 16 million hectares of farmland, supporting some 237 million people and roughly a quarter of its GDP [2].
• Upstream position: as the upper riparian on the western rivers, India holds a permanent geographic advantage that cannot be reversed by force, unlike a territorial line.
• Coercion below the war threshold: after the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025, the Cabinet Committee on Security held the Treaty "in abeyance" until Pakistan credibly abjures cross-border terrorism [3] — pressure applied without a shot fired.

How the IWT frames the contest

• Legal-diplomatic front: India rejects the Hague-seated Court of Arbitration on the Kishenganga and Ratle projects as illegally constituted by the World Bank, holding it has no jurisdiction, and has never appeared before it [4].
• Developmental front: abeyance frees India from run-of-the-river restraints, enabling storage, reservoir flushing and redesigned hydro projects in Jammu & Kashmir.

Limits to the instrument

• India presently lacks the storage and canal capacity to materially withhold western-river flows; leverage is largely signalling.
• Non-recognition of arbitral findings invites scrutiny of India's own reliance on international law, and sets precedents usable by upper riparians elsewhere.

Water, then, is potent but not costless — it delivers durable, calibrated leverage while territory delivers only escalation. India's abeyance is a suspension, not termination, deliberately preserving room for restoration once terrorism ends. The way forward lies in pairing this leverage with accelerated storage and basin infrastructure, so that strategic signalling matures into genuine, treaty-consistent capability.