India’s IWT action long-overdue correction of asymmetric framework based on goodwill

Cape Town, May 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) India’s action on the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) seeks to protect its legitimate interests in the Indus Basin and should not be viewed as aggression, a report has highlighted.

It said that India's actions should be viewed as a long-overdue correction of an asymmetric framework based on goodwill that was never returned.

Since the signing of the treaty, Pakistan has repeatedly used its dispute resolution provisions as a strategic instrument to delay and hinder development rather than genuine dispute resolution, Pradeep Kumar Saxena, former Indian Commissioner for Indus Waters, wrote in South African newspaper Independent Online.

He said that virtually every significant hydropower project India has proposed on the Western rivers — including those explicitly permitted under the treaty's provisions — has faced formal objections from Pakistan, along with technical challenges, or arbitration referrals.

“Projects including Baglihar, Kishenganga, Pakal Dul, and Tulbul have all been subjected to prolonged Pakistani challenges. In several cases, Pakistan has acknowledged the potential benefits of Indian projects for regulated water flow – including flood moderation – while simultaneously opposing them,” Saxena stated.

“This pattern reveals that Pakistani objections are not genuinely about treaty compliance; they are about preventing Indian development in Jammu and Kashmir, regardless of the legal merits,” he added.

According to the expert, Pakistan has taken advantage of India's consistent compliance with the treaty to "construct and disseminate" an international narrative depicting India as a potential "water aggressor".

Pakistani officials, academics, and diplomatic channels have repeatedly invoked the idea of India “weaponising water” against Pakistan — citing the very treaty that India has adhered to.

“This narrative — posing the upper riparian as a threat — has proved remarkably effective with international audiences unfamiliar with the treaty's history. Pakistan has used it to generate diplomatic pressure, attract multilateral sympathy, and constrain India's ability to assert its legitimate treaty rights,” Saxena stated.

“The singular irony of this strategy is that India has not committed a single violation of the treaty — not during the 1965 war, not during the 1971 war, not during the 1999 Kargil conflict, and not at any other point in the sixty-five years of the treaty's operation. India has maintained compliance even as Pakistan has used its territory to conduct state-sponsored terrorism against India,” he further highlighted.

Saxena stressed that Indian goodwill was systematically exploited, resulting in an agreement that was inequitable from its very inception.

He noted that India, nevertheless, ceded 80 per cent of the water; paid £62 million (approximately $2.5 billion in present value) to facilitate the agreement; accepted one-sided operational restrictions within its own territory; and has maintained strict compliance for 65 years — amid multiple wars and sustained cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.

“In return, India has received a Treaty agreed to in good faith that Pakistan uses as a tool of developmental obstruction, a 'water war' narrative it deploys internationally with no factual basis, and the permanent underdevelopment of vast tracts of Indian territory,” Saxena stated.

Source: IANS