Indus Water Treaty: Civil Services Mentor Magazine: November - 2016

Indus Water Treaty

Terrorist attack in Uri army base has shocked the nation. Indian government thought about various possibilities before the surgical strike by the government. Among the other options one of the option was invoking the Indus water treaty. PM of India conducted a review meeting for the same and also said that blood and water can't go together. Pakistan has time and again raised objection against the treaty. Pakistan had gone to the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague earlier with objections against the hydro power project of India in kishenganga river, which is a tributary of Jhelum. In 2013, the court gave the go-ahead to India on some conditions. Treaty provides for three-stage grievance redress. Disputes first raised at meetings, If unresolved, dispute is referred to neutral expert World Bank appoints. If that too fails, sides can apply for arbitration by the UN's court of arbitration.

The waters of the Indus basin begin in Tibet and the Himalayan mountains in the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. They flow from the hills through the states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir and Sindh, converging in Pakistan and emptying into the Arabian Sea south of Karachi. Where once there was only a narrow strip of irrigated land along these rivers, developments over the last century have created a large network of canals and storage facilities that provide water for more than 26 million acres (110,000 km2), the largest irrigated area of any one river system in the world.