Indus Waters Treaty, 1960: The Indus River System, How the Waters Were Divided, India’s Rights, Kishenganga and Ratle Disputes, and the 2025 Abeyance (UPSC Notes + PYQs)

The Indus river system

The Indus rises near Lake Mansarovar in Tibet, flows north-west through Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan, turns south through Pakistan and enters the Arabian Sea near Karachi. Its main tributaries, from west to east, are the Jhelum (rising at Verinag in Kashmir), the Chenab (formed by the Chandra and Bhaga in Himachal), the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej (rising near Rakas Tal in Tibet). The Beas joins the Sutlej at Harike in Punjab before the Sutlej flows into Pakistan. The basin is shared by China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan (the Kabul river), and is fed heavily by glaciers and snow, so it is among the basins most exposed to climate change.

How the treaty came about

Partition put the headworks of Punjab’s canals in India and the irrigated lands in Pakistan. In April 1948 India briefly stopped flows into some canals, alarming Pakistan, whose farm economy depended on them. After years of talks led by the World Bank, which also arranged funds for new dams and canals in Pakistan, Nehru and Ayub Khan signed the treaty in Karachi in 1960. It is often praised as one of the most durable water treaties in the world, having survived the wars of 1965, 1971 and 1999.

Main provisions

So Pakistan got about 80% of the system’s water. India also paid about £62 million towards replacement works in Pakistan.

India’s projects and the disputes

India long did not even use its full share of the eastern rivers; some water flowed unused into Pakistan, which projects such as the Shahpurkandi dam on the Ravi (completed 2024) and the Ujh project are meant to stop. On the western rivers, Pakistan has objected to the design of Indian hydropower projects, claiming they give India the ability to hold back or release water:

• Salal (Chenab): settled bilaterally in 1978.
• Baglihar (Chenab): a Neutral Expert largely upheld India’s design in 2007.
• Kishenganga (Kishenganga/Neelum, a Jhelum tributary): a Court of Arbitration in 2013 allowed India to divert water for power, subject to a minimum flow.
• Ratle (Chenab) and Kishenganga again: in 2016 Pakistan sought a Court of Arbitration while India sought a Neutral Expert. In 2022 the World Bank started both processes at once. India took part only in the Neutral Expert process, and rejected the Court’s rulings as illegal.
• Tulbul navigation project at Wular Lake: suspended since 1987 after Pakistan objected.

Towards abeyance

India served notices in January 2023 and August 2024 seeking to modify the treaty, citing Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism, changed population and energy needs, and the parallel dispute processes. On 23 April 2025, the day after the Pahalgam attack, the Cabinet Committee on Security decided to hold the treaty in abeyance “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”. India stopped sharing flood and flow data, suspended Commission meetings, began flushing reservoirs at Salal and Baglihar outside treaty schedules, and fast-tracked projects such as Pakal Dul, Kiru, Kwar and Ratle on the Chenab. Pakistan called any stoppage of water an “act of war”.

Can India stop the water?

Not quickly. The western rivers carry huge flows in summer, and India has little storage on them; run-of-the-river plants cannot hold water for long. Large dams and canals to divert water to Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan would take a decade or more and face tough terrain. What India can do now is use its full rights, time reservoir operations, stop data sharing that helps Pakistan plan for floods, and build storage. The value of abeyance is as leverage and as a signal that the treaty’s generous terms depended on peaceful relations.

Legal and diplomatic questions

• The treaty has no termination clause, but the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (which India has not ratified, though parts reflect customary law) allows suspension for a fundamental change of circumstances or material breach.
• The World Bank says its role is limited to facilitation.
• China, upstream of India on the Indus and Brahmaputra, watches closely; India must avoid setting precedents that China could use against it.
• Downstream human costs in Pakistan’s Punjab and Sindh could affect international opinion.

Climate change and the basin

The treaty was written for the rivers of the 1950s. Today the Upper Indus basin is changing fast. Glaciers in the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush are losing mass, and studies by ICIMOD and others warn that meltwater flows may rise until about the middle of the century and then fall as glaciers shrink. Monsoon and western disturbance patterns are also becoming more erratic, bringing both floods, as in Pakistan in 2022, and longer dry spells. Groundwater in Indian and Pakistani Punjab is being pumped far faster than it recharges. None of this is covered by a treaty that only divides rivers by name and sets design limits on dams. Experts on both sides have suggested that any future arrangement should include joint flood forecasting, shared glacier monitoring, environmental flows and basin-wide planning, ideas that are hard to pursue while political ties are frozen.

Way forward

Build storage and canals on the western rivers within a planned national framework, use the eastern rivers fully, modernise irrigation in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, keep the legal case clear by linking abeyance to terrorism, and leave the door open to a renegotiated treaty that reflects climate change and present needs.

PYQ trend

Prelims asks the rivers, their sources and tributaries, and treaty basics. Mains GS-II asks water diplomacy and India-Pakistan relations.

Indus Waters Treaty: UPSC angle

Indus Waters Treaty UPSC PYQs (Prelims)

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