How India Was Able To Weaponise The 'Indus Water Treaty' In Such A Short Time

The Indus River System Authority (IRSA) of Pakistan admitted yesterday, 5 May, that the early kharif crops of the Indus basin in Pakistan would suffer from a shortage of 21 per cent of water.

This press statement followed India holding the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in abeyance after the Pahalgam attack and implementing measures to withhold water, or withhold information on when water would be released or retained.

When India had stated that it would hold the IWT in abeyance, many had voiced their skepticism as to how India could execute its intentions in the short term, given the topography of the Indus basin.

However, the statement of the IRSA shows that Pakistan is already beginning to hurt.

This is because while India moved to hold the IWT in abeyance only after 22 April, it had been working on renegotiating the treaty and constructing infrastructure along the river since long.

This writer spoke to commentator Rohit Pathania on the issue for Swarajya's podcast show, What This Means. The following article derives from the conversation itself.

A Treaty Turns Tactical

Even in February 2025, India had formally re-issued a notice to renegotiate the Indus Water Treaty. Note that this was a full two months before the Pahalgam attack. In fact, the government had been signalling its intention to renegotiate the Treaty since 2019.

For a pact that had survived wars and decades of hostility, this sudden shift signalled something deeper: New Delhi was no longer willing to keep water out of its strategic toolkit even in 'peace time'.

The treaty itself, under Article 12, permits renegotiation at any time. Moreover, India has consistently remained within its rights to undertake non-storage — or run-of-river — projects for power generation.

Yet, until 2019, it had not fully exploited even its uncontested share of the eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas and Sutlej), let alone the permissible uses of the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum and Chenab). Consider Ravi: only now are the Shahpur Kandi dam near Pathankot and the Ujh multipurpose project in Kathua nearing completion — the first serious efforts to harness a river whose waters had previously flowed unchecked into Pakistan, giving Islamabad more than it was ever allocated.

While Pakistan had long treated the treaty as leverage to limit Indian infrastructure development, India had stuck to its commitments, even paying for Pakistan's dam systems in the 1960s. But by 2025, the calculus has changed.

What allowed India to execute its intentions quickly on the ground was that the transformation since 2019 wasn’t just rhetorical. Key hydropower projects — Ratle, Pakal Dul, and others in Jammu and Kashmir — were fast-tracked. These are run-of-river projects, completely in line with treaty provisions, yet, they were long delayed due to legal, logistical, and political bottlenecks.

Simultaneously, India stopped issuing month-ahead water release forecasts. Advances in telemetry made such disclosures obsolete. Notices to Pakistan could now come less than 12 hours before water was released — or stopped. These changes, while technical, signalled a crucial shift: India no longer felt bound by the treaty’s voluntary courtesy.

Pakistan’s Growing Vulnerability

Agriculture makes up roughly 25 per cent of Pakistan's GDP and employs about 45 per cent of the population. Without predictable water flows, these sectors wobble.

Recent protests in Sindh over a canal project aimed at diverting water to Bahawalpur underlined this fragility. Sindhi populations threatened secession if deprived of water, forcing Islamabad to shelve the plan. That canal, incidentally, also served as a military trench in Pakistani defence strategy.

Can Pakistan approach international fora against India's actions?

Much of the legal framework surrounding transnational rivers rests on paper — not practice. China ignores Mekong River Commission norms. The United States treats its water obligations to Mexico differently than its domestic rivers. Pakistan’s appeals to international law thus would likely ring hollow.

Ironically, India funded nearly 15 per cent of Pakistan’s original IWT infrastructure. That generosity rarely finds mention in Islamabad’s rhetoric. In most treaty disputes, neutral experts and the World Bank have ruled in India’s favour.

And besides all of that, this is not India violating the treaty. It is India enforcing it, robustly and to its own benefit — after decades of one-sided restraint.

So What Now?

This isn’t a clock fight. It’s a calendar fight — one that matches Pakistan’s decades-long approach to India.

India’s next challenge lies not in escalation but consolidation. If renegotiation happens, India will enter with a stronger hand — new dams, better control, and deeper technical mastery. Any new treaty will necessarily include changes on the Ravi and clarify grey zones on Chenab tributaries.

Can Beijing Throw A Surprise On The Brahmaputra?

Unlikely. While China has built infrastructure on rivers like the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej, the bulk of river flow — especially the Brahmaputra’s — enters India downstream, beyond Beijing’s reach. Infrastructure in Tibet is hard to build, and most Chinese river projects can’t alter major flows into India in any significant way.

China has never joined the Mekong River Commission, often disregards regional treaties, and manipulates data.

During crises like Pulwama in 2019 too, China maintained a studied neutrality. With an ageing population and export-dependent economy, it needs a neutral India more than a volatile subcontinent.

India has, in short order, transformed the Indus Water Treaty from a diplomatic formality into a strategic lever. Without violating a single provision, it has changed the game — legally, politically, hydrologically.

This is not retaliation. It’s realism. It’s not short-term payback. It’s long-term pressure.

You can listen to the full conversation with Rohit Pathania here.