The Politics of Water Begins at Home

When India announced after the Pahalgam attack that the Indus Waters Treaty would be held in abeyance, the decision was presented as a strategic blow. The message was simple: water would now become leverage.

But water has a habit of exposing political illusions. A treaty can allocate rivers between countries. It cannot make a state or province share water with another state or province. It cannot regulate a tubewell. It cannot maintain a canal. It cannot drain a waterlogged field. It cannot force politicians to tell farmers that the crop they are growing is no longer sustainable.

That is why the debate over the Indus Waters Treaty needs a more honest question. Not merely whether India’s announced abeyance hurts Pakistan, or whether full compliance benefits regional stability, but whether either position solves the internal water crises of the two countries.

The answer is no.

The Indus Waters Treaty governs water relations between India and Pakistan. It does not govern Punjab and Haryana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Sindh and Punjab, KP and the federation, or Balochistan and Sindh. Those disputes are domestic. Their causes are domestic. Their solutions are domestic.

Full compliance with the treaty preserves an external order. India’s announced abeyance weakens the treaty’s cooperative architecture and injects uncertainty into an already mistrustful basin. But neither option repairs the internal machinery through which water is actually stored, measured, allocated, priced, delivered and wasted.

India’s own interstate disputes make the point clearly.

The Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal is perhaps the strongest example. It is a canal meant to convey Haryana’s share of Ravi-Beas waters through Punjab by linking the Sutlej system with the Yamuna system. The rivers and the canal lie entirely within India’s domestic water-sharing framework. Pakistan is not involved. The Indus Waters Treaty is not the constraint.Haryana completed its portion. Punjab did not complete the project in a manner that made water-sharing operational. Courts intervened. Orders were passed. State legislation was challenged. But water did not flow as intended.

If India’s water problem were truly caused by the Indus Waters Treaty, then one would expect its own internal options to have been maximised first. The opposite is visible. One of India’s most obvious domestic water-sharing projects remains stalled not because of Pakistan, but because Punjab will not bear the political cost of sharing water with Haryana.

The same pattern appears outside the Indus basin. The Cauvery dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu has survived tribunal awards, Supreme Court intervention and the creation of a management authority. The Krishna dispute has moved through tribunals, state bifurcation, ad hoc arrangements and continuing litigation. The Mahadayi dispute shows how environmental concerns, drinking water claims and state politics can keep an award from becoming operational.

None of these disputes is solved by putting the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. That will not make Karnataka release water to Tamil Nadu. It will not settle Telangana and Andhra Pradesh’s claims over Krishna waters. It will not resolve Goa’s ecological concerns over Mahadayi. It will not make Punjab share Ravi-Beas waters with Haryana.

India’s internal water crisis is not only a scarcity crisis. It is scarcity made worse by governance failure: unregulated groundwater extraction, power subsidies that encourage over-pumping, procurement policies that reward water-intensive crops, weak enforcement, contested data and political reluctance to discipline state-level constituencies.

The treaty can be held in abeyance. The tubewell will still run.

Pakistan’s case is different in one important respect. Pakistan’s irrigation planning is more directly exposed to uncertainty on the western rivers. For Pakistan, full compliance with the treaty provides predictability, data exchange and a framework within which the Indus system can be planned. India’s announced abeyance therefore creates real uncertainty.

But even in Pakistan, the treaty does not distribute water among provinces. That role belongs to the 1991 Water Apportionment Accord, IRSA, provincial irrigation departments, barrages, canals, storage rules, telemetry systems and political trust among provinces.

Full compliance with the treaty does not solve Pakistan’s internal water disputes. It gives Pakistan a stable external baseline. But the internal problems remain.

Punjab’s groundwater depletion is not caused by India. It is caused by crop choices, tubewell proliferation, weak regulation and the political economy of irrigated agriculture. Sindh’s lower-riparian concerns over flows below Kotri, sea intrusion and timing of releases are real. But Sindh’s drainage, waterlogging and maintenance problems also require internal governance reform. KP’s inability to utilise its full allocated share is linked to infrastructure gaps and federal funding failures. Balochistan’s dependence on water conveyed through Sindh raises legitimate measurement and verification concerns.

None of these issues is resolved merely because India complies with the treaty.

Nor is Pakistan’s storage problem an Indian creation. The 1991 Accord recognised the need for future storages. Yet storage has remained politically contested because provinces do not trust how stored water will be operated. The question is not only where a dam can be built. The question is who will control releases, who will measure them, who will verify them, and who will believe the data.

That is why India’s announced abeyance may be especially damaging for Pakistan’s internal politics. It does not create Pakistan’s interprovincial mistrust, but it deepens it. Once external uncertainty rises, every internal shortage becomes harder to interpret. Is the reduced flow caused by Indian action, seasonal hydrology, IRSA’s allocation decision, Punjab’s withdrawals, Sindh’s conveyance losses, poor measurement, or lack of storage?

In such an environment, every province can find a convenient explanation outside itself. The federation can blame India. Sindh can blame Punjab. Punjab can blame system losses. KP can blame the federation. Balochistan can blame conveyance through Sindh. Everyone can be partly right, and yet the system as a whole can remain unreformed.

This is the danger of externalising water politics. It gives governments an enemy, but not a solution.

Full compliance with the Indus Waters Treaty is therefore valuable, but not because it solves domestic water governance. It is valuable because it preserves a predictable external environment. It keeps communication channels open. It sustains data exchange. It reduces the risk that every seasonal shortage becomes a strategic crisis. It gives both countries space to do the harder work at home.

India’s announced abeyance does the opposite. It may create a sense of strategic drama, but by itself it does not create new water where it is needed. It does not reform agriculture. It does not price electricity rationally. It does not regulate groundwater. It does not make canal systems more efficient. It does not settle tribunal disputes in India or Accord disputes in Pakistan. It does not restore the Indus Delta or complete the Sutlej-Yamuna Link. It only adds uncertainty to systems already weakened by mistrust.

The deeper lesson is the same on both sides of the border.

India’s water security will not be secured by threatening Pakistan if Indian states cannot share water with each other. Pakistan’s water security will not be secured by blaming India if Pakistani provinces cannot measure, allocate and manage water among themselves.

The Indus Waters Treaty can stabilise or destabilise the outer frame. It cannot govern the inner reality.

That inner reality is domestic. It lies in state legislatures, provincial assemblies, irrigation departments, farm lobbies, electricity subsidies, procurement policies, groundwater rules, telemetry systems, drainage channels, canal maintenance budgets and the political courage to enforce limits.

The treaty is important. But it is not the tap.

Water security in South Asia will not begin with abeyance. It will not be completed by compliance. It will begin when both India and Pakistan admit that the most difficult water disputes are not only across the border.

They are at home.