Indus Water Treaty (IWT) – a trans-boundary water sharing treaty between India and Pakistan that was hailed for withstanding even the most difficult times including the 1965 and 1971 wars and the Kargil conflict of 1999, is being threatened to be scraped by India. The reason – Modi government due to its own domestic political compulsions find it convenient to threaten water wars against Pakistan.
Water emerged as a major fault line between India and Pakistan soon after partition as India became an upper riparian with control over the canal headworks that supplied water to lands which became part of Pakistan. Signed on September 9, 1960 with the cooperation of World Bank after several rounds of earlier negotiations and other interim agreements, the IWT did not solve the water sharing problem between the two countries , the Indus Water Treaty has since survived all ups and downs of India-Pakistan relations unlike other agreements and CBMs that vanished into thin air once the relations soured between the two countries.
